My favourite language apps for learning Chinese

Introduction

This post gives a list of Chinese language apps I have used along with commentary on my experience using them and is based on an email written to a friend who asked me for advice on this topic.

These are my personal opinions, and your milage may vary, but I hope that it will provide some practical inspiration for the beginning of your language learning journey.

You can jump straight to the summary if you want to simply download and use my top recommendations.

Rundown with Commentary

HelloChinese

I would recommend HelloChinese as the first app to try out. It has some explanations of grammar and cultural points, clips from native speakers, and practice speaking with tone recognition software. I finished all their main content so don’t use it anymore, but I heard they recently released an update, so maybe I should check it out again myself.

Memrise

I personally have used Memrise a lot to pick up lots of sentences and vocabulary. I think the use of spaced recognition helps for memory a lot. HelloChinese also does reminders for refreshing your memory, but I think it is relatively less frequent/sophisticated/relevant, and Memrise also emphasises vocabulary that you find difficult by repeating it more often (when you make a mistake) which I think is really useful.

LingoDeer

I think LingoDeer is a promising app in a similar vein to HelloChinese with more language options as well, but I haven’t actually used it myself beyond a quick preview, because at my current level of Chinese I believe there are more efficient ways to learn nuggets of new vocabulary than spending most of the time repeating content that I am already very comfortable with.

I would be interested to hear your thoughts on the app in terms of the way the material is presented and any differences in topics/vocabulary covered in comparison to HelloChinese and Memrise.

Drops

Drops focuses on teaching vocabulary with graphics and animations. I think the pictures are nice, and I like the range of vocabulary topics that are offered beyond the basics. However, this app won’t teach you sentences and grammar, which is why it is not what I would suggest as a first language app for Chinese.

I personally don’t like the time limitation element which restricts your usage to 5 minutes per day. I understand that this is their business model to sell the premium version, and supposedly helps to build the app habit by encouraging a five minute daily dose, but it means I cannot binge-learn lots of vocabulary when I’m interested and have some free time, which in my mind makes it significantly worse than the previous three apps. It’s also less convenient to keep track and/or keep up with previous vocabulary/prioritise the stuff you find interesting or difficult - the former being a limitation imposed on the free version, and the latter might just be a ‘feature’.

Scripts is part of the selection of Drops products, but downloading it separately will allow you an extra 5 minutes per day to practice writing only. I used it to try to practice/learn the Japanese alphabets. You can also get extra time by downloading the language specific app ‘ Drops Chinese’, but progress is not consistent between apps (which allows the exploit anyway). A positive for Drops/Scripts is the availability of writing practice, though it only covers the basics and can feel somewhat tedious sometimes. I feel like HelloChinese incorporates the writing element better, though it forms a smaller part of the overall app.

Duolingo

I haven’t revisited Duolingo’s offering recently, but I think it is very average for Chinese, with poor explanations of grammatical structures sometimes. My impression is that Duolingo is better placed for learning European languages such as Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese due to having a larger user community. Also check out this post for user stats from 2018 and for highlighting the idea of ‘doing the reverse tree’ (e.g. taking the English course for Chinese speakers).

Beelinguapp

Beelinguapp has the principle of learning language through reading (children’s stories) with both the learning language and native language translation available. I haven’t used it much because I find it difficult to find stories to suit my level - usually too many new vocabulary items (e.g. in fairy tales), plus occasionally dubious user interface. I don’t know if there are good stories that I just can’t read because I’m using the free version. I think this app has potential, especially for more advanced learners, but I haven’t got much value from it myself. It’s also worth noting that (as a native English speaker) I think it would be easier (for me) to use this kind of method to practice and develop understanding in languages more similar to English since educated guesses could be made when encountering new vocabulary.

HSK Hero Pro

Finally, I’ve been having some fun with HSK Hero Pro recently which practices vocabulary from the HSK exams (Chinese Language Level exams aimed at non-native speakers with syllabus set by a Chinese government institution). It’s a very simple app with relevant vocabulary and I’ve been using it to refresh my memory since I haven’t been taking any classes or actively reading Chinese language textbooks over the summer. Only does vocabulary and not sentences, but that suits my needs at the moment.

The free version of the app 825 words, ranging from HSK level 1 all the way up HSK level 6. I feel that you’ll get more mileage out of this app as you Chinese language level gets higher because the amount of content increases exponentially with level, but difficulty increases slower than that.

Honorable mentions

Nowadays, instead of learning curated content from language apps, I use the website Line Dictionary (which also has an associated app which I haven’t tried) to look up new vocabulary that I encounter in my travels, whilst a number of people I know use Pleco as a dictionary app for learning Chinese, making it also worth looking into.

I recently came across an online discussion of Chinese language apps where a user recommended 香港小學習字表 HK Chinese Lexical List for learning to write in Chinese (Simplified and Traditional). They said “It’s designed for kids, but anyone can use it to learn how to use the correct principles to write Chinese (筆劃), and the pronouncation section in both Mandarin and Cantonese is useful.”

A review of the app in Google Play store says: “Faithfully replicates the Hong Kong Education Bureau’s Chinese Lexical Lists for Primary Learning Website.” With this in mind, I expect that this app will be a good choice for those who want to focus on Cantonese and traditional Chinese characters, especially.

Summary

1. I would recommend using HelloChinese as a first Chinese language learning app. It is a comprehensive introductory app which covers the basics and beyond.
2. I also got a lot of value from Memrise, which I discovered earlier in my language learning journey. It has buckets of content, and really helped me learn and remember new vocabulary. I’d strongly recommend trying out these two apps together first.
3. Check out LingoDeer and tell me if you think it’s good. There are also plenty more apps in the Google Play store/Apple store for learning Chinese, such as ChineseSkill, which I haven’t tried but you might find effective, and I’d be interested to gather your reviews of these for comparing and sharing.
4. If you have time/finish the other apps, check out the novel approach of Drops/ Scripts. It has some vocabulary distinct from the previous apps (a great plus), but I think it’s been generally less effective for me in terms of retaining newly learned words.
5. If you are already comfortable with the basics and want to practice/increase your word power, I can recommend HSK Hero Pro to cover vocabulary from the official syllabus.
6. If you’re looking for an app to specifically focus on writing and/or you are particularly interested in Cantonese/traditional Chinese characters, check out HK Chinese Lexical List. I haven’t tried it, so can’t personally vouch for its efficacy, but it is also based on an official source.

Caveats

I’d like to reiterate that whilst I hope you find the apps mentioned here fun, interesting, and useful, you might find others on the market that are even better for you or at least have a different order of preferences to those expressed here. You are welcome to let me know if that is the case and to express your reasons why.

The scope of this review is limited by being concerned only with the free versions of these apps, but this has worked for me, and I think is a reasonable expectation for beginners. For example, if the price of the full version of HSK Hero Pro wasn’t so steep, I would possibly even recommend buying it, but for £17.49 (at time of writing) I think your money would be better spent on classes/textbooks.

Indeed, I believe that language learning apps are a great tool, but should certainly be supplemented by taking classes, reading textbooks, and ultimately practicing reading/writing/speaking/listening in a real context, which is why you wanted to start learning in the first place, right? 😄

What’s next?

I hope to follow up this post in the future by writing about which textbooks, classes, and other forms of media I have used and would recommend to learn more about Chinese language, culture, and history. This could include websites, YouTube channels, Facebook groups, books, films, as well as various methods of interpersonal interactions (e.g. university societies, language partners, Chinese restaurants/dining, visiting China, etc.)

Thanks for reading, and let me know if you’d like to hear more thoughts and reflections from my Chinese language learning journey.

Your fellow learner, Edward