Learning languages generally involves four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing.

Most apps I have used focus strongly on speaking and listening while dedicating little time to reading and writing. However, especially for Mandarin Chinese, reading and writing can be a real pain and up to now I haven’t found any good solution. Enter Zizzle: Zizzle is a Mandarin-learning app whose main purpose is teaching how to recognize and remember Chinese characters, including their shape, meaning pronunciation and tone; and for this task, it does a fantastic job.

How it works

Zizzle (available for both iOS and Android) teaches Chinese characters not only through the traditional way of repetition. Rather, Zizzle makes you remember characters through association, and it does so via visualization and keywords. When Zizzle teaches a character, it introduces it with a two-part story that contains links to the character’s shape, meaning, pronunciation and tone. The stories are accompanied by images which will help create an additional visual layer of learning. As we will see in this review, some of the stories are absolutely hilarious which actually helps the learning effect. Through this method, Zizzle makes it possible for you to remember the characters in a much more interesting and faster way.

Use the promo code “DIGMANDARIN10” to save 10% on all three-month and annual subscriptions, as well as packs.

The Experience

The app is easy to download (I used the iOS version) and has a very simple and easy-to-use interface. It did not take me long at all to get used to how the app works. The number of buttons to press is minimal. Keeping the app simple and easy to understand is important for learners.

The app starts out with a tutorial to get you started which takes you through the workings of the app. It’s very intuitive and it won’t be long before you start to learn Chinese characters through the Zizzle “library”, starting with Lesson 1.

Each Lesson is composed of five characters, and you will learn each character in turn. At the end, you will have learned what the character looks like and how to pronounce it via associations in the visual stories, its usage in Chinese sentences that have English translations, and even downloadable audio.

As an example of how Zizzle works, here are some sequential screencaps of how Zizzle teaches its users to learn the character 大 (dà), meaning “big”.

Zizzle starts by showing you the character, its pinyin, and its definition with a choice to hear the audio of its pronunciation. If you already know a character, you have the option to skip learning it before you start the lesson.

The core of the Zizzle method is a two-part story: The first part of the story will use and include the character’s meaning, in our example “big”. The story is always shown in combination with a vivid image, which, in the case of simple characters, will follow the shape of the character. Taken together therefore, the first part of the story will help you remember the shape and the meaning of the character.

Swiping right leads you to the continuation (the second part) of the story.

In the second part, the app will then associate the pronunciation and the tone of the character with elements of the story. In our example, the story includes a big bulldog who looks like Darth Vader (from the Star Wars movies). The DA in Darth Vader provides a linkword to the pronunciation of the character, which in our example is dà.

Finally, the Zizzle story introduces a “hero”, which helps you to remember the tones for the word’s proper pronunciation. In our case, the hero is the bulldog, who represents the fourth tone, because he likes to punch down on things, just like the downward-moving fourth tone.

After introducing the two-part story, the lesson continues by showing you words and sentences with the character in actual use. Here, you can find examples of the word being used in a sentence, with an option to hear the audio. You can then start the quiz to test your knowledge.

If you get all your answers correct, you pass the quiz, and you have just learned a new character!

Quick summary

For 大, they used an image of a BIG fictional person, Darth Vader. The image and the DA in Darth Vader’s name help the learner to remember the shape of the character as well as its meaning and pronunciation. Zizzle then uses a hero to teach the tones, with each character representing a tone. In the above example, the bulldog represents the fourth tone. They also have a turtle, a fox, and a dragon, to represent the other tones (1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd), as well as another hero that looks like a bamboo stick for the “light” tone.

Together, these parts form the stories that Zizzle uses to help learners remember the character better than through rote memorization. After this the app will present the character in a sentence or two to show how it is used in context.

Finally, users can take a short quiz to test you on what you have learned. The quiz will ask you to answer multiple choice questions regarding the character’s tone, look, meaning, and pronunciation. This quiz is the final part of the process in learning a new character.

Complex characters

The majority of Chinese characters usually have more than one component, so of course I was wondering how Zizzle would take on these. After all, complex characters are not as easy to visualize. However, with regard to complex characters, Zizzle makes great use of the natural building structure of Chinese characters. In particular, they often consist of parts called radicals which, when combined with other parts, form new characters with distinct meaning and pronunciation. Below is an example with the character 谢 (xìe) to show you how that works in practice:

谢 means “thanks” which you might know from the very common expressions 谢谢. Zizzle breaks the character down into its parts, in our case the word radical, and the character 射 (shè) which means to shoot. You can clearly see, how, when the two parts are put together, they form the character for 谢.

Zizzle will then turn this relationship (word + to shoot = thanks) into a story, again accompanied by an image, so that you will have a visual memory of it. This makes it easier for you to remember the components of complex characters as well as the meaning of that character itself. What I particularly enjoyed about Zizzle is the fact that the stories sometimes are a bit funny and absurd which really contributes to its memorability.

Following Zizzle’s style, it continues the story in its second part by giving you a linkword (CASHIER) and a hero (the bulldog) to help you recall its pronunciation and tone. And yes, the second part of the story is still pretty funny and absurd. But I’m sure you will now easily remember this character!

Again, the app will then shows you how the character is used in sentences, followed by the standard quiz for pronunciation, tone, meaning, and how the character looks.

Overall, this is the sequence that Zizzle follows to help you increase your Mandarin vocabulary. In addition to the basic character learning function, Zizzle offers spaced repetition (SRS) to really strengthen what you have learned before.

Verdict

Zizzle is an excellent app for learning Chinese. Despite some initial doubts, I must admit that learning characters through stories is a unique way of remembering them!

I researched on the internet to see if there were any scientific studies on this kind of learning, and yes, there were indeed a few sites that confirmed that you can learn faster and better by associating images and stories to what you are learning. As I have already mentioned, some of the associations, images, and stories in Zizzle app can come across as strange and hilarious, but this is actually a positive thing. Because the stranger the association, the more the learner will remember it, and thus, will also remember the character!

The App allows for a free 7-day trial to get a feel for how it works. After the trial period is over, you can choose to continue learning by either purchasing Zizzle Character Packs or Zizzle Subscriptions.

The Character Packs give you lifetime access to selected characters, words, phrases, audio, and quizzes inside chosen decks, with each pack worth US$49.99. These packs are the “Chinese Textbook Companion,” “Master Everyday Chinese,”, “Crack the HSK,”, and “Chinese Medicine.”

Zizzle Subscription instead offers access to all content without limitation. Right now, this includes visualized stories of 850+ Chinese characters (including any new characters), with 3000+ essential words and phrases with audio. You can choose from a 1-month to a 3-year subscription ranging from US$9.99 to US$159.99. More characters are added continuously and will then be available to the users.

If you are convinced, use the promo code “DIGMANDARIN10” to save 10% on all three-month and annual subscriptions, as well as packs.

What is clear is that Zizzle is a very easy-to-use app, which uses images and stories to make learning Chinese characters memorable.

Recommendation

If you are trying to learn Chinese characters, how they are written, their meaning, and how they are pronounced, you can’t go wrong with Zizzle. This, for me, is a unique and one-of-a-kind way to learn Chinese characters. If what you’re after is character learning, from the basic up to the more complex characters with radicals, then yes, Zizzle is for you.

For the future, I have even more expectations from Zizzle. The app currently does not teach you how to construct sentences, grammar and how to build conversations. It also does not yet offer you a glimpse into the culture behind Mandarin. If Zizzle add these features, it would actually be a perfect learning tool.

But even now, if you want to learn individual characters well, along with their meaning and pronunciation, then Zizzle is just the right app for you, especially if you are not the type rote memorization. The app can definitely help build up your Mandarin vocabulary!

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Everyone in the world is a speaker of their own language. Because of this, everyone can teach someone else how to speak their own native tongue. Who better to teach others than someone who already knows a language very well?

This is the foundation for how HelloTalk works.

HelloTalk is a language learning app (for both iOS and Android) that connects people who want to learn a second language to those who know it as their first. They make this connection by setting up familiar social-media communication tools such as private chats, public chat groups, search, video, and audio recordings in an integrated app. What’s more, HelloTalk also provides translations and transliterations to help learners understand each other. Because of this set up, the best way that HelloTalk works is when two students who want to learn each other’s native language try to teach each other. The app claims to have millions of members from all over the globe with over 100 languages to be learned.

How It Works

As with most apps, it is easy enough to find HelloTalk on Apple’s App Store or on Google’s Play Store. Downloading it is quick, and registration is simple and easy. All it takes is to enter your name, birthday, and first language via the app (as well as the language you wish to learn), which you will then have to verify through an email. It took me less than five minutes to complete this process.

After registration, you will be shown a brief greeting page, and from there, proceed to the main HelloTalk page where you can see all the four main features.

These four main features are: HelloTalk, Moments, Search, and Profile.

> HelloTalk

HelloTalk is the private messages page which lists and shows all those you have sent messages to. These are your fellow learners, the ones who are going to teach you the language you’ve chosen to study, and whom you will be teaching your own native tongue.

> Moments

Moments is the group chatroom. This is where you can publicly talk to all the native speakers of a language who are members of HelloTalk all at once. It functions like a regular chatroom, as any subject matter can be talked about. You can ask questions about language, culture, or even travel.

Moments is interesting because at the top part of the screen, you can choose to see the conversations under Default, which is most everyone in the language community you are in talking about any topic; Following, which are those particular members you have chosen to follow; Learn, which are posts related directly to learning the language; and Classmates, which are those members studying the same language you are interested in.

> Search

Search is just what it says it is, a tool that helps you search for the ideal partner with whom you can learn and chat with. HelloTalk does its best to match you to other members who can best help you and who you can also help.

> Profile

While Profile is simply the information page about yourself. The flag of your country will be shown in the profile picture, and you can give a short biography about yourself.

Experience

For me, getting used to the interface took some time. Once I had finished registering, it was not quickly evident to me what each part was for. I was grateful for Amy, the chatbot that helped me understand how exactly to use the app.

I advise spending time with Amy. She will teach you how to use the app properly. You can learn about how to make corrections, use audio and video, send images, and most importantly, how to find chat partners, which is what HelloTalk is all about. Overall, it took me about 10-15 minutes of chatting with Amy before I was confident enough to try to explore the rest of the app.

And that is where I encountered a bit more difficulty. I used the Search function and scrolled through the list to look for some chat partners. It was hard for me to choose, even if I knew everyone there was willing to teach Mandarin, and was looking for an English speaker like me to learn from. In the end, I messaged a number of other members hoping someone would answer back.

In the end, a very nice lady from Shenzhen named Jessie, messaged me back. You should put in time and effort to find a good partner to chat with.

Once you do find one, everything becomes great! Jessie was a wonderful partner. She is such a nice lady and very patient in teaching me proper Mandarin, and I did my best to teach her English. This is where HelloTalk really lived up to its promise. Once two people come together who are willing to learn and are patient with each other, learning a new language becomes very interesting and fun.

Even if both Jessie and I were very slow, she with English and me with Mandarin, we could understand each other and were correcting each other as we learned. Because this was happening with a real person who spoke Mandarin very well, I was learning very deeply about proper pronunciation and vocabulary. I was also doing my best to teach Jessie good English grammar, in the same way she was teaching me how to properly pronounce words in Mandarin.

The above screenshot was where we were saying goodbye to each other after a chat. We not only chatted with each other, but we also shared audio messages, taking turns to send each other voice clips of what we were saying. This was slow, and we were not speaking to each other as if we were on a telephone or on videochat, but, this was actually good, because it gave us time to think and prepare what we wanted to say. This was actually perfect for early learners like us. We had time to study what we said to each other and to think about what we could say next.

The above screenshot also shows some “in-app” features of HelloTalk, all of which are very useful. Most of them are self-explanatory, but the most useful ones for me are Translate and Transliteration. Translate allows me to read in English what Jessie typed in Chinese in case I didn’t understand it. Transliteration shows me the pinyin, helping me pronounce what I was reading. Very useful!

Once the 15 free times translation are used, it allows us to upgrade to Pro Membership so that we can enjoy the unlimited services. Or we can also go outside of HelloTalk and use another translation program to try to understand things others said that were not clear.

HelloTalk allows us to report bad behavior that we see. Also, many HelloTalk members were quick to write comments and say that this bad person should be reported and then ignored. I’m glad that there are many good members on HelloTalk.

Verdict

For HelloTalk, everything depends on finding a good chat partner or partners. But once you do find one, learning becomes enjoyable and fun. I like Jessie very much. She was very patient in teaching me, and I hope I was able to teach her also. Jessie was so nice, I plan to chat with her again next week, and every week after that as often as I can because I know that this will help me improve, and at the same time, I want to help her become good in English also.

Unless you are already an intermediate student, I also advise you to get the VIP membership. It was so hard to use the app in free mode once all the translation services were used up. In addition to unlimited translation services, you will also get Power Search, no ads, exclusive use of stickers and cards, and you can learn up to three languages at once. You’ll have to pay for this, though.

Recommendation

HelloTalk is a very good app for learning from other native speakers around the world. It may take some time to get used to its user interface, but once you do, it becomes quite convenient. What’s important with HelloTalk is finding the right chat partner! It is here where you must invest some time in finding a good partner with whom to learn each other’s language. But once you find a good partner, learning becomes better.

Though your partner may not be a professional teacher who knows all the proper grammar rules, you will learn exactly the way a native speaker uses the language, which is always the best form of practice. All our teachers in the classrooms say that “practice makes perfect” when it comes to using a language, and that we should do this with other good language speakers. Therefore, HelloTalk is an app that will make sure you get to practice a lot!

*the reviewer is an English speaker who used HelloTalk on an iOS device to learn Mandarin

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Luckily, today’s digital world offers alternatives that bridge the gap between eager-to-learn students and competent teachers. With internet video, teachers and students can now enjoy the benefits of face-to-face learning.

Enter Mandarin Café.com, , which describes itself as “ an integrated online learning platform offering high-quality Chinese learning.”  The teaching institution is That’s Mandarin, a more than ten-year old Chinese language school located in Beijing and Shanghai, and it partners with a dedicated engineering team that works with “the latest and greatest web and mobile technologies” to make it as easy as possible for students and teachers to meet in the virtual world.

Mandarin Cafe is in essence, an ambitious internet Chinese language teaching channel that utilizes digital technology to bring students and teachers together into a virtual one-on-one direct tutorial environment, complete with lessons presented in video format. Anyone with good internet connection can be taught Chinese by a native speaker via online video, and to be frank, being taught by a trained native speaker is one of the best ways to master the language!

The User Experience

In theory, the developers of Mandarin Café have thought of everything to make it easy for students to not only get a teacher, but to study lessons as well.

I downloaded the app to my cellphone first, and logged in with an email address and a password. The first thing that I was asked to do was to take a test. The goal of the test was to gauge my current Chinese ability using the HSK levels standard.

I was asked a series of questions that involved translating English words into Chinese and vice versa (either entering the word, or picking from a multiple-choice list). Sometimes, I was asked to pick a picture, after being shown either a Chinese character or hearing a Chinese word spoken out loud.

You start out, of course from HSK 1, and the questions, just like a video game, got progressively harder. Once the test determines that you are no longer able to answer the questions consistently, you are pegged at that level, and it is at that level where you will start your studies. (Maybe you can try this test for free here)

Once I finished the test, I started studying in earnest, and for this, I stopped using the cellphone (more on that later) and instead logged on at mandarincafe.com using Google’s Chrome browser on my computer.

Studying Through Mandarin Cafe

It is not unique, but it is certainly very helpful, that one can learn Chinese through following real-life situations. Mandarin Café does this under the “Study” option through simple animated videos that show different events of everyday life. These are categorized under different Units and Lessons that are titled depending on the situation the video is concerned with.

From here, one can choose to: Read, Translate, Analyze, Read and Speak, Listen and Speak, and even learn how to Write characters. It’s all-encompassing learning through videos. Even if they are simply made, they are sufficiently effective, and the voice-talents are as natural as one can expect them to be.

I was particularly pleased with the Listen and Speak feature of the videos! I knew that I needed much practice with my tones, and hearing the characters in the video speak first, and then clicking on the microphone icon for me to “Speak” or repeat what the characters are saying was so helpful in making me practice. The program is even capable of gauging how well you spoke, giving a signal of “Good!” when you have done well.

The great thing about this system is that one can opt to repeat and review the videos over and over again until one feels that he has mastered all that he can from it. Depending on what you are practicing in your skill level, you can focus not just on your speaking tones, like I did, but on reading, translation, and even writing (you will need to have Chinese language input in your computer for this).

After I had gone through the videos under my levels, it was time to get to the real meat of learning, and to book a lesson with a real-life teacher!

Booking a One-on-One Tutorial

One can book either with a call, or via email. I chose to do so via email, choosing one that was within the prescribed HSK level of my test. Each class is typically 1-hour long. I initially tried to book one from 8:15 pm to 9:15 pm, but was informed that this was beyond their class hours. Take note that the teachers are only available from 8 am to 9 pm on weekdays, and 9 pm to 6 pm on weekends, Beijing time.

Once booked, all one has to do is make sure that one is online and logged in at the right time and date of the lesson! Mandarin Café will see to it that you will see a “Join Now” button for the lesson one has booked, and all one has to do is click on this, and one will then enter the virtual classroom where Teacher will be waiting.

Learning Online from the Teacher

I chose “Rise and Shine” for my lesson, and was taken to a simple screen divided into a video area on the upper left, a chat section on the lower left, and a space for words and text on the rest of the screen.

Since I arrived early for my class, I experimented with the words and found that each of them were clickable! A window box would pop up with a translation and an image, and a clickable “Play” button. Once can click on that, and the word would be spoken out with the proper intonation. Perfect for someone like me, who is focusing on pronunciation!

After scrolling through a bit, the time for class to start came, and I clicked on “Enter Room” which opened the video chat to the Teacher.

It was here, in talking to the Teacher, that I experienced again the ideal situation of learning a language one on one from a native speaker. A lot can indeed be learned from pre-programmed sentences and video or audio recordings, but the biggest benefit of having a human teacher is that one can ask questions about where one isn’t clear, and get an immediate answer. One even learns about nuances in Chinese speaking, and how you cannot directly translate from another language into Chinese because Chinese has its own unique way of sentence construction.

For example, here is something about telling time that I learned:

  3:15 = 三点一刻 (sān diǎn yí kè)

  3:45 = 三点三刻 (sān diǎn sān kè)

“ke”, the last character, means fifteen, so by saying 三刻you are actually saying “3:45”. But I did not know that you cannot use 二刻as “2:30”. That is just wrong. Instead, you say 半 or half. If I did not ask my Teacher that, I would never have known, and it is doubtful if a pre-programmed video or written conversation would have made that clear.

Another example of nuance: in asking whether you have short hair or long hair in English, the proper way to do so is: “Do you have short hair or long hair?”

And the literal translation would be 你有短发还是长发？(Nǐ yǒu chángfà háishì duǎnfà?)

But that would be wrong! Having a Teacher who explained that this is awkward was such a big help, as the proper Chinese expression is:

你是短发还是长发？ (Nǐ shì chángfà háishì duǎnfà?)

Though translated into English it would become “Are you short hair or long hair?”, this is the proper way to ask such a question in Chinese. It would be hard to explain this without a human Teacher to guide you.

In addition to having grammar rules explained, this for me is one of the biggest advantages of Mandarin Café, that there is a human who can explain the correct expressions in Chinese.

The Classroom Features

In addition to the aforementioned clickable words, the Teacher can also type in new words for you that are not in the original lesson. This is yet another advantage of having a human, who can expand what is in the lesson so that your knowledge of the language is increased. The wonderful thing about Mandarin Café is that these new words can be typed in for you to see, and each of these new words are also clickable, with the same translation and pronunciation found in the original lesson’s words.

The best part: once the lesson is done, one can click on “Review”, and those notes are saved for you, so you can easily go back to restudy then whenever you wish. So convenient! There is even an area where the teacher can provide “Feedback” to show where you need to improve.

In my opinion, Mandarin Café has done a good job in providing a “virtual” space that can act like a real classroom, and that automatically saves all your notes and all the Teacher’s comments so that it is so much easier to learn. There is no excuse for a determined student not to learn. All the tools are there.  It’s like a real classroom, with a real teacher, except it’s all done via the internet.

 Technical Problems with the System

This is not to say that the system does not have any problems. As with all things that rely on computers, one can encounter “bugs” or “incompatibilities” that are technical in nature. Here are some of those problems that I encountered:

• Remember how I mentioned that I switched from my cellphone to my computer? That was because when I tried to enter my classroom on my cellphone using the app there, I could not enter the classroom. Repeatedly clicking the “Join Now” button did not result in anything, and I ended up being late and missing my first class because of this. But when I used my computer, I was able to “Join”.
• But using the computer was not without its problems. It was not smooth sailing right away. I needed to Skype with my Teacher first to fix the problems because at first, I could not see any video, and then later, there were also problems with the audio. It took several testings and adjustments between myself and the Teacher before we could exit Skype and finally use Mandarin Café the way it was meant to be used.
• And further on the cellphone app, I also tried to watch and learn from the simple videos on it, but for some reason, they also would not load properly. I would get a “100%” video loaded message, and yet, the screen would remain black. At least, on a computer, I did not encounter this problem anymore. Still, using my cellphone to study would be more convenient because it is easier to carry a cellphone around than a laptop, which is heavier.

It is these technical imperfections that hamper proper learning. You could say that these digital problems are the equivalent of distance or heavy traffic for real-life classrooms. And there is one thing you should know that I took the classes in Philippines. Maybe the internet problem varies in different places. No matter where you are, you can take a free trial lesson first and test your internet with Mandarin Café.

Verdict

Mandarin Café’s system and process of teaching, its lessons, and its method of bringing teacher and student closer so that one can simulate real face-to-face learning through the internet is truly excellent…but only when the internet speed and the app works well.

They have actually thought of pretty much everything in making sure that a student, no matter his predetermined HSK level, will get the proper lessons and be in touch with a proper teacher who can guide him properly, but it really all depends on both internet speed and on the program working well.

But if you have a good network connection, and all other technical concerns are addressed, then I can recommend Mandarin Café as a great way to get in touch with a human Teacher through digital means. Without a doubt, having a human Teacher is one of the top ways to become proficient in learning Chinese, whether in real life, or through a virtual realm.

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Through the app, you just feel like you are listening in on conversations that indeed happen in China, with the added benefit of seeing the words—both characters and pinyin alike—like subtitles, as if you were watching a movie. The only thing lacking from the whole movie-like experience is seeing the people on the screen. So, maybe the better comparison is that the whole learning experience is more like listening to the radio, but with the added benefit of visible Chinese characters and pinyin.

The Learning Experience

The Du Chinese mobile app is designed for simplicity of navigation. Everything is labeled clearly for a student to understand what he is tapping on, and the labels are kept to a minimum so as to lessen confusion.

At the top of the main page are the three main areas of learning: “Lessons”, “My Page”, and “Words”. Simply put:

• “Lessons” are the actual conversations or articles where one can listen to and read what is taking place.
• “My Page” is where one can record favorite, completed, and latest lessons
• “Words” is where one can save specific vocabulary that one wishes to go back to and review for future study.

The lessons are marked by difficulty ranging from newbie to master, and the most popular ones are listed on the main page. I found they constantly add new lessons at a pace of 6 lessons per week. The lesson topics are interesting covering daily conversations,  Chinese culture, current events，the latest trends, funny stories, and life in China, and etc.

How it works

Once you tap a lesson, you are taken to a page which shows the lesson text. The Chinese characters one sees can be in either Simplified or Traditional form (changeable through the Settings) with the pinyin guide on top of the character. It has the option to turn off the pinyin so that you can learn to read the characters without them. Additionally, the words will be underlined with different colors based on their HSK level.

Clicking the “Play” button on the bottom starts the audio of the article, which comes with a voice recorded by a native speaker. The text will be highlighted during playback so that you can easily follow along, not just with your ears, but also with your eyes. At the same time, an English translation of what is being said will appear at the top of the screen. You can pause the audio at any time to suit your learning speed, and even tap on a completed sentence if you wish to hear it again. If you get stuck on a word, a simple tap gives you the word’s meaning and pinyin in the context of that sentence. It also allows you saving the words and review them later with their flashcards, pretty cool!

Searching for “Lessons”

Just as when you follow a lesson text and see the color-coordinated HSK underlined Chinese characters, “Lessons” are also labeled with the same colors. Thus, you can choose “Lessons” suited to your current mastery of Chinese, that is, whether your level is that of “Newbie”, “Elementary”, “Intermediate”, “Upper Intermediate”, “Advanced”, or “Master”. Of course, each increasing level makes the conversation and vocabulary more and more challenging. You need only tap on the desired level, and you will be taken to the “Lessons” that are categorized under that level.

Another easy way to search for “Lessons” is via the “Tags” listed at the very bottom of the main page. Here, you only need to tap the desired “Tag” and you will be taken to the “Lessons” that have been so tagged.

Verdict

Du Chinese is an excellent mobile app for learning Chinese. The app developers believe that, through this immersive method, the learner will absorb the vocabulary, sentence construction, and general way of speaking the language.

What you may not get from the app is the formal understanding and reasons behind the grammar of the language. This is one advantage of other learning methods, such as via schools, books, or one-on-one with a human teacher. Explanations of the reasons behind why a sentence is constructed the way it is are easier to find using these other methods.

But make no mistake, the Du Chinese app is worth it. If one can master all the “Lessons”, one is guaranteed to have advanced one`s Chinese language ability by a huge leap.

You can find the app in the App Store / Google Play or visit their website.

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