The last time I made a concerted effort to bump up my Mandarin skills was over 10 years ago. Back then I literally had to use physical flashcards and dictionaries. Let me tell you, it wasn’t the easiest thing to use an actual paper-based Chinese dictionary.

These days, we’re blessed to have so many tools to use! It has made learning Mandarin infinitely faster and easier. Here are the ones I’m using.

ℹ️As I’m what you consider a “heritage” speaker, my learning needs will be very different from those trying to learn Mandarin as a second language. You can read my previous post, Why I’m learning Mandarin in 2024 to understand what I mean.

Free apps

Pleco
Chinese digital dictionary

Google Lens
I use it to turn images of subtitles into text that I can plug into Pleco or Google Translate for translation or into my flashcards.

Tofu Learn
(Contains free flashcards where you can learn Mandarin and other languages)

The following Tofu Learn decks are helping me with learning and writing Chinese characters in the proper stroke order:

• Writing – Learn Fast
• 3000 most common Hanzi

Anki and AnkiDroid
Rote learning doesn’t work with me, but spaced repetition and flashcards really help me remember. Digital flashcard programs have been a gamechanger for me. (Remembers the physical flashcards I used to use and how I keep losing them 🥲) Initially, I used another app called Brainscape, but discovered that Anki is far more robust and free! (Though not as user friendly.) It also allows me to add audio to a flashcard, which is very important as I need to get the tones right.

PS: Anki is the desktop version, and with AnkiDroid you can access the decks you create in Anki on your mobile.

Paid tools

Outlier dictionary
This paid dictionary breaks down a character and explains the origins of how the character came to be. Understanding this helps me remember the characters better for some reason.

Paid course

Outlier Chinese Total Package
Includes two courses and an app in one:

• Chinese Character Masterclass
• Dictionary
• Mandarin Pronunciation & Accent Masterclass
• Chinese Character Semantic Components Poster PDFs

Why did I choose the program? I’m primarily interested in the character masterclass, which teaches you how to memorise the characters in a logical way. Also, I find it helpful to memorise the components of a character first and see how they form a character. I did consider another programme originally, but that one had such a complicated memory system that I know I wouldn’t be able to handle it. For one, it has a mnemonic component for tones, which I do not have as much as a problem with as those with no background speaking tonal Chinese languages. In fact, I found it too complicated to add another layer of memorisation to it.

Podcasts

• ChinesePod – Beginner
• ChinesePod – Intermediate

I like these podcasts because they give you the transcript of the conversations in Chinese, English and hanyu pinyin. I find that I am mostly breezing through the Beginner podcasts, but there are a few words here and there that I do not know. For words that I do not know, I’ll plug it into Anki to create flashcards for them.

Photo by Cherry Lin on Unsplash