In this article, we’ll explore the top 5 ways to kickstart your Mandarin journey, offering a diverse range of tools and tricks you can utilize to make your Chinese learning journey enjoyable and painless, based on my own personal experience.

If you’re already an advanced learner, this article may help you in developing your Chinese fluency

1. Follow a Structure

When it comes to language learning I often think about the road that I would recommend people to take and I compare it to driving a car. If you have a sat-nav, you’re likely to get to your destination much faster than if you just try to figure it out as you go along. Studying Chinese is exactly the same, so I’d recommend any new beginner to pick a structured learning method if they’re interested in learning beyond a few basic phrases.

The benefit of these structured approaches to learning is that they allow you to follow the path that an expert has set out, often saving time in the long run. It also allows you to measure progress along the way, so you can see the improvements you’re making.

I’d recommend trying a few out and finding which one fits you. There are a number of different structures you can pick depending on what your goals are. For example, the HSK exams are great if you love the academic side of language learning, whereas Ninchanese is excellent if you enjoy a well-structured, gamified approach to language learning.

2. Have Fun

This is perhaps one of the most underrated tips I have seen in the language-learning community, have fun!

The biggest tip is to find what aspect of the Chinese language you enjoy and try to immerse yourself in that area. For me personally, I love reading, so reading Chinese novels is my preferred way of practicing my reading skills. If you’re interested in films or TV series, then watching shows may be the best way for you to practice your skills. There may be a lot of other possible motivations for you, for example learning to cook Chinese food, eating at Chinese restaurants, learning about the history
or culture, chatting with people, etc. The possibilities are endless.

Just make sure you don’t rely on a textbook, as it’s a perfect method to get bored. Fun and interactive methods will go a long way over the course of your study to keep you interested, engaged, and motivated to keep going.

3. Join the Community

There are a lot of Chinese language learners out there and there are some excellent platforms out there for you to connect with them. The benefit of this is being able to learn from the experience of others to make your learning journey as smooth as possible. I recommend checking out this Chinese learning blog as it contains a lot of useful information about learning Chinese and gives a personal

View on the reality of learning Chinese

Connecting with other learners as well as language learning partners can be a great motivation, as well as sharing resources, hints, and tips for the most effective ways to learn Chinese.

You can also check out Chinese-forums.com as a great place to make friends and learn more about learning Chinese.

4. Use the Resources Available

There are a lot of really good resources available for Chinese learners in the modern world. The best advice I can give is not to rely on just a single tool or resource.

My experience as a Chinese learner is that all the tools are effective ways to learn, but never cover the whole spectrum of what you need to learn the Chinese language effectively. So the best solution is to utilize multiple different tools to take advantage of the strengths and weaknesses of a variety of them. For example, Pleco is a wonderful app for helping you with learning Chinese
characters and practicing reading, but it won’t help you with developing your speaking skills.

There are some platforms that over a pretty comprehensive coverage of all the major skills you will need, Ninchanese being one of them.

5. Pick a Goal, Find your Motivation

Relating to point 1 and point 2 is to pick your goal based on what you are interested in and what will motivate you to study. It will also help you to direct your learning in a way that suits you.

You should study all aspects of the language to get the full benefit, but that doesn’t mean you can’t focus more on one aspect that you particularly enjoy. When you build your study plan, think about what is motivating you to learn to speak Chinese. Many things might motivate you, for example, if you’re planning a trip to China, you might want to focus your study on speaking and listening, and focusing your learning on specific areas that you will find useful.

Ninchanese has an excellent selection of different lessons targeted at these which I particularly like. For example, they have a course dedicated to the Chinese language relevant to video games as well as many other interesting areas. If you have a particular area of interest, learning the words for that area and using them often is a great idea.

Check out this blog post if you’re interested in learning more about Chinese graphic novels

The post Top 5 Ways to Get Started Learning Chinese appeared first on Ninchanese.

Reader apps provide graded Chinese texts and tools to help you decipher a text quickly. Today we’re reviewing Du Chinese, one of the most popular Graded Chinese readers.

What is Du Chinese?

Du Chinese is an online and mobile text reader.

Available on iOS and Android, it helps you read Chinese texts with a few well-done tools.

Du Chinese is excellent for improving your reading skills and understanding Chinese stories. It’s purfect for Chinese learners who want to be able to read Chinese texts and reinforce what they already know.

读 Du means to read in Chinese, so even the name shows you how much it wants to help you read in Chinese.

Content of Du Chinese app

What kind of content does Du Chinese offer? You have lots to choose from! You can browse over 1,900 texts on the app, which is impressive.

There’s plenty of text categorized into New Lessons and Top Stories. There are also a few Series of Novels in Chinese, which are stories in multiple chapters. In addition, you have some categories like Business in China, Everyday Life, Language, and Funny Stories. You can extend each type of category with the see more button.

The Du Chinese team or other Chinese schools like Go East Mandarin, LTL, or Excel Mandarin write these stories, which says a lot about the quality of the content.

Stories, organized by level

Any Chinese learner that’s attempted to read in Chinese knows that it can be hard to find a text that suits them well.

Du Chinese thought of that and made it easy for you.

With their graded system, there’s content available at every level, whether you’re a newbie or an advanced Chinese learner.

Moreover, all their texts, from the single-page stories to the multi-chapter longer ones, are carefully tagged by level, so you always know what you’re diving into.

Some story recommendations to start with Du Chinese

Wondering where to start? There are quite a few recommendations when you open the app and have indicated your reading level, and I recommend trying one that looks interesting.

Here are also a few series that I like to get you going. “Ben’s life in China” is a fantastic series to read, full of helpful content to know at the intermediate level. It’s perfect if you are living in the country. You could consider it a great addition to our course “the Chinese Phrasebook” on Ninchanese.

If you’re a beginner, you can read the “story of a cat” (obviously, considering you’re learning with cats on Ninchanese!). The series is elementary and goes slow, with quite a lot of repetition of accessible characters. It’s maybe even a little too easy, but it’s an excellent start for beginners looking to ease into reading Chinese texts.

You can also try the “funny story” section with a very Chinese humor style. I’ll let you explore that one; I’m sure you’ll find one story amusing.

How do you use Du Chinese?

A pleasant reading experience

If you just want to get reading, it’s pretty straightforward. Select a story, and you are presented with the text to read.

The text itself is well presented, without any fuss. There are three parts to the screen on the mobile app:

• first, a translation tool part, where the translation of a word or sentence is,
• then, the middle, the most prominent part, is the Chinese text you are reading,
• and finally, the last part at the bottom is the menu. You access different customization options from there.

Easy tools to help you understand what you’re reading

Imagine you start reading the text and find a sentence you don’t understand. You can touch it and be presented with its complete translation at the top, above the text.

Or there’s a word you don’t understand. Touch it longer or hover over it; you can see a brief definition. Overall, it’s pretty easy to look up words you don’t know, thanks to a well-done text segmentation.

It’s also nice to have the translation available with your reading, all in one place.

Generally, the translation is good but sometimes a little short. Don’t worry; you can also long press on a word to get more info, which will take you to another page to see more definitions.

The definitions are from a free dictionary called CEDict, which is pretty good. We also used it in Ninchanese as a basis and then improved. So that’s an excellent point for them.

Sometimes, words are missing sentence examples, but you can always go to an external dictionary to see more info on that word.

Listen to the story as you read along, or turn it into a Chinese podcast

When reading, you can also press the play button at the sentence and hear the whole text read to you, with a nice little cursor, karaoke-style, to help you follow along. That makes it simple to follow while the voice reads it.

You can also easily pause the reading whenever you want or go back to a specific part of the text by simply touching the word or sentence you want to hear again.

Want to take a break from reading? You can also listen to the story being read with no text. I can imagine that being handy while on the go, jogging, for instance.

Customization options galore

Once you’re familiar with the app and know how you want your reading experience, you can customize how you want to read the text, to how you like it.

Change the reading speed

By default, the speed is set at 1x, which, in my experience, is actually quite slowed down. But it’s a good starting speed.

You can slow it down even more or go up to 1.5x speed, which sounds more like a normal speaker’s speed. So, at higher levels, that feels like a more natural speed.

Also, from what I have experienced, some texts are faster, so maybe they change the average speed depending on the difficulty of the text.

Show the pinyin (or don’t)

There’s a button directly on the text screen you can toggle on or off to choose whether you want the pinyin shown above the Chinese characters. That’s helpful because sometimes you know what it means but not the pinyin.

Turn off full translations

You can decide whether you want the app to show sentence translations or not. This is nice if you only want to see the translation of a word and not the whole sentence.

Plenty of visual options

If you go further into the submenu, you’ll find the rest of the customization options. Visually, your options are:

• You can choose simplified or traditional characters.
• You can select the font size for Chinese characters and pinyin.
• You can choose different types of fonts, which is helpful to get used to reading Chinese in various fonts, or if you prefer a different font to see the strokes more.
• You can underline the HSK level on each character. It’s cool, but I don’t recommend using it since it makes the text harder to read. But, you do as you like.
• You can customize how you want your character readings. Here, Du Chinese goes further than other reading apps. You can decideif you wisht to show pinyin for every character or only for some problematic words, such as words from higher HSK levels or names.
• Lastly, you can choose the transliteration model: the app can show you pinyin, tone marks only, or the Bopomofo system used in Taiwan instead.

The one thing I would have liked to see is an option to preset the sound speed I wanted. By default, as mentioned, the sound is at 1x, which I found too slow. I have to manually set it back to 1,5x at the beginning of each text. No biggie, but it definitely could be an option.

Simple navigation

Once you start reading a text and returning to the app later, the last story you read will be waiting for you on your homepage. You’ll find a shortcut to continue reading and studying the text, which is pretty nice. You can jump to the text from the homepage, and it is pretty straightforward to return to the lessons.

I would have liked to have more than one story in my home if I had started two or three texts simultaneously. For example, I expected that my favorite story would be there, but it wasn’t. Why can you star a story (presumably to favorite it), if you can’t find it again on the app’s home?

If you want to read something else, you need to use the nav bar and hit the discover button. There you’ll find all the content of Du Chinese.

Different approaches based on your level

All those ways to tailor your reading experience can be a little dizzying at first. But, not to worry, Du Chinese also adapts what it shows you based on the level of the text you’re reading.

Suppose you’re reading a newbie text. The sound is slowed down to make it easy for you when you’re starting. Then, gradually, as you go up in levels, the speed of the sound increases.

At higher levels, you also might not get translations automatically shown to you, and the app will only display pinyin for new or challenging words.

If you like how it’s presented, keep it that way. Or dive into the settings to make your reading time just the way you want it.

Does Du Chinese include flashcards?

Yes, Du Chinese has a built-in flashcard system. Admittedly, it’s a simple flashcard system, but it does the job.

What I like about it is when you’ve added a character to your learning stack, it shows you as an example the sentence where you first encountered that word. Sure, it’s not necessarily the most straightforward sentence that explains the word, but you understand the sentence better after a while. And finally, you can cram your words if you want to practice your Chinese a little more.

Can I learn Chinese with Du Chinese?

To answer this question fast, no, you won’t learn Chinese with Du Chinese. But you’ll improve your Chinese reading and listening skills if you use the option.

You won’t have clear Chinese grammar lessons or train yourself to make sentences or speak Chinese as Ninchanese does. There is no explicit curriculum on this graded reader; you are free to wander.

That’s what is great about it. It’s a great reader and will help significantly train your understanding of Chinese passively. So, in sum, it’s a great app in addition to your favorite learning app Ninchanese.

Is the Du Chinese web app or the mobile app better?

The web app is pretty pleasant; the interface is quite the same as the mobile app. It’s fast and easy to use. It’s easier to navigate between lessons on the web app, but reading a text on your mobile on the go is a plus for this kind of app.

Is Du Chinese free? The premium of the Du Chinese app

Some of the stories on Du Chinese are free so you can try Du Chinese out first.
But you’ll quickly realize that the more exciting stories are premium-only, which is entirely understandable.

Du Chinese uses a subscription-based model. Plans are priced at $15 per month.

On Du Chinese, they have three different types of “lessons.” First are stand-alone articles, there are also courses (articles connected within a single theme), and, lastly, multi-chapter stories, which all add up to thousands of lessons within Du Chinese. In addition, while I don’t have the exact number for you, they release about 5-7 free weekly lessons.

Is Du Chinese worth it? Is Du Chinese good?

Yes. It has a lot of content, and it is easy to use. You can use the web or mobile app, and you’ll improve your Chinese reading.

Du Chinese Discount

We discussed with the Du Chinese team to see if we could get you a nice discount on your subscription.
Peter, the cofounder of Du Chinese, was very kind and shared a great discount code that you can use on the app.

You’ll get a 20% discount with the code: NINCHANESE20.

The post Du Chinese Review of a great graded Reader appeared first on Ninchanese.

What is That’s Mandarin?

That’s Mandarin is a Chinese school based in Shanghai, Beijing, and Suzhou.

Since 2005, they have been doing in-person courses in several locations in China and now also offer live online classes through a platform they call NihaoCafé.

When you start interacting with That’s Mandarin, you can tell it’s a well-oiled machine.

Their sales department is very proactive and immediately wants to introduce everything to you on their platform. But, on the plus side, they are quick to arrange the next steps with you: a live test, to begin with, and then the live online class itself.

Start with a live assessment

When you start, you first do a live test on their platform.

You schedule the test ahead of time, of course. This exchange is done by email, which is simple enough.

In my case, login didn’t quite work as planned for the test, so we had to reschedule. The assessment test was postponed to the following day, so no biggie.

20 minutes of questions to prepare your live online classes

The assessment test lasted 20 minutes, as they had announced.

We started with a few simple questions such as introducing yourself, what your hobbies are in Chinese, etc. The goal here was for my “assessor” to assess my ability to speak Mandarin Chinese and see how well I understood her questions.

We then moved on to slightly more complex questions, such as (in my case) introducing my app (Ninchanese ) and its benefits. The idea behind this section of the test is to determine if I was able to talk about things in a constructed and detailed manner.

Afterward, she had me read a text aloud to see how well I knew my vocabulary.

In the text, words in green are at an HSK 3 level, and words in orange are HSK 4.

She then asked me comprehension questions about the text I had just read aloud and had me explain to her the meaning of some words in Chinese.

How the test went

During the test, I found myself wishing I hadn’t booked a morning session. First of all, I’m not a morning person, and second, I was probably feeling a little stressed because it was a test.

Comprehension-wise, I was fine, but ah, reading aloud and speaking? I could have done better.

However, an afternoon session wouldn’t have been possible, most likely. That’s because the school is in China. As I’m in France, morning classes my time work best for both sides.

Besides, a teacher uses the assessment results to put together a lesson at your level. That is the whole point of the test, after all. To get you classes at your level.

So don’t be like me and worry about your performance! Just relax and chat.

Nihaocafe platform, once you log in.

You take the initial test and the classes on their platform, NihaoCafe. The platform itself is neat and clean-looking, with a modern design. It looks easy to navigate.

A 50-minute trial live online class

On the following day, I had my trial class. You connect to the class on their platform as well.

Following this lesson, I’m told I’ll get a full report of my strengths/ weaknesses in speaking, reading, and understanding. So I’m looking forward to that.

The class started with a few initial connection hiccups, with our mics successively not working in sync. But, of course, that’s always a risk with live online classes.

However, that relaxed me, in a way, and possibly the teacher too, as we both got a good laugh out of it.

A class session lasts 50 minutes. She made sure we did a full 50 minutes, not counting the connection hiccups and so on in the beginning. Always a nice touch.

The class interface

Overall, the whole lesson went by quickly. We started with an introductory chat, moved on to new words, talked about a diagram, and finally answered questions.

What I liked about the online class

It felt professional. The teacher took me through the content planned for the lesson. But it took me a while to catch on to the fact she was following the content plan. It felt almost like a free-flow conversation, with her introducing new expressions from time to time.

In other words, she very carefully and professionally guided me to where she wanted me to go, and I saw nothing coming. 

I liked how she introduced new words. We’d talk about a subject, she’d start explaining something in Chinese, and when she was sure I had followed, she’d introduce a new word. So, each new word in Mandarin discovered was in context.

For example, she explained the term 跳槽 (tiào cáo)  to me. We first went over each character in the expression. Then, she had me think about why each of these characters was used to form the phrase “job-hopping”.
跳槽 (tiào cáo), job-hopping, turned out to be the main topic of the lesson, so we used that word a lot in the live online class.

You can also follow along and see the list of words you’ll be learning on the platform.

I discovered after a while that you could easily click on them to view the meaning and pinyin, but I didn’t feel the need to since my teacher’s explanations were plenty.

Adjusting to my level

For some words, the teacher checked if I was familiar with them and quickly moved on if I was, which was something I appreciated. Doing this allowed us to spend more time exploring unknown words.

Focus on pronunciation

She also carefully corrected my pronunciation, making me repeat words I wasn’t saying right and insisting on tones I wasn’t using correctly. She managed to do that in a way that wasn’t annoying or shaming, which was nice. Having her correct your pronunciation is a big plus, and I enjoyed the fact she took the time to do that. That was a first in my lessons online so far.

Homework and after-class practice

Your work isn’t over when the class is

After the lesson, you’re given homework. Homework! —another first in the live online classes I’ve reviewed so far.

In this case, I had to write a 100-character text in Chinese characters. My mission was to answer a few questions related to job-hopping, which was the topic of my class.

Once you upload that text back, it gets corrected and returned to you. And really corrected, the way your homework would get checked in class. She caught my typos, explained how I could make my text flow better with discourse connectors, and suggested better wording for awkward sentences.

Review what you saw in the class

Finally, you’re also given exercises to practice using the Mandarin content you saw in class.  You review what you saw in the live session on the platform and even see a bit more. That’s, I’m told, content initially planned for the lesson that we didn’t get to cover. According to That’s Mandarin, we would have covered the rest of the content if I’d booked a second class.

The exercises are mainly multiple-choice questions, with a few fill-in-the-blanks, but it’s a nice touch.

No clue what to answer some of the questions (I didn’t see that in class)

What happens if you don’t do the homework or practice exercises?
Not sure, as I didn’t do any follow-up lessons. You’ll have to learn that by yourself if you decide to book one of their live online classes and not do your homework!

Receive a complete overview after the class

After the class, as promised, I received a detailed overview of the areas I was doing good in and the areas I needed to strengthen. My 4th tone was singled out, for instance, as needing more work.

Definitely a good assessment of your weaknesses and strengths. You get a good picture of skills to work on. That’s something you want from your teacher and a class you took. Quite logically, you also receive a suggestion of what package to book and what level.

Pricing of their online live classes

At my level, That’s Mandarin suggested I book a 128-class package at a total cost of 24320 RMB (~ 3468 euros).

For that price, you get full 1-to-1 classes. In addition, you get access to experienced teachers, a learning platform, and a method.

Group classes are also available, it seems, at a different price. They weren’t offered to me, so I can’t comment on their price.

Moreover, you are also offered different content at different levels.

The class I took was an HSK 4 class. According to them, different approaches are used, ranging from videos they made themselves to “real” TV shows to more static content as I got. Sometimes, they’ll focus more on characters and introduce new Chinese characters or explore Chinese components, according to the intro I was given as a reviewer.

Is NihaoCafe worth it?

Among the different live online classes I reviewed, That’s Mandarin is definitely on the higher end of the spectrum.

Courses do seem complete and go from beginner to higher levels of Chinese.

There’s a slight surcharge for higher levels included in that cost, just so you know. This is, unfortunately, quite common.

In case you were wondering, as I was, if their in-school classes are the same price as online classes, the answer to that is no. Offline classes are more expensive than these online classes.

That set aside, for the price, you get real feedback from a teacher, material to work on, homework (that’s corrected and returned to you), and after-class practice, too. You’ve also given an assessment of your skills and what you need to work on next.  Presumably, you can also see your progress and have a sense of continuity from one class to the next. All that has a cost.

So, ultimately, that’s something for you to decide! I suggest you give their classes a go and see what you think of them.

How I’d use NihaoCafe and Ninchanese together

All the practice you want

Ninchanese is a great complement to any live online class That’s Mandarin offers. On Ninchanese, you’re self-learning, so you can spend as much time as you want on a topic and practice.

For starters, it’s a lot cheaper. Ten dollars a month is not much. So get both and get the best of both worlds.

Nincha Decks

Enter the vocabulary you’ve learned or discovered in class.

You can see a list of the words you’ve seen in class on their platform. That makes it easy to look them up on Ninchanese and add them to a custom Nincha deck to memorize them lastingly!

Strengthen the grammar you see with sentence-building stages

While you do see grammar and get a chance to practice grammar on their platform, NihaoCafe, this doesn’t go in-depth. They use the same sentences in the examples and the lessons, and you quickly go through them.

So, use Ninchanese to go further in the grammar lessons and to really practice your Chinese grammar patterns!

Summary

All in all, I was pleased with what I saw of That’s Mandarin online classes. They are professional, and if you’re willing to shell out that much, they’re a decent school you should check out.

NihaoCafe x Ninchanese Coupon

Because we love you, here’s a meowsome coupon to give That’s Mandarin classes a try yourself!

You get 5% off their live online classes (NihaoCafe). Just mention the code “NichaneseNC5” when you book an online course by email!

And one more thing

If you want to continue learning Chinese with authentic and entertaining content, then you’ll love Ninchanese.

With Ninchanese, you get a complete method to learn Chinese, which has you speaking, reading, writing, and more in Chinese. So whether you’re a beginner or an advanced learner, there’s content your level on Ninchanese and plenty more!

Start using Ninchanese on the web, with your computer or tablet, or on your phone with the Android app.

The Nincha Team

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The post That’s Mandarin: Review of their NihaoCafe Live Online Classes appeared first on Ninchanese.

LTL Mandarin School, on-site and online live mandarin courses

Based in several locations in China, Singapore, and Taiwan, LTL Mandarin offers students Chinese language classes and other programs. With Flexi-classes, they expanded to offering also online Chinese classes. Using the same platform, they offer classes in Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Shanghainese, and Cantonese. I tried their Mandarin Chinese classes. And so can you! Read on for a meowsome discount.

Flexi Classes: Online live Chinese classes

FlexiClasses are online classes LTL Mandarin started to offer in October 2020. The idea behind these is to provide students with an online platform where they can book live Mandarin classes whenever they want.

You can choose to have either a group class or a 1:1 private, tailored class. I tried out both.
Note that starting at level HSK 5+ (presumably that’s part II of HSK 5), only 1:1 classes are available.

Private classes: you decide what they’re like

When booking one-to-one private classes, you choose to work on one of LTL’s fixed topics or choose yourself what your lesson will focus on. For my 1:1 class, I decided to have a session dedicated to free speaking.

While the class was unstructured, I chatted for 1 hour with my teacher about random everyday topics, which was excellent speaking practice. And I had fun.

Group classes: small enough to feel cozy

Group classes are designed for small groups, usually 3 to 5.

Good to know: At the moment, possibly because the platform is relatively new, many group classes aren’t full. So, for example, I booked a group class for three, and there were only 2 of us.  It was fun to have someone else in the class, to ask questions I didn’t necessarily think of.

You can see who else has already registered for the same class.

I took a second group class, expecting other students. This time, it was just me. Pretty neat. That was probably a good call, given how hard that class was for me. Ahem.
So it was like a private class for fewer credits, where we followed the topic set for the lesson.

Group classes follow a fixed topic set by LTL Mandarin. They offer lessons on lots of current topics, like riding a shared bike or slang. That’s definitely a plus.

When you book, you choose what topic you want to cover and at what level. [Classes are organized by HSK levels, then by chapters, with each chapter containing several sub-topics.]

Word of advice: Be careful you choose a class that’s your speed and not too advanced. Classes that are too hard are not necessarily worth it for you. During a lesson, you see a lot of new vocabulary, and the teacher expects you to be comfortable using it immediately. So, do check carefully before booking.

Learning material provided ahead of time

Each group lesson gets its own page, from which you can view:

• a description of the class,
• its study goals.

You also can see what you’ll be studying thanks to the different learning materials provided. This material, which is available even before you book the class, is then used in the class. It includes:

• A pdf of the content you’ll be studying;
• An audio file of the content you’ll be learning (this is to use at home, as in class, your teacher will read out the different sentences and words);
• A list of additional resources, such as videos or blog articles to read.

You get a pdf of what you’ll be seeing in class.

Having all that learning material readily available for download is great. It allows you to get a good idea of what you’ll be learning and prepare for the class ahead of time.

Our recommendation: Create a Nincha Deck of the vocabulary you’ll be seeing in your lesson, to prepare! Plus, it’ll help you memorize what you saw in class.

How a Mandarin live group class went

The live Mandarin group class I followed was an HSK 4 class about online shopping. It focused on the popular expressions used in Chinese to talk about addiction to online shopping. Such as “吃土,” which means “eating dirt”, and 剁手, another slang term used by shopaholics.

Funnily enough, the term 吃土 was initially used to talk about people who ran out of money before the end of the month. It then got “reallotted” specifically to those who overbuy online and can’t resist sales.

My teacher was very attentive and patient with our questions during the group class. The whole lesson flowed easily. We followed the learning material pdf provided before the class, except for quick intros before we jumped in.

To warm-up, you reorganize sentences, like on Ninchanese. With all the sentence-building we do on the app, this felt easy.
Then, you learn new words and try to make up sentences using those new words. Once that’s done, you take turns reading sentences using those new words.

There’s also time dedicated to practicing a grammar structure in Chinese. In the lesson, the focus was on 不管.

Then you make up your own sentences using the given prompts, and finally, read a dialogue using the new words you’ve learned.

The material still uses pinyin everywhere, and at the HSK 4 level, I would have liked less pinyin. [This changes at the HSK 4+ level.]

The class provided plenty of occasions for speaking practice. Most of it was about the lesson material, of course, but the teacher was flexible enough to allow some free-form discussion in Chinese. It was a fun and enjoyable hour. An hour goes fast, so it’s nice to also have the speaking stages on Ninchanese to practice speaking and improve my pronunciation.

Related: Read our Review of Go East’s Online Mandarin Classes

Teachers

Since the group class follows the learning material provided by LTL, it’s genuinely your teacher that makes the class. As can be expected on a platform that offers classes 24/7,  there are several different teachers on the platform.
You won’t get the same teacher from one class to another unless you go hunting for classes with that specific teacher.

Different teachers mean different teaching styles. I loved 2 of the three teachers I got.

In one of my group classes, for instance, my teacher made me repeat many things. I didn’t get as many occasions to talk as in my previous group class. Perhaps that was because the class I’d booked was too hard for me. Maybe that was her style. All I know is she made me repeat after her a lot and didn’t adjust the class to make it easier for me, despite being the only one in the class.

Once you’re done with the class, LTL Mandarin does ask you to rate each class and teacher anonymously.

How does booking a Live Chinese class on the platform work?

Let’s talk about the FlexiClass platform.

A wide range of live Chinese classes and topics

The platform’s offer is flexible and customizable to your schedule. There are many classes offered at any time of day each day of the week.

There are many different topics offered to study; you can easily filter classes by level, by type: speaking, grammar, vocabulary, review… So much so, in fact, that there’s a lot to choose from at first.

There are many ways to book classes, and it’s easy to get lost on the platform when starting. I found myself confused at first. Did I want to filter by topic? By category? By city version? What’s a city version? Should I book a class? A course?

These are all the classes I can book today at the HSK 4 level.

Once you get over the initial “wow, there are a lot of classes and lots of options to choose from” impression, you notice that every class is organized by level.

There’s a level 0 for introductions to everything in Chinese. Then, everything is organized by HSK levels. There are classes at all levels, from HSK 1 to HSK 6.

You can choose to start with chapter 1 of the level you selected. Or you can pick a class that’s at a time that suits you and on a topic you like. It’s up to you.

Click on a class and get talking!

Once you’ve figured out your way around the platform, have purchased credits (see pricing below), and picked your class, it’s easy to book the class itself.

Click on a class, confirm, done! You’re booked. That class can be as soon or as far away as you want. You could be taking a lesson in the next hour if you wanted!

You get a reminder by email before the course and can add your class appointment to your calendar. Simple and convenient. If you change your mind within 30 minutes and cancel, you get all your credits back. Same if you cancel your class at least 72 hours before the class.

A tip:
Check the date of what you’re looking carefully, to avoid booking something too in the future. The recommendation feature first showed me lessons that were several months away. [You can book up to December of this year, and maybe even further even].

Pricing

Instead of paying for a certain number of hours or classes, for LTL Flexiclasses, you purchase credits through a monthly subscription. To give you an idea of the cost, one credit (= one group class) ranges from 7,5 € to 12 €, depending on the size of your subscription. A 1:1 private class (= three credits) runs from 20 € to 28 € per class.

For a real-live class with a teacher, that’s a pretty reasonable cost.

How to get the most out of your live Flexi Classes

Prepare for your Mandarin live class ahead of time

You can definitely show up to your class and discover everything with your teacher. Since the class material is provided before the class, nothing keeps you from preparing for the class and getting familiar with the new words you’ll be seeing in class.

Create a Nincha Deck of the words you’ll be seeing in class

Get a head start on learning those new words! Creating a Nincha Deck of the Mandarin Chinese words you’ll be seeing in that class is a great way to get the most out of your class. By reviewing your deck after the class, you will memorize that Chinese vocabulary long-term.

You spend most of the class discovering new words and practicing using them in context. So by combining Ninchanese and the live classes, you can get comfortable with the new terms you see and memorize them for good.

Summary: do we recommend LTL Mandarin’s online Flexi classes?

If you’re looking for online Mandarin live classes, want to focus on the HSK, and like the idea of being able to book your classes easily, whenever you want, then yes, we recommend you check out LTL Mandarin.

Their Flexiclasses are certainly flexible to use. You just need to figure out what to choose from because you are given many choices. Once you’re logged in and have credits, you could be just hours away from doing a class! That’s fast.

A possible drawback to that flexibility is that if you pick and choose your classes as you wish, you probably don’t get a sense of continuity. You change teachers, so they don’t know you from one class to the next, and you learn new material in each live lesson. I get the feeling LTL wants you to follow their order; it just doesn’t make you. Just something to keep in mind.

Use Ninchanese and FlexiClasses together

We think FlexiClasses and Ninchanese can work great together to learn Mandarin Chinese.

To successfully learn Chinese, you need a lot of input, which Ninchanese provides you with, and you need output, i.e., occasions to use what you’re learning! Live classes with LTL Mandarin can fit that bill.

Progress on Ninchanese and LTL at the same time

Both Ninchanese and LTL cover all major HSK points. Ninchanese offers courses from HSK 1 to HSK 6, and so does LTL. So, you can practice sentence-building about a specific grammar pattern on Ninchanese. Then, you can do a live class on that pattern (or vice-versa). That’s a meowsome way to get the best of both systems.

Purrfect to hone your Grammar and Speaking skills

Use the live speaking practice to complement the HSK-based courses on Ninchanese.
I suggest you take your time getting familiar with a topic and vocabulary on Ninchanese, and then reinforce your learning, with a live class with LTL Mandarin.

Nincha x LTL Flexi Discount: Get 20% OFF

Guess what? Because we love you, we reached out to LTL and got you this special offer for their Flexi classes:
Enter NINCHANESE when you sign up on LTL and get 20% off any of their Flexi Programs. Purrfect to see what you think of the Flexi Class experience yourself! 

Have fun learning Chinese, little dragons!

Sarah, from the Nincha Team

Sarah Aberman is one of Ninchanese’s co-founders. She loves learning languages, mainly Chinese, writing, and traveling. She’s passionate about furthering her understanding of Chinese culture. She’s also fascinated by Japanese and Korean and enjoys discovering and exploring those cultures. When she’s not writing up Chinese grammar lessons or blog posts for the Nincha blog, Sarah can be found holed up at home with a good book or a Cdrama/Kdrama/Anime.

The Nincha Team

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The post LTL Mandarin’s Live Flexi Classes: A review appeared first on Ninchanese.

What’s GoEast and for who is it?

GoEast Mandarin is a dynamic Chinese teaching School based in China. They have two campuses in Shanghai. They offer both Chinese classes there and live online lessons. This is a legit school with a good track record and a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of over 84, which is no small feat. They teach Chinese to adults and children alike and offer several different types of lessons.

All Go East lessons start the same way:

First, you book a free language assessment through a convenient online tool. Then, input your available times, and wait for a match. In my case, Liz.

Live Language Assessment with Liz over Zoom

During the language assessment, we spoke together in Mandarin Chinese for about 40 minutes. Yes, she went straight for Chinese, and we stuck to it for the entire assessment session, something I enjoyed. Part of it was free-flow conversation, and the rest was her saying sentences and asking me to repeat them and translate them. This exercise of repeating and translating sentences allowed her to check my level of comprehension, expression, and understanding. At the end of the session, she rightly assessed that my current need was more spoken Chinese, as opportunities to speak Chinese are rarer at the moment.

If you’re a beginner in Chinese, not to worry, the assessment won’t be entirely in Chinese for you! The whole point is for GoEast to understand your needs in Chinese and what goals you have. From there, they can put together a study plan and suggest a course of action for you.

The whole proposal is sent to you by email for your consideration.

Classes at all levels

Levels 1 to 4:
You get a double combo, from Chinese levels 1 to 4: online content to prepare each upcoming class, including audio and some video content (what they call self-study), and then a live session/group class to discuss and drive home the content you explored beforehand.

As they say, this saves the teacher (and you!) time, as they don’t need to teach you vocabulary live, time better spent using the language in context and learning to make sentences with it. GoEast calls it, their ESA method: study at home, engage, and activate (what you learned) in class.

From level 5 and on, there’s no online content to rely on. That’s because, as GoEast put it, at this level, each student has different needs, and it’s best for each teacher to figure it out with the student directly. GoEast has different high-level paths to offer: one for academic needs, one for business needs, and one that places the focus on Spoken Chinese.

In-person or over zoom GoEast offers a wide range of live lessons

You can do sessions in person, in their Shanghai-based schools, or over zoom, which is convenient in these covid-stricken times.

Choose the style that suits you best, from one-to-one classes to group classes. Group classes can be composed of other Chinese learners at the same level as you (up to 4 per class) – great if you’re more into studying when others are learning with you. Group classes can also be composed of students you know! Gather three other students and make your own group class. Pretty neat!

The choice also depends on whether there’s a group class at a time that’s convenient for you. Group class times depend on the level you’re at and what group is starting soon. There are a lot of time slots at levels HSK 1 to 3 and fewer as you go up in levels, which is understandable. In my case, a group class at my level would have been in the morning, China Time so not at all convenient for me considering my time zone.

One-to-one classes offer more flexibility in terms of when they can take place, so that’s what I tried.

How a Live Class goes

Each live class is 50 minutes long. First, you determine when it’s best to have a lesson and then, GoEast gets back to you with a timeframe and a teacher. As much as possible, GoEast tries to match you with one teacher and stick to that to ensure continuity in your learning.

GoEast’s teaching style

GoEast offers a free language lesson for you to try out their teaching style. I tried an intermediate Spoken Chinese, as per my assessment recommended.

The teacher I had, Dany, spoke Chinese the most during the session. She only relied on English, which she spoke very well, when needed, to explain a concept I didn’t know yet, for instance, or to help me find the words I needed to talk. This way of doing things ensures you’re spending your time primarily speaking in Chinese, which is the whole purpose.

The Spoken Chinese class relies on a book (Mastering Chinese) for topics of discussion and questions, and its goal is undeniably to get you talking in Chinese. In each session, you cover one lesson. GoEast explained that 100 sessions were needed to go through the whole book. My test lesson centered around 职业病 (zhí yè bìng), occupational diseases, i.e. afflictions that can ail you at work. For instance, if you spend your workday sitting at the computer like me. It was pretty fitting, and I learned a few new words that I put directly in a Nincha Deck for later reviewing and reinforcement.

Pricing

Good for: you if you learn better with a teacher and with someone to drive your learning.
Pricing-wise, Go East explains that the cost of a session depends on:
– whether you are taking a one-to-one class
– or a group class
– and on the level you want to take classes at.

As expected, rates for group classes are cheaper (although I wasn’t given the rates) and one-to-one classes are pricier. They do demand a sizable investment. But perhaps, that’s the price to pay for a personalized approach and flexible hours, with real human beings teaching you (and not lovely cats that teach you Chinese).

Summary

Based on what I tried, lessons look well-prepared, and teachers know what they’re doing. So if you’re looking for a live teacher, check out GoEast. They offer a free language assessment and a free class so you can try out their services at no cost.

Our recommendation: GoEast could be a good complement to Ninchanese. Use Ninchanese at your level to focus on vocabulary acquisition, sentence practice, and speaking training. And use GoEast to give you live interaction with teachers and speaking practice.

Have fun learning Chinese, little dragons!

Sarah, from the Nincha Team

Sarah Aberman is one of Ninchanese‘s co-founders. She loves learning languages, particularly Chinese, and traveling. She’s passionate about furthering her understanding of Chinese culture. She’s also fascinated by Japanese and Korean and so enjoys discovering and exploring those cultures too. When she’s not writing up Chinese grammar lessons or blog posts for the Nincha blog, Sarah can be found holed up at home with a good book or a Cdrama/Kdrama/Anime.

The post Go East Review: Live Mandarin Classes appeared first on Ninchanese.