Hands down my favorite tool for studying Mandarin. Wonderful for extensive reading. Their adapted stories are actually compelling, which makes reading so much more fun. The audio recordings are wonderful. My only concern is reading so fast that I run out of their stories!
Great app if you want to read more classic Chinese stories like romance of the three kingdoms.
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!!!
I’ve been living in China for more than 8 years. I have yet to find an app like this. Each lesson not only helps you learn authentic pronunciation and diction, but also subtlety teaches you word order, grammar rules, and the importance of using the right tone. I’ve been looking for an app that can help my listing and reading for a long time...I’m so glad I’ve found you Du Chinese. If you are interested is seriously improving you listening and reading skills(and inadvertently improving your spoken Chinese as well) you must have this app.
I can’t recommend this app enough. Narration, simplified and traditional (I’m learning both), pinyin (I can’t read zhuyin), dictionary and translation all in one place and I don’t have to switch through countless settings or discover new tricks for how to make this lovely resource work.
The organization and content of the app is superb and has greatly helped my listening and reading proficiency! I will be taking the HSK (Chinese Lever Proficiency) Test Level 5 and this app is my go to. It organizes stories bases on difficulty and labels EACH word based on how advanced it is. So great for studying!
Besides that, I just love the stories that range from folktales, news, practical vocab articles, culture, and more. 100% recommend <3
I think this is the first time I’ve ever reviewed an app. Du Chinese is literally perfect. The format and personalization options (simplified/traditional characters, with/without pinyin or translation) are great, and the app is so intuitive to use. I really like that you can directly see the definition of each word and add them to a list to review later. I often use this app before bed. Thank you to the developers!
Excellent app for practicing Mandarin reading and listening comprehension. They have a large library of context tailored to specific vocabulary levels, and frequently add new content. Reading mode lets you see the level of assistance you want (see not see translation, see not see pinyin), and all text is paired with high quality audio. I particularly enjoy using audio mode to loop a particular story chapter until it’s easy to understand.
Apps have no business being this good. The definitions they provide seem to be context-dependent, which is bananas. No idea how they pulled that off. I’ve searched quite hard for optimal ways to learn Chinese and this app is by far the best way that I’ve found.
It’s hard to make this any better, but my suggestions would be:
- occasional grammar explanations / alternate phrasings accessible by tapping some button near the English translation
- option to open Pleco directly instead of the info page
After spending a lot of time using character recognition apps I found I still had difficulty difficulty reading characters in actual reading situations. Reading and writing individual characters is still important but adding Du Chinese to my learning regimen has greatly strengthened my actually reading ability. Highly recommended.
I am a certified teacher of Spanish and English and have studied language acquisition at the graduate level. As a language teaching professional, I think this may be the best digital resource for learning Chinese that is currently available. I used (and still use) Hello Chinese and Duolingo to build some vocab, but it is here that I get the quality meaningful input at the newbie and beginner levels that I need. So appreciate this app. It is well done. Highly recommended for any Chinese learner.
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