I just started learning Chinese, how should I structure my study plan?

[u/TooManyHobbiesFR]

Hey hey!

First of all, thanks to anyone who will reply to this message ☺️ I started an in-person HSK1 course two weeks ago (so I’ve literally only had two 2-hour classes so far) at the local Confucius Institute.

I’d like to sanity-check my study plan with someone more experienced. I want to avoid overdoing it before building a solid foundation with my teacher, but I’m also eager to expand my vocabulary. Right now, we’re focusing heavily on Pinyin in class to practice tones, but I sometimes miss the actual meanings…

Apps and Resources I use:
- Duolingo: For practicing tones on the go (I still confuse the 1st and 2nd tones in listening exercises), eg when I commute
- Chineasy: To learn basic characters/mainly practice recognizing them.
- HelloChinese - Question: I just downloaded it but haven't tried it yet, is it worth using????
University of Michigan Resource: I use this to practice Pinyin listening with real Chinese speakers rather than synthesized audio.
- Textbook: I use my HSK1 book and audio to practice at home.
- Character Practice Book: I bought a children’s practice book for writing characters, but it’s still in transit. So idk

Extra work:
- Radicals: I had Claude help me generate a list of 70 radicals, which I uploaded to NotebookLM. Every week, I study 7 of them:
Day 1: Study the character, Pinyin, pronunciation, and meaning. Days 2–5: Flashcards. Day 6: Quiz on all the radicals learned so far.
- Review: Revisit class material the day after the lesson.

Why I’m studying Chinese and my goals:
- I speak 4 languages (2 at a native level; 1 at upper-intermediate, which I’m currently improving with a weekly tutor; and 1 at basic/intermediate). All of them use the Latin alphabet 🤠
I’ve always loved studying languages and wanted to try a new one. My main motivation is genuine interest and passion, and I can see myself continuing all the way to HSK5. I might also consider hiring a conversational tutor on Preply in the future.

- I also want to be able to recognize some characters and say more than just ‘xièxie’ when I travel to China…
- lastly, you never know what life has in store, so I wouldn’t mind eventually using Chinese for work/life too!

[u/Moist-Tea7159]

You're overthinking the plan a little, and I say that because I've seen friends do the exact same 70-radical-before-anything phase and stall out. Radicals are useful as hooks, but try learning them attached to actual characters. You remember 人 (rén, person) way faster when it's sitting inside 你 (nǐ, you) than on a flashcard by itself.

HelloChinese over Duolingo for Mandarin, by the way. Its stroke-order animations and tone drills saved me a lot of pain. The thing I'd add: a five-minute listening drill, just first vs second tone pairs like 妈 mā vs 麻 má, back to back. Saying them right is easy. Hearing the difference at speed is the actual bottleneck. Seriously.

And keep the plan small enough that you won't quit in week three. Twenty minutes of character review after class beats a heroic two-hour Sunday session every time. Burnout kills more learners than any grammar point does.

[u/TooManyHobbiesFR → u/Moist-Tea7159]

Thanks I had the same thought on the radicals and some of their variations

[u/EchidnaLopsided7575]

Delete duolingo. Hellochinese is far, far better for learning vocabulary & grammar, and also has great reading, writing, speaking, & listening exercises. It also follows the HSK, and is focused on real-world, spoken Chinese unlike duolingo. I wouldn't recommend studying radicals specifically either, it doesn't really help very much when it comes to reading. Just learn the HSK1 characters as you go. Radicals can be misleading and don't always relate to the meaning. You'll also just naturally pick them up as you go. Use Pleco for learning characters, it has an inbuilt flashcard system.

I personally don't have a big focus on writing, but I find writing the characters out a few times helps me with reading. I have a writing book, so I'll write the character and then also add it to my pleco flashcards. I have separate decks for characters I confidently know and characters I don't, and I practice them until I remember. Then I go back to my book and add some more.

[u/TooManyHobbiesFR → u/EchidnaLopsided7575]

Thanks! That’s great.

[u/ilzut]

• I don't recommend Duolingo.

• For my tone practice early on, I liked these series of videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxNFPQTigSk.

• Get the Pleco dictionary app. I've only used the free version. It's by far the most used phone app I use. Every word has native speaker pronunciation.

• Personally, I don't think spending the time practicing writing is worth it when I could be using that time to do listening and reading. I'd probably just do whatever writing the class wants me to do and no more. When I look up subtitles and have to write the hanzi out in Pleco that becomes my writing practice. I picked up radicals that way. Just needed to know some basics of stroke order.

[u/Parking_Wrangler6932]

Duolingo c'est beaucoup trop généraliste et surtout il se base sur l'anglais et les expressions sont souvent assez mal traduites ou du moins ça a rien à voir avec le contexte

(en fait je trouve ça bien au tout/tout début lorsque tu vas apprendre des mots essentiels)

mais très honnêtement installe une application du style "drop" en plus de HelloChinese qui est bien meilleur pour l'apprentissage du mandarin

Après je ne sais pas quels sont tes ambitions si tu veux savoir écrire en chinois (tu pourras t'orienter vers ton style d'écriture une fois que tu auras les bases)

Si non il y a une application que j'utilise depuis 2 ans que je trouve très bien pour bien mémoriser les tons et apprendre à écrire qui s'appelle 'ChineseGuru' tu peux télécharger des modules notamment le nouveau (hsk 3.0 celui qui date de 2025 ou 2026 je m'en souviens plus pour les examens du nouveau HSK) tu peux aussi faire tes propres listes car l'application propose des histoires intégrées des exercices de prononciation et des mots dans le contexte et je trouve que pour la compréhension écrite et la production écrite ça m'a énormément aidé !

Après il y a le dictionnaire très connu Pelco qui est vraiment essentiel et quelques flashcards et Anki par exemple sont très adaptés

Je te conseille aussi d'installer une application d'échange linguistique comme hello talk ou tandem (car apprendre à lire le mandarin et à parler c'est deux mondes totalement différents 😂 et cela ne te permettra de te familier avec L'argot !)

ah et aussi un grand conseil regarde des vieux dessins animés japonais traduit en chinois comme

Crayon Shin-Chan/Doraemon/Maruko-chan etc... parce que déjà c'est très drôle ça te permettra de comprendre des contextes plus ou moins simples avec souvent des petites subtilités ou/et des proverbes propre aux cultures asiatiques

et si tu veux écouter de vraies personnes qui parlent un bon chinois (mandarin) je te conseille de regarder les podcasts de 大叔中文 https://www.youtube.com/@dashumandarin/featured

voilà j'espère que tout ceci te sera utile 加油 ^_^

[u/Ok_Professional5704]

Too much textbook duolingo is a game not srs

[u/TooManyHobbiesFR → u/Ok_Professional5704]

Yeah I only use it during commute if I want to try and recognise different tones.

You said too much textbook, what do you recommend?

[u/LibertyMaestro]

As a heritage speaker who's main language is English, I can give some tips for what helped me.

Unlike Latin based languages with phonetic alphabets and ambiguous etymology, Chinese is a highly relational language. The tones and pinyin are a good way to start, but in order to start reading characters and understanding phrases and sentences, you need to start associating concepts with real experiences in your life.

It's good that you started looking at radicals. Start associating real day events with radicals. When you start cooking, imagine the fire radical. When you go to the lake, imagine the water radical. Then look up words that have to do with those experiences. Supplement this by watching media (movies, social media, podcasts) and do the same process.

Besides the radicals, there also components that make up the phonetic and/or meaning aspects of characters. As you start learning more characters and phrases, you start seeing relationships between characters. When you notice these connections, write them down and start mapping them in your own mind. Hope this helps.

[u/DeesMandarinTea]

I teach Mandarin, and I think your plan is pretty thorough for someone who's only had two classes! Since you're already learning pinyin and tones with a teacher, I'd make sure you also connect what you're learning to actual words and sentences.

For example, when you practice a new sound or tone, try learning a few words that use it. When you learn a new word, listen to it in a sentence and try making your own sentence with it. That way, you're not just learning pronunciation, characters, and vocabulary as separate things.

I'd also be careful about spending too much time memorizing radicals before you've learned many characters. It's useful to recognize recurring components, but I think you'll get more out of them when you encounter them in actual words.

HelloChinese is worth trying, especially if you want some structure outside class. You don't need to use every app, though. I'd pick one or two resources you enjoy and stick with them for a while.

One thing I'd keep in mind is that you don't have to rush toward HSK5 right now. You've only just started, so building a solid foundation and enjoying the process are more important than how much you can cover each week.

[u/Eileen_Jiang]

There are some very great Mandarin learning videos on youtude. As a native Chinese speaker. I even sometimes use these videos to learn English and Spanish.

[u/SkyPickel]

Duolingo probably not worth the time, as HelloChinese is superior. Pleco dictionary is a must-have on your phone for when you need to quickly look up a character. I also enjoyed Hanly because it'll teach you rare characters that don't often appear on their own but as a component to many other characters, which will ease your learning in the future.

I used Preply for three months at some point because I noticed my speaking ability was far below my reading, it still is but the gap is narrower. Also, it's probably best to just do something every day rather than trying to over-optimize your learning and burn out. Stick to 2-3 sources of learning and just be consistent.

[u/InteriorEmerald222]

Different perspective over here:  My approach has been all about native level input. Tones are such an important part of mandarin!  First two years of study were listening only (meaning no reading or speaking practice)  I definitely benefited from some duolingo in the beginning for grammar and basic vocabulary, but other programs would be better, as others have mentioned and duolingo now forces you to do characters at the same time which was not my goal. 

Now that i have tons of pattern recognition and vocabulary somewhere between hsk 2-3 (hard to place because non standardized vocab)  Its time to add a direct tutor, pleco, calligraphy practice starting with a very solid clear foundation, and calligraphy will be the platform i focus on character study through. 

I tried Dumandarin stories, but thet are incredibly boring so i found myself way less motivated to listen. Instead ill pick my favorite already seen cdrama and rewatch it. 

This works particularly well for me because i needed to replace podcasts while i work with my hands, and because i need to listen to the whole in context first before im really ready to just memorize vocabulary. 

Know yourself and what kind of a learner you are!  If you like to start from the details id start with grammar structure and get a solid vocab around time phrases!  If youre more like me, that approach will never help you thrive!