我不知道啊……

那就读书破万卷!

I started learning Chinese back in high school, and I took it for two years using the Integrated Chinese textbook (shoutout 王朋和朋友们). After a long break and trying other languages, I always ended up coming back to Chinese. Maybe it’s all the Chinese music I listen to, or maybe I’m just used to it. Regardless, I wanted something to show for it, so I started my journey toward HSK certification, which is the most popular Chinese language proficiency test.

The only problem was, I had no idea where to start. After reading a lot of the literature on second language acquisition, I understood the foundations of acquiring a second language¹, and reading from a textbook wasn’t going to cut it.

The driving force of any language acquisition is input. So that means reading and listening for a spoken language like Chinese. Since input is typically richer² in written language compared to spoken language, I focus most of my efforts on reading when I can, but of course I listen too.

Reading

Du Chinese

I primarily use Du Chinese (literally, “read(读dú) Chinese”) for my reading. It provides several graded readers with serialized stories and recurring characters. It also has many helpful features like: HSK highlighting, built-in grammar notes, custom flashcards, and an integrated dictionary. It costs me $13.49 monthly, which I think is a fair price for the content. If you cannot afford to pay, there are still a few free stories on the website to read.

An example story from Du Chinese ^{(my userstyle here)}

Listening

Dong Chinese

Very similar in name to Du Chinese is Dong Chinese (literally, “understand(懂dǒng) Chinese), which provides a bunch of cool features. The main page of the website has a list of YouTube videos that are in Chinese, and also a percentage score of how comprehensible the website thinks those videos would be for you, depending on how well you do on the tests.

This provides a great opportunity and hub to access Chinese language content at your level without having to sift through YouTube videos on your own.

I don’t benefit from this (not subscribed), but if you want a 20% discount, you can use my code IYON38

Filmot

Filmot is a fantastic search engine that indexes over a billion video subtitles and their metadata. With it, you can search for any phrase you want, and find videos using it.

Searching 西瓜 on Filmot

I also enjoy watching bad Chinese TV, even if I can’t understand it super well, and trying to piece together what’s going on. This isn’t really a serious strategy; just something I find fun.

Really, though, any videos or podcasts you find at your level will work. They don’t have to be 100% comprehensible to be useful (babies, for example, start at 0%!). The important thing is that you are able to stick with it, and it’s something you’re semi-interested in.

Tests and tools

Dong Chinese

Dong Chinese grades how “comprehensible” videos are for you with its own tests of your knowledge, which are sort of like some portions of the HSK test (in fact, some of the questions are lifted from previous tests or practice tests). While I do not think these will push acquisition much, they are great prep for any standardized test and help the system understand your level.

Dong Chinese also has, in my opinion, the best Chinese dictionary out there, bar none. It has etymology, script evolution, examples, statistics, practice, and more.

The Dong Chinese dictionary entry for 每

MDBG

When talking about online Chinese dictionaries, I have to mention MDBG, which is freely available online and provides handwriting input and lots of data about the characters.

The MDBG dictionary entry for 每

中文

For web browsing, I almost always have 中文 (literally, “Chinese language”) browser extension on, which lets me hover over text and get definitions, grammar notes, tones, et cetera. It’s become so second-nature to me that I nearly forgot to include it on this list.

Hovering on the 中文 GitHub page

Tatoeba

Literally, “for example” ( 例 (tato) え (e) ば (ba) in Japanese), Tatoeba provides a massive, collaborative, searchable database of sentences and their corresponding translations. For example, if we’d like to see how the construction 《如果……就》 is used, we can search just that and see many real examples:

Transverso

On the same page as Filmot is Transverso, which lets you search the subtitles and their corresponding translations into other languages, much like Tatoeba. It will look at the subtitles and how they’ve been translated, and also allows you to watch the video it comes from.

Searching for 《如果……就》 on Transverso

Conclusion

As I get ready for my HSK tests, these resources have been invaluable in my journey and provide a nice way to get input fast and at my level. There are some popular resources I do not use or rarely use (e.g., Pleco on my phone), and I’m not claiming this is the best way, just sharing what’s been most helpful for my learning.

Regardless of the tools you use, I think the most important thing when learning a second language is staying motivated. Motivation is something everyone struggles with, myself included, but the easier it is to get comprehensible input, the better. The best tool is whatever keeps you engaged, and so I hope some of what I’ve listed will help you do that. I try to make it easy to say “yes” to doing a little bit every day, so that even when I’m not motivated, I’m still improving.