The Top Paid Chinese Learning Programs
Rocket Chinese
This language learning program was built around recorded audio in the form of different dialogues. Teaching the language in "chunks" as opposed to phrases and individual words, these dialogues come with English explanations to help clarify their meaning.
Not only does Rocket Chinese prepare you for conversations with native speakers, but it also dives into Chinese characters, even in the earliest sections of the course. Most Chinese courses keep learners using pinyin and gradually convert them to characters in the future.
Rocket Chinese provides a comprehensive approach to learning Mandarin, exposing learners to speaking, listening, reading, and writing. A time commitment of only 20 minutes a day is all you need to make incremental progress.
ChineseClass101
ChineseClass101 was designed around Chinese dialogues, much like Rocket Chinese. However, though it is much more affordable than Rocket Chinese, it lacks the same kind of thorough structure. For that reason, ChineseClass is much more of an app than a fully developed language program.
Lessons for ChineseClass101 are built as individual podcast episodes, with a conversation between two native Mandarin workers.
Following the dialogue, the hosts break down the grammar and vocabulary used. They also introduce fun, humor, and amusing anecdotes into the conversation.
The site is also furnished with a host of learning tools like flashcards, and a resource section for learning Chinese characters and other vocabularies. To get the most out of this program, you'll want to dedicate at least 15 minutes a day.
Pimsleur Chinese
Pimsleur is an audio-only program meant to get you the basics of Chinese through listening exercises. So, you can't expect to learn any Chinese Characters with this system. Each lesson is 30-minutes long, focused on a Chinese dialogue.
Though this might sound less promising, Pimsleur is not a typical kind of Chinese course. With a single question, recall, and response teaching method, this program gets you into the habit of listening early, practicing speaking the way one might if they were talking to a real person. Using this approach, you can learn basic grammar more intuitively.
This audio course is set apart from many on the market with an intense focus on correct pronunciation. This program walks you through natural pronunciation as used by native speakers by breaking down the words into syllables. With particular emphasis on the exact Chinese tones, these exercises are especially helpful.
If your goal is to develop an excellent Chinese accent and engaging in basic conversation, then the Pimsleur course might be an excellent choice for you. The main drawback is that it has no real support for the reading and writing of Chinese, which, as I said before, is extremely helpful for nailing down the language mentally. To get the most out of this system, you'll want to commit at least 30 minutes a day.
Rosetta Stone Chinese
As one of the best Chinese programs for language learning, Rosetta Stone seems to be quickly recommended by friends or family as one of the most effective ways to acquire a language.
But before we get too excited, we have to confront the fact that different languages have varying levels of difficulty. For languages such as Arabic or Japanese, Rosetta Stone tends to be singularly ineffectual.
As it stands, Rosetta Stone provides a decent Chinese learning program for what it is. This program assists in developing an excellent grammatical foundation in the Chinese language, and it does so implicitly without using English to explain each point.
With great emphasis placed on the tones in the natural flow of Mandarin, you can learn how to express ideas in context with full phrases. Just learning individual words hasn't proven to be helpful, which is why context is so important when studying Mandarin.
Because Rosetta Stone offers so little in the way of reading and writing the Chinese language, you shouldn't pick this program up unless you just want to master the basics of the language. It's recommended you use this course 15 to 20 minutes a day.
FluentU
This platform helps you learn Chinese by watching native videos.
Watching things such as Chinese TV shows, movies, commercials, and more, you can enhance your understanding of new words with flashcards, captions, and games. This is a great way to learn the language in context.
There isn't a lot of structure on this platform, as it's more of a learning tool than an organized system. It's better for developing your listening skills while learning new items and phrases along the way.
Because you may not have access to native materials, this platform might be worth checking out.
Chinese Pod: Chinese Podcasts
As one of the oldest and most prestigious platforms for learning Chinese, Chinese Pod has an excellent app that provides you with convenience to study no matter where you are. Based on a system of high-quality podcasts, this system includes support for improving your listening skills and much more.
The significant advantage of this app is that with a premium subscription, you can download all of the content, so you can study it without even having an internet connection. You can utilize the videos, podcasts, as well as the integrated exercises, flashcards, and personalized vocabulary lists. For $29, you can get the premium version of this service, for $14, you can get the basics.
The Best Free Chinese Learning Resources
Here are some great free resources that can bolster your Chinese study. Note that most should be used in conjunction with an existing system or book. Here are some of the best Chinese learning apps:
Best Flashcard App for Learning Chinese: Anki
If you're unfamiliar with SRS software, this system provides a kind of electronic flashcard meant to be used for practical self-study. If you're trying to learn or remember Chinese characters, Anki is a perfect, free solution.
If you find any Chinese vocabulary you haven't studied and want to commit to memory, you can take out your phone and create a flashcard using the mobile app wherever you go.
Anki is simple to start using, and it has support for most operating systems, whether PC, Android, or iOS. Another thing that is incredible about this system is that there are pre-existing decks you can use to learn from specific textbooks or platforms.
Anki is an excellent platform for any kind of study, not just for language learning. What most people dislike about it is the way you have to make a judgment call about how familiar you are with each card, because it impacts the number of times the card comes up in circulation. Other platforms like Memrise have a less ambiguous system where you are either right or wrong.
Memrise
As another flashcard app, this software provides a high number of preexisting decks you can use. As long as you have an internet connection, you can test yourself from many courses, including the HSK. However, if you want to download decks of flashcards, you'll have to pay for the premium version of this app.
One of the significant advantages of using Memrise is its community and mnemonic rules, all of which are integrated into this SRS software. With different kinds of conceptual or mnemonic rules tested by the developers and the community, you can use more than one strategy to remember different words and phrases of a new language. By using this software, you are harnessing the experience of the multitude of students that have studied the same items before you.
Best Software for Learning to Write Chinese: Skritter
For learning to write different Chinese language characters, Skitter is one of the best. Not only does it come with an SRS flashcard system, but it also provides writing tests using the touchscreen. It has thousands of vocabulary lists for you to dive into. Create your vocabulary lists with graphic and mnemonic representations to improve your memorization skills. This app reveals the differences and similarities between traditional and simplified characters and has video lessons to introduce new vocab.
Animated diagrams teach you stroke order for writing the characters with detailed statistics on your progress. Audio is also provided with tones to make sure your pronunciation doesn't fall too far from where it should be. Use this app to test yourself on tones, as this is an area that many Chinese students more or less neglect when bogged down by the massive number of other items they have to study.
Youku, Tudou, and YouTube
While Anki covers your bases in terms of flashcards, to make the most of the system, you're going to need suitable materials to study. Between the three video-sharing platforms listed above, you're going to have hours and hours of free Mandarin content to enjoy.
There are plenty of free Mandarin lessons online, but for listening practice, you're going to want to listen to native speakers. These materials are completely free.
Best Mandarin Chinese YouTube Channel for Self-Study: Mandarin Corner
This channel has some of the best content for improving your listening skills. Eileen breaks down specific lessons by various HSK levels and has content ranging from beginner to advanced. She also has excellent stories with vocabulary and podcasts with colloquial Chinese. Well worth your time to visit this channel.
Duolingo
Though this language learning app has a similar usage style to Memrise and Anki, Duolingo is great for learning grammar, because it provides many exercises or you to put words for a sentence in order, translate phrases, and more.
Duolingo is free. It can be used on both Android and iOS, as well as PC. If you log in to your mobile device and PC with the same credentials, your learning progress will be synchronized between devices. This app is a must-have if you want to focus on grammar.
Best Dictionary for iOS and Android: Pleco
Pleco is a fantastic free app, and in my opinion, it is a must-have to learn Chinese. It has saved me plenty of times when I've been reading a Chinese text, and I need to look up a character quickly. It's also jam-packed with features, including flashcards, optical character recognition software, audio pronunciation, stroke order diagrams, and a text reader.
The offline dictionary is about as good as Hanping, the online Chinese/English dictionary. The lite version offers necessary flashcard support. If you want the more enhanced version, you'll want to buy the add-on. The optical character recognition software is free, but if you're going to integrate it with the dictionary, you'll need to download an add-on.
There are other premium features with this app that will make it a mainstay in your Chinese learning journey.
Honorable Mentions
HiNative is a platform that is very useful for getting quick answers to questions you might have about Chinese. You can go there and ask people to evaluate your pronunciation or help you write that answer to the question in your workbook that you just can't figure out. This is one of the more useful tools you can have in your toolbox for language learning.
Finding a suitable Chinese learning program isn't easy. Without experience, it isn't easy to way which platform has the best Mandarin learning software.
There are more than a few companies that provide elementary and ineffective courses that just label their materials "Chinese" and call it a day. As a result, learners make almost no progress and often feel frustrated by their inability to communicate about basic things.
You can't learn Chinese the same way you study a language like Spanish. Mandarin has certain complexities that many language programs fail to address. To create a program that allows a learner to develop Mandarin skills with any degree of competence, a learning company is going to have to exert extra effort.
In this article, I will break down my recommendations for the best Chinese learning programs, free as well as paid. But before we talk about that, first, we should define what qualifies as a "good program for learning Chinese."
What makes a good program for learning Mandarin Chinese?
It Emphasizes the Importance of Tones
As Mandarin is a tonal language, you can't hope to speak it will without mastering their nuanced variations. You have to understand that the pitch a word is said can completely change the meaning of the word. You might've heard, Chinese even has novelty poems all written with one word pronounced different ways. There is no way to get around this. Learning tones requires dedicated study and hours and hours of listening practice.
Some Chinese language courses might fail to emphasize the importance of tones, as they're eager to sell you a beginner set of words for you to use for essential survival purposes. Unfortunately, learning Chinese is not so simple as picking several choice phrases to use in certain conditions, and you probably won't do well if this is all you're interested in learning.
It Addresses Chinese Grammar
In the beginning stages of studying Chinese Mandarin, the grammar isn't particularly tricky, and even similar to English in some ways. Basic Chinese phrases have the subject-verb-object order that is often found in English.
The problem is that as you get more advanced, certain grammatical complexities will put you in positions where though you can read the entire sentence, you still can't parse meaning.
Because of structures such as resultative verb compounds and polysemy, Chinese grammar contains very foreign concepts that will be alien to English speakers.
Remember that the best Chinese course should make an effort to break down these complexities. Without an explanation or a tutor, it is going to be very difficult for you to understand these things.
It Teaches Written Chinese
As you might have guessed, the Chinese writing system doesn't make use of an alphabet. Because Chinese characters are logographic, they represent phrases or words and not sounds like in the English alphabet. To reach a Chinese newspaper, you need to have memorized between 2,000 to 3,000 characters. There are even more characters that are used in certain situations and contexts.
Though you technically don't need to be able to read Chinese characters to speak the language, the advantages you get by studying Chinese writing are so plentiful, and you shouldn't avoid them if you're serious about learning the language. For example, by analyzing Chinese characters, you can identify specific components that make up many different words. This can help you acquire the language.
If you're serious about studying Chinese, do yourself a favor and start exploring the characters early on to provide yourself with a solid foundation of new words.
Questions and Answers
What is the best program for learning Mandarin?
It depends on what your goals are. If you just want to know enough basic Chinese to get by when visiting a Chinese-speaking country, most of the basic courses will do such as Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone. However, if you're looking to pave the foundation to eventual fluency and being able to read the language without trouble, you may need to look for more advanced language learning textbooks and hire a tutor to practice with you. For this purpose, I recommend sitting with someone each week to practice on iTalki.
Can I teach myself Mandarin?
Not likely. Chinese Mandarin is one of the most challenging languages to study for English speakers, and you're very likely going to make a lot of mistakes. It is going to be a struggle, and you're going to need a lot of motivation. Self-study can be suitable for paving a foundation, but you're very likely to develop bad habits if there is no one to correct you.
To keep your language learning progress on track, I recommend sitting with a tutor once a week to tune up your broken Chinese. You can find plenty of great teachers on iTalki at affordable rates. One hour a week should be enough, any more than that at once, you start to get diminishing returns. If you want to do more guided practice than that, split your sessions throughout the week.
How can I learn Mandarin fast?
There isn't a fast and easy way to learn Mandarin. It is not the kind of language you can so easily acquire through immersion and immediately put to use (like other romance languages). Though there are ways you can optimize your study (like using an exercise bike while using flashcard software on your phone), it is still a very gradual, time-consuming process.
What is the best language learning software?
It depends on what kind of language learning software you're looking for. For the Chinese language, Anki is one of the best flashcard systems, followed by Memrise. For language learning through audio systems with repetition, Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur might be suitable.