Online Mandarin Learning Resources| 5 min read

Start Learning Mandarin Online. There is a number of great online Mandarin learning resources. Some are free whilst others cost money though they will certainly assist you in learning Chinese. We have done the work for you and hand picked the best learning Chinese learning tools out there and grouped them by function. These tools are for your desktop, are an app or sometimes both.

FREE MANDARIN PHRASEBOOK

ImmerQi have developed our own Mandarin phrasebook which we provide to our participants on arrival. You may download an e-copy here.

DICTIONARIES

Our foreign staff swears by Pleco, a free app that includes a dictionary and features such as OCR lookup, flashcards and more on the paid version from $35USD.

Nciku is an excellent online Chinese/English dictionary.

WEB PAGE TRANSLATING

ZhongWen is a fantastic extension for browsers that act as a popup translator. Simply mouse over Chinese characters to get their meaning and pinyin.

The Chrome browser can translate entire web pages for you though accuracy can be an issue.

Google Translate is useful for translating blocks of text though translations aren’t always accurate. They have an app available.

SOCIAL MEDIA

When coming to China, there are a number of social media websites/apps to join.

By joining Chinese social media you will be able to follow Chinese news, make local and foreign friends, learn about Chinese pop culture and much more.

WeChat is our number one recommended app as it is used by Chinese and foreigners alike, and is a fun and a non-intimidating way to exchange contact details with new acquaintances, create group chats amongst friends and share photos.

If Facebook and Twitter had a Chinese baby, Weibo would be the result. This is immensely popular platform for sharing and posting content. Available on your desktop or as an app.

QQ is an instant messenger in a similar vein to MSN messenger. Available on desktop and as an app.

A number of Western social media website are blocked in China including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram etc. These can be accessed by purchasing a VPN but we strongly recommend at the least joining some of the above Chinese social media platforms when coming to China.

INTERACTIVE COURSEWARE

Fluenz offers more structured interactive courseware than Rosetta Stone and useful tips from their tutors. Courseware includes offline, online and an app. From $278USD and free demos are available.

Domino Chinese is actually written by a former participant of ours and based on his and other student’s experiences to make the courseware more relatable for learners. From $199USD and a free demo is available.

Memrise is an interactive way to increase your vocab, with a number of use submitted quizzes. It is very intuitive, reminding you if you haven’t been studying and periodic testing on previous vocabulary to ensure you have remembered it.

Rosetta Stone is a fun and interactive way to learn Mandarin. From $250USD and a free demo is available.

AUDIO LESSONS

ChinesePod is one of the most popular Chinese learning tools out there. They provide access to over 3000 audio lessons, a mobile app and private tutoring for premium subscribers. From $14USD a month.

Popup Chinese uses hundreds of free podcasts and study tools to help you learn Chinese.

CHINESE CHARACTERS

Learning how to read and type in Chinese will suffice for most foreigners. Writing is time intensive and with technology readily available, typing will usually be enough to get by.

NJ Star has a word processor, which is a great way to learn to read/write Pinyin as well as characters. From $99USD.

Skritter is highly recommended if you are interested in learning to write Chinese characters. From $14.99USD a month.

ONLINE FLASHCARDS

YellowBridge has an extensive collection of flashcards from various textbooks.

Quizlet enables you to create your own cards and share them with your friends.

1 ON 1 ONLINE TUTORING

EChineseLearning is popular though the quality of tutor you get may vary.

LANGUAGE EXCHANGE

You may be able to find a local Chinese to do a language exchange with on iTalki or Livemocha, which claims to be the world’s largest online language learning community.

OTHER ONLINE CHINESE LEARNING TOOLS

For the time poor, you could learn one Chinese word/phrase a day.

There are many videos channels on YouTube dedicated to learning Chinese. Young Yang does a review of some of the channels out there.

A number of useful Chinese learning apps can be found here.

This blog also contains a number of free learning resources.

For pronunciation and pinyin, DigMandarin has a great collection.

Whether you can’t afford to come to China, wish to learn before coming over or want to complement your learning in China, we hope these Chinese learning tools are incredibly useful.

Stay tuned for our future blog on apps for living in China.