Mastering Mandarin: A Guide to Chinese Learning Platforms for Native Chinese Students of English

The digital revolution has profoundly impacted various facets of modern life, and education is no exception. In China, the online education market is experiencing exponential growth, projected to exceed 5400 billion RMB (USD$77.23 billion) by 2022. The scale of online learners in China was estimated to reach 296 million in 2020, demonstrating the vast potential and increasing reliance on digital learning platforms. This surge has led to a proliferation of online education enterprises, with over 220,000 companies in the market, more than half of which have been established in the past five years. This article explores some of the leading Chinese learning platforms catering to native Chinese students learning English, highlighting their unique features and benefits.

The Rise of Online Education in China

The rapid development of technology in China has not only changed how people shop, travel, and work, it has also changed how people learn. The online education market in China is expected to value over 5400 billion RMB (USD$77.23 billion). It was estimated that the scale of online learners in China would reach 296 million in 2020. Publicly available information shows that there are over 220,000 enterprises in the market of online education in China. Over half of these companies were set up within the past one to five years.

VIPKID: Immersive English Learning for Young Learners

Founded in 2013 and based in Beijing, VIPKID is an online teaching and education platform that focuses on providing English immersion learning to Chinese children aged four to 15. VIPKID distinguishes itself by employing North American-based teachers who are certified by the company before teaching on the platform. VIPKID matches over 65,000 teachers with more than 500,000 Chinese students for real-time one-on-one English immersion learning. It is estimated that the student-retention rate of this platform is around 95%.

Zuoyebang: A Mobile-Based Learning Community

Zuoyebang is another online education platform popular among Chinese students and parents. The mobile based platform has 120 million active monthly users in China. The Baidu-owned startup started to operate independently in 2015 after it accomplished several rounds of fundraising. Similar to its parent company Baidu’s community-based Baidu Knows feature, Zuoyebang allows users to ask and answer questions. Users can choose their own education level and grade for customized content, which includes exam-oriented exercises and mock tests. Zuoyebang also allows users to upload a photo, which it will analyze and match to questions in its database.

Gogokid: Localized Content with a Global Approach

Just as how it challenges established competitors in the social media market, internet giant ByteDance is also disrupting China’s online education market. A market research shows that in China, online subject-based tutoring is the main demand of K12 online education users. Among all the subjects, English and Math were the two most popular subjects. While hiring native speakers based in the U.S, Gogokid localizes teaching content and uses the Chinese standard curriculum through an AI-enabled virtual classroom. Each teaching session is 25-minute-long.

Dedao: Audio-Based Learning for the Modern Age

A leader in the paid content industry and online education market, Dedao offers live seminars and audio-based editorial columns from experts and leading opinion leaders in China. Granted, China’s online education industry is geared towards K12 and middle school students, most of who were born after 1995 and even 2000. Dedao represents a growing trend of China’s online education market and the paid content industry: educational audio courses. According to the the company’s data, Dedao sees 20,000 new users every day and has sold over 1.44 million subscriptions of its services since it was founded in November 2015. Dedao’s mission is to encourage users to read “a book a day, 365 books a year”. It provides paying users with a library of popular books summarized into 30 minute, quality podcasts with transcripts.

Ximalaya FM: Audiobooks and Podcasts for Diverse Learning Needs

Another big name in the audio-based online education industry is the Shanghai-based Ximalaya FM service. Available on the web and mobile versions, Ximalaya offers podcasts and audiobooks in a wide range of topics. The platform started to offer paid content in June 2016. As of early 2019, there were four million registered paying members on Ximalaya. According to a research firm, Ximalaya has more than 70% of the audiobook rights to the bestselling titles in China and 85% of adaptation rights for online literature. In line with the overall demographics of the audio-based online learning community in China, male users are the dominant users of Ximalaya.

Advertising Opportunities on Chinese Learning Platforms

With over 300 million users in total, China’s online learning market is expected to grow. Chinese consumers also demonstrate more willingness to pay for content and knowledge, making this industry a big business not only for service providers but also for advertisers. These popular platforms provide an excellent venue for brands to gain users’ attention, raise brand awareness, and build a connection with target audiences. Each platform has different advertising options.

Comprehensive Platforms for English Language Learners

Yoyo Chinese: Conversational Skills

Yoyo Chinese holds a special place. It puts a heavy emphasis on conversational skills and claims you can reach a conversational level in six months. There are three main courses-Beginner Conversational, Intermediate Conversational and Upper Intermediate Conversational. Each course has six levels with 7-10 units per level. Units are then made up of 3-5 video lessons. The videos are about 5-10 minutes long. In the intermediate levels, they’re centered around a conversation between native speakers. The founder breaks down each line and teaches new vocabulary and grammar structures from it. Once you’ve watched the video, there’s an audio review, dialogue review, flashcards and a quiz. Plus, each lesson comes with downloadable PDF lesson notes. Aside from the conversational courses, there are also two Chinese character courses, a Chinese reader course, Chinese grammar series and a “How to Say in Chinese” series. While the pricing is affordable, the only con is that the free plan only gives you access to about 75 videos. Compared to the thousands on the site.

FluentU: Learning Through Authentic Videos

FluentU lets you learn with authentic videos by turning any YouTube or Netflix video into a language learning lesson. You hear how native speakers actually speak Mandarin because they’re videos that are made for them. Each video comes with interactive subtitles-meaning you can click on any word you don’t know to instantly get a pop-up of its meaning, pronunciation and example sentences. Clicking on the word adds it to your personalized flashcard deck, which uses a spaced repetition algorithm to time your reviews optimally for long-term memory. And once you finish a video, there’s a quiz on the new vocabulary. The only potential downside is that the quizzes are pretty in-depth, so they might be a little overwhelming if you have a busy schedule. The Netflix and YouTube Chrome extensions give you interactive subtitles on whatever you’re watching as long as the video has captions. Regardless of which method you use, you can use all the usual FluentU tools to learn your new vocabulary-flashcards, quizzes and the like. There are also hundreds of curated videos already on the platform that you can watch, categorized by level.

Read also: Mandarin Learning Guide

Mandarin Blueprint: Intensive Immersion

Mandarin Blueprint promises to teach you Chinese faster using their unique immersion and Hanzi learning methods. The creators promise that by the end of the course, you’ll understand 99.4% of Chinese, master 11,800 words, read and write 3,050 characters, and pass the HSK Level 9. The course starts with extensive lessons on pronunciation. Then, they move on to teaching characters using their “Hanzi Movie Method.” It’s an in-depth mnemonic system that spends several lessons getting you to design your own, specific mnemonics for components, radicals, initial sounds and ending sounds. Once you learn the 105th character, you won’t even need pinyin anymore. Once you’ve graduated through enough lessons and phases, the focus shifts to comprehensible input-native Chinese media appropriate for your level. This is part of the “Mandarin Immersion Masterclass.” There’s an exhaustive Notion page full of native speaker media, and the course walks you through exactly how to use each resource. The only drawback is that it’s very expensive.

ChineseClass101: Diverse Learning Pathways

ChineseClass101 has been big in the Chinese learning community for a while. You don’t get a course when you sign up for ChineseClass101. They teach using learner “pathways”-which are essentially collections of podcast and video lessons grouped by specific themes and levels. Each lesson starts with the audio or video content. They’re pretty short-about five minutes on average. You then move on to reviews and drills. Depending on whether it’s a grammar or vocabulary lesson, the types of exercises vary. And there are lesson transcripts and downloadable PDF notes, too. There’s endless amounts of content, but the lack of structure made it difficult to use as a primary resource. One thing is how many built-in study tools-like flashcards and a personal word bank-and free gifts they offer. There’s a “word of the day” feature, a Chinese dictionary, free vocabulary lists, key phrase lists and a list of the 2,000 most common Chinese words. If you go with the Premium Plus subscription, you also get access to the “My Teacher” feature. This includes the ability to message your tutor, live private classes, group classes and an assessment test done by a tutor. A free account doesn’t get you far at all. Second, the abundance of content without any course-like structure can be overwhelming.

Mandarin Corner: Free and High-Quality Content

Mandarin Corner has some of the most free content. There are 22 videos and they teach all 600 words you need to pass HSK 4, organized into parts of speech. You learn about 30 words per lesson, but the videos are relatively short-about 10 minutes on average. All of Mandarin Corner’s content is free. This is the most in-depth, high-quality resource where it’s not necessary to pay anything. If you’re a big fan of their content and want extra materials like PDF notes and transcripts, you can upgrade to premium with a one-time payment. You can also find tons of reading and listening exercises on their YouTube channel. The only downside to Mandarin Corner is that it’s all input-meaning you don’t get any speaking practice.

Chinese Grammar Wiki: Comprehensive Grammar Reference

Chinese Grammar Wiki has always been the go-to for grammar references. They have over 2,100 free articles on Chinese grammar concepts, and they’ve organized them by level. So it’s possible to use it as a grammar course just by working through the articles one by one. There are full courses-which are basically grammar point lists that link out to the lesson article-for HSK 1, HSK 2 and HSK 3. But if you go by CEFR level instead, there are lessons up to C1. Each one starts with a summary that introduces the structure or formula of the grammar point. Then, it goes straight into examples. And although the lessons are pretty short, they go really in-depth. The only bone to pick is that there’s no pinyin. There’s just no vocabulary taught or involvement of other skills. It’s pure grammar.

LingoDeer: The Duolingo of Asian Languages

LingoDeer is like the Duolingo of Asian languages. There are two Mandarin courses: Chinese I and Chinese II. Chinese I has four levels and Chinese II has six. The courses follow a roadmap, so you have to complete the units and lessons in order. They follow a format very similar to Duolingo-you start with multiple-choice translation options with pictures that represent the word, and then go through several vocabulary drills. They include multiple choice, listening, translating and matching. Finishing a lesson gives you points, and then you move on to the next lesson in the unit. Each unit comes with “Learning Tips,” which are like mini grammar lessons. There’s also a “Story,” which is an interactive reading exercise that starts from lesson one. And to top it off, clicking “Vocabulary” shows you all the words you’ve learned in the unit. If you’re not a fan of Duolingo, you probably won’t like LingoDeer, either. It can feel rigid and the exercises can get repetitive. You can’t skip around in the course, and the progression feels a little slow.

italki: Personalized Tutoring

italki lets you take one-on-one lessons with Chinese tutors in your price range. There are over 900 tutors, and you can set filters to find the right one for your goals-such as the country they’re from, price range, lesson category (like grammar or conversation practice), etc. Each tutor then has a video introduction and their class offerings on their profile. Once you’ve found someone you like, you can schedule 30-minute, 45-minute or 60-minute lessons (some tutors offer 90 minutes). If you click with the tutor, you can continue to pay for classes one by one or buy a package of several and schedule them out. There’s a tutor who followed a textbook and taught grammar each class, but the majority were focused on conversation practice. Ask them to correct mistakes and they’d send corrections and vocabulary. What makes italki different from other tutoring platforms is their “Community” feature. This lets you ask questions, practice Chinese writing, read articles published by italki tutors and connect with other learners. Used this feature a lot for sentence corrections. Any time you learned a new grammar concept, post example sentences. Finally, there’s an option for taking group classes that follow a specific lesson topic (like news, politics, daily living, reading club, etc.). Lesson costs can add up quickly if you don’t go into it with a budget in mind, and the quality of lessons definitely varies depending on the tutor. You’ll likely have to “shop around” before you find the right person for you, which takes time and money.

Pimsleur: Audio-Based Immersion

At first, you understand close to nothing. But by the end, you understand everything. The host prompts you to repeat after the native speaker at intervals to learn the new words used in the dialogue. So not only do you understand it after 30 minutes, but you also get a solid grasp on how to use the words and structures independently. The Pimsleur courses are almost 100% in Chinese and you speak within the first five minutes. So even if you don’t use it as your main resource, you instantly jump into listening and speaking. A lot of people do find the listen-and-repeat style gets boring and repetitive after a few lessons. Each lesson is 30 minutes and there are 30 lessons in each level, so you can realistically complete one level a month. There are five levels total.

Memrise: Vocabulary and Community Learning

Memrise has undergone a lot of changes in recent years that not everyone has been a fan of, but still use it every once in a while. Each mini-course is made up of five levels, except for Mastery, which only has one. There are 31 levels in total. Unlike many courses, Memrise doesn’t follow a set structure. Instead, they have “Scenarios”-collections of lessons that teach a certain topic. As you complete lessons, you earn points. And once you earn 100 points, you move on to the next level. Since there’s no course structure, you can get your 100 points from any of the Scenarios you want. Memrise also sprinkles in videos with native speakers and conversations with AI chatbots throughout the lessons and keeps track of how many you’ve completed. It’s obvious that Memrise is more of a vocabulary resource with hardly any grammar instruction. It’s also slightly more expensive. Memrise lets you learn the vocabulary most important to you, and they’ve gotten creative with their practice exercises. But wouldn’t recommend it as your primary resource. The community site works by teaching you the new words through various rounds of vocabulary drills like multiple choice and translation exercises. And it uses a spaced repetition algorithm to time your reviews optimally.

Additional Tools and Resources

Several other tools and resources can aid in the journey of learning Mandarin Chinese:

Skritter: A tool for learning to write Chinese characters.
Pleco: A comprehensive Chinese dictionary app.
MDBG: A quick choice for looking up Chinese words.
Zdic.net: A Chinese dictionary with a lot of detail.
Tatoeba: A collection of example sentences in multiple languages.
ChineseClass101, ChinesePod, Popup Chinese: Paid podcast-based learning services.
HelloChinese: A fun and effective app for learning Chinese with game-based learning and speech recognition.

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