Du Chinese: Read&Learn Chinese

Mandarin is the 4th language I’ve studied. So I came to it with a fairly well-entrenched set of tools and study methods that worked well for me. And they were working well for me with Chinese, too. But I ended up dropping all of them after discovering Du Chinese, because it brings almost everything together into a one-stop shop that streamlines my studying beyond all recognition. I’ve got all the practice material I could hope for, both written and oral. I can find it so easily. I’ve got sentence mining in a single tap, and a very good SRS built in. I’ve got grammar notes presented in a timely manner. I’ve got an audio player and suitable material for shadowing. The subscription fee is a crazy good value for all of that, considering how much time it saves me and how much it streamlines my study routine. Also huge props to the dev team for being open to feedback and suggestions. Because no it’s not perfect - no app ever is. And no they don’t give me everything I ask for - you can’t please all the people all the time. But it’s clear they are always just trying to support learners and make Du Chinese as great as Du Chinese can be, without all the engagement hacking and dark patterns, and for that I am forever thankful.

After a year’s patronage of Du Chinese, I can confidently say this app along with its desktop version, were instrumental in my progress. Seems like all the good things have already been noted by other users, but I do want to emphasize a few things. I am so impressed that the hover-definitions show the exact usage and context of the word within the sentence/story. The UX is beautiful and interface is responsive, ability to change fonts (on app) has helped my character recognition immensely, and even the thumbnail graphics are enticing. Most importantly, the content. Regarding the article lessons, I am very impressed at the range of social, cultural, and even entertainment news, all done in a relatively neutral tone. My favorite are the classic stories. I grew up in the US with the likes of Crime and Punishment and the Magic School Bus as cultural references, so it’s quite enlightening and even exciting to have the ancient Chinese classics available, albeit abridged for the eager learner. I use this material (at the moment, it’s the “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” series) in my live classes, so my native Mandarin-speaking teacher is able to impart even more insight to us that we can relate to as adult readers, whilst we consume comprehensible input at our own graded reader levels. Thank you DC team!!!

This app provides the basics in the best way. Many levels from beginner to “master;” choice of simplified or traditional characters; show or hide pinyin and translation at the tap of a button, and you can choose to show neither, either, or both. The recorded speech is natural sounding and you can adjust the speed (my only quibble: I sometime have a little initial trouble setting the desired speed, but maybe that’s because I have only used the app for a week). But what really impressed me and led me to subscribe was that I sent in a question about a translation and got a response within a few hours from the proofreader himself! Now that’s some proactive service. After our exchange he made a helpful tweak to the translation. So I have a lot confidence in both the integrity and responsiveness of this service. I guess I should mention what they don’t offer (as far as I know). I don’t think there is any provision for pronunciation feedback or for learning to write characters. I am considering Hello Chinese for that. But I am highly satisfied with what Du Chinese gives me for the price. Highly recommended.