LTL Mandarin Schools Recommends the Best Apps to Complement Your Mandarin Studies

Max Hobbs | Sep 19, 2017 11:29 am | Add a comment | 1630 reads | Provided by LTL Mandarin School

This post was written by Max Hobbs, the Marketing Manager at LTL Mandarin School. With locations in Beijing and Shanghai, LTL Mandarin School believes that Chinese study should not just be limited to the classroom. When you study in China, you can fully immerse yourself in Chinese culture, giving you a deeper understanding of the Chinese language.

I originally come from a small town in the southwest of England called Cheltenham, which has just over 120,000 inhabitants to its name. You can, therefore, imagine swapping Cheltenham for Beijing was quite the change in lifestyle. From 120,000 people to over 20 million people, just like that!

Beijing is busy but also full of energy, full of history, and full of people to meet. In just a few weeks I’ve heard some fantastic stories. Whether local or foreign, everyone has their own tale to tell. That said, to communicate properly with local Chinese people, you need to add Mandarin to your armory.

Working at a Chinese school helps. I see students studying hard every day for up to six hours and I am around the Chinese language all day. LTL’s staff are predominantly Chinese and only includes two other foreigners.

Thus far, my progress has been steady and I’m content. Of course, one of the perks of the job is taking part in our language classes and I’ve been improving my speaking, writing, listening, and reading skills. The classes are well-structured and actually really fun!

However, as the job becomes more demanding, finding time to learn Chinese becomes more difficult, so I turned to learning on the move. Using your commuting time wisely is key. Beijing is very spread out, and the resulting travel time is actually a free opportunity to learn.

I have been using two apps during my commute: Skritter and Hello Chinese.

Skritter
Skritter is dedicated to learning characters.You write characters and learn stroke order until it becomes second nature. I cannot stress enough how useful this is. I would absolutely advise any beginner to not neglect those characters. Learn them alongside speaking, listening, and all the rest. This will pay dividends in the long run.

You probably won’t enhance your spoken Chinese with this app but that isn’t the aim. You will still see the pinyin, the tones, and the meaning of the characters, but I find other apps are better for drilling those aspects. Use Skritter to start learning Chinese characters and you’ll very quickly find that you can pick out characters you recognize all around you on a daily basis.

Hello Chinese
Where Skritter is focused on one specific area of Chinese, Hello Chinese is more of an all-rounder. You can choose from a number of different tasks, including:

Fill in the blanks
Multiple choice picture questions
Multiple choice pinyin questions
Arrange the Sentence
Stroke order

I find Hello Chinese works great hand-in-hand with Skritter. I love the versatility of Hello Chinese. I feel I can practice my sentence building, increase my vocabulary and study characters (as well as write them) all at the same time. To date, I’ve yet to find an app with all of these capabilities.

A feature I really started to warm to as of late is the audio questions. You are told to speak for a number of questions and this really helps you keep your tones in check. It’s very easy to ignore the tones and just focus on the vocabulary. Do not do this. Tones are absolutely essential and one of the first things you should crack. You might not be anywhere near perfect early on, but stick to it. Every single foreigner started somewhere and everyone has made mistakes. If you don’t make mistakes, you won’t learn. Make mistakes and laugh them off!

Make the Leap to China
If you’re reading this while preparing for your trip to China, I’d advise getting the aforementioned apps before you arrive to give yourself a head start. If you can arrive in China with a few basic phrases locked in, it’ll make a big difference to your overall experience. If you can at least master the simple things like taxis, buying drinking water, checking into your hotel, and making introductions, you’ll fit right in!

On the other hand, if you are already here and have maybe neglected to learn Chinese thus far, give it a shot. I can say with confidence that you won’t regret it.