Studying Chinese in Digital Age: The Ultimate Masterlist of Resources for Mandarin Fluency

Introduction

Sometimes I ponder how our ancestors ever learned other languages without all the modern day tools we currently have at our disposal. Don’t misunderstand me, learning a language still takes time and dedication, but thankfully it’s made a lot easier with the tools we have today at our disposal.

Here’s my current method for studying Chinese, which includes many linked resources & Chinese language learning tips. Let this be a guide that you can edit to your liking. I hope you will find this useful.

What’s your “Why”

Before diving into a long-term commitment like learning a foreign language, it’s important that you keep in mind why you want to start this journey. Language learning is a marathon and will take consistency over the course of years to achieve any proficiency, so being able to remember your “why” will help you stay motivated.

Another huge reason to pay attention to your “why” is that you’ll be able to formulate a proper plan for your specific language learning goals. Your language learning goals will change how you study. For example, if you want to be able to communicate with a family member, then learning how to write Chinese would be a less efficient path for you. If you’re learning Chinese for the purpose of reading manhua, and Chinese poetry, then you may not want to spend a lot of time learning how to pronounce pinyin.

I wanted to be able to write Chinese (for no real reason other than the language is just so beautiful), and be able to message my Chinese friends on the internet. All the resources I used will be for supporting this goal, so keep my bias in mind as you continue to read this ultimate masterlist.

Learn the Dang Radicals!

I know you may be upset with me already, but I swear it’s extremely useful and I’m so glad I did it.

Chinese is made of thousands of unique characters, but guess what? All of the 50,000+ characters that exist are made up of these 214 radicals! These radicals will give you insight on the meaning of characters, as well as the potential pronunciations.

Spending quality time with the radicals will also aid you in Chinese writing because after writing the first few radicals, you quickly catch on to the stroke order. Plus, a lot of the more complex radicals are actually made of the basic radicals themselves! It’s also great to learn them because suddenly characters that use to look crazy difficult to memorize (警察 for example), can be broken down visually with ease. This will help you with memorization greatly! You’ll even be able to notice subtle difference between hanzi (like 土 vs 士!)

What I use to do is watch this Youtube video that showed me all the radicals animated in a handdrawn font (this font is called Kai font btw!) which is super useful! I’d play some interesting podcasts in the background and just have fun rewriting the radical over and over (along with the pronunciation, but I didn’t try super hard to memorize that).

Overall, learning the radicals took me about 3 months to do, and I’d say is 100% worth the time investment.

Flashcard Tips

You could go with real flashcards, but I personally highly, highly recommend Pleco flashcards. This is THE flashcard app to get for Chinese learning.

The app itself is free, but the pro flashcard system is way better and completely worth the $10 investment. Pleco also has a vast dictionary system in it. You’re able to search using any form of input as well, which you’ll find very useful.

As someone who taught herself Spanish, and now Chinese, the following pattern seems to always occur: flashcards will be extremely useful in the beginning of your language learning journey , but eventually once you’ve memorized a good foundation of words, you won’t find them as effective. You’ll eventually learn vocabulary primarily through immersion.

Language Learning Apps

Now that we’re in this digital age, and we’re always on our phones, using a language learning app is easily accessible, and can be a great supplement to your studies. I currently use some of the following apps on my lazy days, when I just want to stay in my bed. Instead of doom scrolling, try out some of these apps instead.

Duolingo

Let’s get it out of the way, discuss the elephant in the room…or should I say the scary, green owl?

Duolingo for Chinese is…not the best. As of right now, it lacks in a lot of ways I’m sure you’ve already heard of (this wonderful posts discusses the issue in great detail). The only good thing about Duolingo is that it’s the only free app on this list. I honestly recommend you skip the Duolingo phase if you can, and try these other two apps below instead.

LingoDeer

LingoDeer is known as a great competitor to DuoLingo. This app gives thorough and proper grammar lessons with lots of practice. You can practice your speaking, and reading abilities, too. It even includes built-in flashcards. My personal favorite part is that there are no punishments for being wrong, so you study without fear.

Coming in at $15/mo or $80/yr, this app can be a bit expensive. I highly recommend you get LingoDeer on sale during Black Friday instead! This is when I personally picked up the lifetime subscription (about $120 and I think it included LingoDeer+).

DuChinese

DuChinese is a reading app for Chinese and has a crazy catalogue of materials to choose from! They have materials made for every level, from newbie to advanced, and the best part is that they’re all genuinely interesting stories. The app connects directly with the Pleco dictionary app which is super convenient. It also has its own built-in flashcards.

They recently added grammar to the DuChinese app, so they’re actively improving the app. The only real downside to this app is that it’s a subscription service. Unlike LingoDeer, there’s no way to buy a lifetime membership. But if you have the money, I really think it’s worth the investment (and get it on one of their many sales throughout the year).

If you don’t have the spare cash then I HIGHLY recommend the next section!

READ!!!

I cannot stress this enough. Reading is my favorite way to pick up a language. This is how I learned Spanish without really trying.

You could use DuChinese to read, which has the built-in pop up dictionary, but you could also just buy a book and start going at it.

Nowadays, there are a ton of digital tools you can use to facilitate you when you need to look up a character or pronunciation. I personally use Pleco’s OCR (Optical Character Recognizer).

I also do this convoluted method that involves taking a photo of the book, then using Apple’s text-recognition built-in software to capture the text, then I copy and paste the text from the photo into an email that I then email myself with. After that, I use a Firefox extension called Zhongwen Chinese Pop Up Dictionary so I can roll over the text. It also directly links to the Chinese Grammar Wiki, a popular grammar website. Or, you could avoid all of this by just sticking to an e-book that has a pop up dictionary built in 😅.

Textbooks

I used the Integrated Chinese series in the beginning. The design of the textbook itself is really beautiful. I know it’s a bit pricey, but I think it’s worth it if you’re looking for a structured method.

I got through the whole first book and had bought the second in the series, but there are some cons to this.

For me, it was just so slow. It takes quite a while to get to grammar concepts I had learned a long time ago through reading (this may be true for all textbooks & not just the Integrated Chinese series though). Another thing is, this series was meant to be used in a formal university setting. The grammar concepts are written in a very advanced way and that can be difficult to understand. Luckily, there are plenty of examples, so you can still follow along. It’s just something to bare in mind if you pick up a copy. Or you can just stick to the Grammar Wiki.

The Future & Change

This is currently how I study Mandarin Chinese, but as language learners, your methods should change and shift with time. Recently, I started Remembering the Hanzi by James W. Heisig. I’m considering pausing most of current routine to learn how to write 3000 hanzi, as well as memorize their meanings. It think it might help me output the language better.

There’s also a language learning tool that deserves an honorable mention: YourTeacher.Ai. If your purpose for learning Chinese is to speak out loud fluently, then check out my review on this new and potentially great app.

If I have great success with Remembering the Hanzi, I’ll be sure to mention it right here on my blog, so be sure to follow me on Pinterest and YouTube and stay tuned!

Leave any question or comments below, or contact me directly. Be sure to bookmark this page as a resource if you find it helpful! 🙂 再见！