The best Chinese learning apps and online platforms for chineese are ever available to us. Do you want to learn a new language? Are you struggling to find the right app? You don’t have to feel alone, or keep searching aimlessly.
This article will provide you with a list of the best chinese apps out there, so you can start learning right away.
VIPKID
Founded in 2013, VIPKID is an online teaching and education platform based in Beijing. Valued at more than $3 billion, VIPKID is one of the largest online English tutoring companies in China.
VIPKID’s target audience is Chinese children between the age of four to 15. All of its teachers are based in North America and must be certified by the company before teaching on the platform. It matches over 65,000 teachers with more than 500,000 Chinese students for real-time one-on-one English immersion learning. It is estimated that the student-retention rate of this platform is around 95%. In 2018, VIPKID signed a strategic cooperation agreement with World-Renowned Education Publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) to bring in premium English content, making it the first online education platform to get full access to HMH’s K12 curricula.
Zuoyebang
Founded in 2014, Zuoyebang is another online education platform popular among Chinese students and parents. The mobile based platform has 120 million active monthly users in China. While it also targets K-12 students, Zuoyehang provides a unique niche service where K-12 students can upload their homework questions and search for solutions.
The Baidu-owned startup started to operate independently in 2015 after it accomplished several rounds of fundraising. Goldman Sachs, Sequoia Capital China, New Enterprise Associates and other leading companies are all its investors.
Similar to its parent company Baidu’s community-based Baidu Knows feature, Zuoyebang allows users to ask and answer questions. Users can choose their own education level and grade for customized content, which includes exam-oriented exercises and mock tests. Zuoyebang also allows users to upload a photo, which it will analyze and match to questions in its database. For questions whose solutions are not in the database, users can opt to pay for virtual one-on-one sessions with teachers that partner with Zuoyebang.
Gogokid
(a screenshot of learner’s profile, source: 36kr)
Just as how it challenges established competitors in the social media market, internet giant ByteDance is also disrupting China’s online education market. Although founded for less than three years, ByteDance’s Gogokid, an one-on-one English learning platform for children aged between four and 12, has become one of the hottest online learning platforms among Chinese users.
A market research shows that in China, online subject-based tutoring is the main demand of K12 online education users. Among all the subjects, English and Math were the two most popular subjects. Since ByteDance is primarily a tech company that excels at algorithms, analysts predict that Gogokid will provide better targeted and customized subject-based content for users.
While hiring native speakers based in the U.S, Gogokid localizes teaching content and uses the Chinese standard curriculum through an AI-enabled virtual classroom. Each teaching session is 25-minute-long. The virtual classroom runs best in browser environments.
Dedao / iGet
A leader in the paid content industry and online education market, Dedao offers live seminars and audio-based editorial columns from experts and leading opinion leaders in China. Granted, China’s online education industry is geared towards K12 and middle school students, most of who were born after 1995 and even 2000. But with the increasing prevalence of massive open online courses, a growing awareness of intellectual property among Chinese netizens, and the convenience of mobile payments, more and more adults are looking to and willing to pay to equip themselves with more skills for career advancement.
Dedao represents a growing trend of China’s online education market and the paid content industry: educational audio courses. Research shows that over half of the consumers of audio-based online learning courses are internet-savvy male who are keen to seek knowledge in their free time.
According to the the company’s data, Dedao sees 20,000 new users every day and has sold over 1.44 million subscriptions of its services since it was founded in November 2015. Dedao’s mission is to encourage users to read “a book a day, 365 books a year”. It provides paying users with a library of popular books summarized into 30 minute, quality podcasts with transcripts. Users can buy online courses, e-books, audiobooks and other virtual products through “Dedao”, or buy products through the physical mall of “Dedao.”
Lingbe (iOS/Android)
Using Lingbe, you can call other Chinese learners (totally free) or native Chinese speakers (pay only US$5 for 1 hour of conversation) to practice your Chinese. Lingbe is fast, low cost and anonymous.
2. Anki (iOS/PC)
Anki is an app that uses SRS. You can download pre-made flashcards or make your own. You can then grade how well you know the card: “Hard”, “Good” or “Easy”. But the best thing about Anki is it’s open-source and easy to customize. Rich, CEO of China Admissions personally uses Lingbe.
3. Duolingo (iOS/Android)
Duolingo helps you learn Chinese through interactive games and bite-sized lessons. For beginners, you start with lessons such as greetings, number, names etc. Advanced learners need to take a placement test.
4. Memrise (iOS/Android)
Memrise is a flashcard app that helps you memorize Chinese characters by using mnemonics and SRS. You will choose your own course and study it, after which, Memrise quizzes you on them using fun games where you get badges and virtual rewards.
5. Skritter (iOS/Android)
Like Anki and Memrise, Skritter uses SRS but what’s unique about this app is it has a smooth on-screen handwriting feature that you can use to actively recall how to write Chinese characters wherever you are.
6. Hello Chinese (iOS/Android)
Hello Chinese features mini lessons delivered through fun games. You can use their handwriting tool to practice writing characters. If you would like to speak conversational Chinese fast, this app has many listening exercises and a speech recognition tool to help with your pronunciation.
7. ChineseSkill (iOS/Android)
ChineseSkill is the only app that follows a curriculum designed by veteran Chinese teachers from Peking University, the best university in China. This app features automatic speech assessment, character handwriting and pinyin tone animation.
HelloChinese: Designed Specifically for Chinese
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HelloChinese might be the best app to get started learning Mandarin Chinese. Like many of the apps on this list, you work up through different levels, building on your knowledge and improving your understanding of the language as you go.
HelloChinese starts with an explanation of how to read pinyin—the written form of Mandarin that uses letters instead of Chinese characters.
From there, play award-winning games to expand your vocabulary, learn grammatical rules, and construct sentences. By the time you complete the app, you should be conversational in Mandarin.
Download: HelloChinese for iOS | Android (Free, subscription available)
3. LingoDeer: Learn to Read and Write
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LingoDeer is an excellent option if you want to learn how to speak, read, and write in Chinese. This well-structured app uses minimal English to get you thinking in Mandarin Chinese as soon as possible.
Practice writing Chinese characters, expand your vocabulary from beginner to conversational, and listen to native speakers in slow motion to help perfect your pronunciation.
LingoDeer also gives you a breakdown of your performance after each lesson. This makes it easy to see your progress and highlight any weak spots, which you can work on using Review mode.
Download: LingoDeer for iOS | Android (Free, subscription available)
4. Memrise: Translate Objects Using Your Camera
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Once upon a time, Memrise was a flashcard-based app, but these days you can use it to follow a gamified learning syllabus instead. One of the great parts about Memrise is that it periodically encourages you to review what you’ve already learned, helping shift those words to your long-term memory.
Memrise is packed with clips of native speakers so you can improve your listening skills while learning how to pronounce words and phrases clearly.
You can also use the camera on your device to get translations of objects around you, helping to bridge the gap between Memrise and the real world.
Download: Memrise for iOS | Android (Free, subscription available)
5. Skritter Chinese: Learn to Write Chinese Characters
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Learning to read and write Chinese characters is incredibly important in your journey. First of all, the same characters are used across Mandarin and Cantonese, so knowing them boosts the number of people you can communicate with. Second, reading or writing Chinese is extra useful if you meet anybody with a regional dialect that you can’t understand.
Skritter is the best app available for learning to write in Chinese. It teaches you over 10,000 characters, which combine to make over 400,000 words. And Skritter guides your hand through writing these characters one stroke at a time.
If you don’t want to pay anything, you’re limited to a seven-day free trial. But that’s plenty of time to get some basic characters under your belt.
Download: Skritter Chinese for iOS | Android (Free trial, subscription required)
6. Anki Flashcards: Expand Your Vocabulary Even More
AnkiMobile and AnkiDroid act as counterparts to the Anki desktop app, which is one of the best flashcard apps available. These fully-featured mobile counterparts let you add Chinese decks to your account so you can work through vast vocabularies and expand your knowledge.
Decks of flashcards can include audio and images to aid you in memorizing new words. You can then sync your decks over the cloud, making it easy to review them on any device.
AnkiDroid is totally free, just like the open-source desktop app, but only works on Android devices. If you have an iPhone, you need AnkiMobile instead, which comes at a premium fee to support further app developments.
Download: AnkiMobile Flashcards for iOS ($24.99)
Download: AnkiDroid Flashcards for Android (Free)
Conclusion
It is no secret the number one sought after skill in China and around the world is learning how to speak Mandarin. Whether you plan to relocate, do business with China, or just want to learn a new language online — there are certain apps you should consider installing today!