Hey Marco - we actually started making Spotify playlists off the back of our Top Chinese Songs blog and it proved to be more popular than we expected. We ended up picking up over 100 followers from this playlist alone.
It’s only 12 songs but they are 12 hugely popular songs to know. I think I’ve sung 小苹果 at KTV 100 times over already!
This is a good nudge for us to create some more playlists! Thanks and hope it’s useful.
PS - a song I recently discovered that I loved was You Exist in My Song by Wan Ting. We made a YouTube video for it translating the song to English to use as a study tool. Beautiful song.
Hi Marco! This is Marine from LTL Beijing, I actually created the LTL Spotify myself with several playlists requested by students such as: Traditional Chinese, C-pop, Disney songs in Chinese, rap/hip hop as well as a Study Playlist. This is the link to our Spotify.
It is a work in progress, but what other playlists would you like to see?
Hi Marine, thank you so much!! These playlists look really cool, I will certainly listen! As for playlists I’d like to see, maybe one with trending songs? I’d say songs that are playing on the radio right now, but not sure if the radio is still a thing in China (or anywhere else, really…)
I use Skritter every single day. By far my favorite daily app.
For learning I prefer Italki. I have found great one on one tutors and teachers and have noticed a big leap in my learning. I have 2 sometimes 3 classes per week.
Lastly I like HelloTalk. A great place to find a language exchange partner.
I have a special spreadsheet for study tools. Here are some of my favorites.
I agree with @Kimberly-Mandarin-HSK_4. Skritter is by far the most useful tool to review characters but also quite expensive (there are other newer alternatives like TofuLearn and Inkstone if that is an issue). If you don’t care about writing at all, Hack Chinese is perfect.
I have originally learned how to memorize characters by following the methods (storytelling and memory palaces) outlined in this book: Learning Chinese Characters. The other tool I use daily is the Outlier Dictionary for Pleco that breaks down each character for you so you can memorize it. Thanks to these strategies (and daily Skritter practice) I’m now able to read at HSK4/5 level.
For reading, my Preply tutor and I have been using HSK Reading. Like others, I also try to read graded readers daily - for HSK4 I highly recommend Journey to the West by Jeff Pepper. There are many other books by this author for all HSK levels and even free audio versions of these books.
If you’re preparing for HSK (or if you just want to improve your grammar), the two best resources I found is the Chinese Grammar Wiki and Chinese Zero to Hero (I purchased the Ultimate bundle and it’s absolutely worth it. They also have a few free courses).
Speechling is great for practicing listening and pronunciation. You can get free feedback on 10 recordings every month. If that’s not enough or you just want an immediate feedback, you can also try this free Pronunciation Training tool written by yours truly. Currently it supports Chinese and Japanese
Last but not least, this is not really a study tool but I use Evernote for anything related to learning Chinese (meeting notes with tutor, homeworks, exercises, daily log etc).
Not exactly a study tool, but I have a knack these days for uploading audio files into Anki to practice listening. An example of this are various funny/interesting videos I find on Douyin, which I then use the Video DownloadHelper Chrome/Firefox add-on to download and convert to MP3 on my computer. I then upload them to Anki and have them play in the background!
Oh, one other AMAZING resource I found recently on Youtube is this Channel for Chinese Fairy Tales.
HUGE amount of videos of all the famous fairy tales and more!
For any other language learners, the channel has other languages as well (I’m using it to improve my Thai and Korean currently)!
Domino Chinese - this course/app I have really enjoyed - it is amazing for learning new vocab and connecting similarly rooted words together. What I like the most is that it is taught by a non native speaker in conjunction with native speakers, so the vocab sections are organised in a similar way to how I connect the vocab (similar looking characters, sounds, etc). I had the free month trial via Hack Chinese and now use it daily (although I warn you, there is a large amount of vocab, I block quite a few of the less common words in my hack Chinese).
Drops - I really like this app as its simple and a pretty interface, basically has loads of different topics with 5 mins study time to learn new words. I used to do one drops session every time I went for my morning coffee - which really adds up! It isn’t as reliable as hack Chinese as it doesn’t have SRS but I think it’s good to widen your vocabulary awareness
Has anyone used Mandarin Blueprint? I actually just cancelled my free trial as I get the feeling it isn’t for me. In essence, it seems to be about how to make a scene in your head to remind you of characters. Since I already know around 3000 characters, it seems like a waste of time / effort to do this at this stage. I read a review that said it was fairly helpful for beginners, but personally it seemed like too much to imagine in my head - I can’t see myself getting home from work and then coming up with new scenes every day to learn new words.
I found it quite hard to find information about how it worked before I signed up, not sure if I didn’t look hard enough or if it isn’t clear. Thought I would share here as I think it’s good to know pros and cons of learning resources
I tried it for a very brief time. My feeling was similar to yours. I thought “so in addition to learning all these words, grammar, characters, now I have to invent and learn movie scenes?”. And, these movie references have nothing to do with Chinese language or Culture. Down the line I’m going to be reading a book in Chinese, come across this character and start thinking about Adam Sandler in Happy Gilmore or The Godfather part 2.
To be fair, I tried it on a money back guarantee and they returned my money no questions asked.
I will say however, that their pronunciation course (this was free at the time I did it, some 2 odd years ago) was excellent and I got a lot from it.
I am writing my own tools, i have made a start, which you can see here https://dictplus.azurewebsites.net its just starting and i dont really have to much time, but there is a dictionary with stroke order, radical explorer, measure word explorer, list of hsk levels, still buggy but am working on it!!!
Great. Why don’t you create a topic for feedback and ideas for it on here where you tell other students how it works and maybe get some feedback too? Like The Hack Chinese thread
Great thread! Here are some resources that have stuck with me throughout my studies:
Du Chinese: They have some free stories, but this is one of the few apps I pay for. Reading is one of my weaker skills, so their functions really help me during the times that I’m wanting to read with less pressure. I also love that all of the stories have audio. Skritter: Write Chinese: This app has helped me immensely improve my character and tone knowledge. They have pre-made decks for many of the most popular books.
They also have some free decks to study from. Hacking Chinese Blog: Olle has hundreds of free blog posts about learning Chinese. Plus, there is a monthly competition that helps learners to focus on particular skills.
I also really enjoy Pleco and Podcasts on Spotify.
This is a nice video for learning/reviewing some more Cny vocab. I don’t subscribe to yabla, but I often use their free online dictionary. I love the multiple example sentences that you can read and then watch in videos/native content. I end up watching lots of short videos on different topics.
I’ve been a long-time fan of graded readers - especially the Mandarin Companion books! Have you guys ever read any of them? My favourites are The Prince and the Pauper and Great Expectations (especially as it’s a Shanghai adaptation!)
Seeing grammar points and vocabulary in context over and over again really helps me absorb all the language points. Plus when the stories are enjoyable I actually forget I’m reading in Chinese after a while - it feels more like a pastime than actively studying.
BONUS We also recently made a video on what they are and how to use them
The app I love the most to review my Chinese vocabulary is Quizlet. I used to use it when I was in university to not only memorize characters, but also to learn new vocabulary in the correct context. And I love the audio feature, because I can listen to the pronunciation of the character/sentence without looking at it and try to guess the correct meaning.
Another very useful tool I discovered last year is Langotalk, which uses AI! Here’s a blog that better explains how it works Langotalk Review || How AI is Revolutionising Language Learning | Flexi Classes
Here you can talk to chatbots in your target language, you can practice your speaking skills and much much more!
