ChineseSkill - Learn Chinese 4+

Love the app - want to give it 7 stars!

I am a teacher and very thoughtful about the ways the human brain absorbs information. I teach in a predominantly Chinese area, so I am motivated to learn Chinese. My students think it is exciting and funny when I try to speak Chinese - they laugh, then help me with my accent and tones.
I bought Rosetta Stone (very expensive) and I do use it, but this app is 1) much easier to get into, 2) more memorable with art than with photos, 3) more multimodal (switching from recognize, recall, listen, write, fill-in, English to Chinese, Chinese to English, etc.), 4) more grammatically oriented (ie this/that), 4) more organized topically, 5) less confusing (when using RS I have to stop and look things up on google translate or else stay confused) 6) more reading/writing (on this app I am starting to read the Chinese before the English), more time friendly (5-10 minute sections), and 8) more [sic] FREE!!!
So great that I took the time to write a review! (I rarely do this)
[[[ If you are a developer reading this review, please turn the large written Chinese characters into Flashcards for optional ongoing vocabulary development (I currently screenshot them, but think it would be a great addition to the app - and thank you!! ]]]

Please fix this!

Hi!

I love this app, but however, the new lesson format is very annoying!! There is no way to turn off English translations in the new lessons! I already KNOW what the characters mean, and if I am supposed to be learning to read Chinese and not English, I need to be able to only see Chinese characters if I want. Giving English translations every darn time WILL NEVER HELP a person learn to read Chinese. We need to be able to test our reading skills by NOT seeing English(or other language that a person’s native language is.) over or under the characters. Why did you guys ADD English to everything?? The old lessons were not like that. Please fix the new lessons to be English free! It is not immersion when my native language is always in my face when I don’t want it to be. A person should be allowed to choose whether they want translations or not. If we can choose to have pinyin, both pinyin and characters or just characters, then we should be able to turn on and off the English translations as well. The ONLY place any English translations should be permanent in, are in the green/red boxes, where corrections are given after we give an answer. Otherwise, English(or other people’s native language) should be an option in the non-green/red box areas and not permanent. I tried to find a way to turn them off, but there is no way. PLEASE FIX IMMEDIATELY! Thank you! I will change to 5 stars once this is fixed.

Developer Response ,

Hello, sorry for the negative experience! In the learning section, the translation has to be there so that a learner can select the correct answer. If you prefer to read Chinese only, it's recommended to use the Flashcard feature under Review, and set the display in Chinese by clicking the Settings button on top right. If you need further assistance, please message us using the in-app "Contact Us" function. We'll get back to you by the next business day. Thank you again for choosing ChineseSkill! ^^

Better than duolingo

I’ve tried this and duolingo for a few days, and although duolingo seems to be more well known (could be just marketing), I like ChineseSkill app more. (My background is that I am Cantonese Chinese, and I know how to speak and understand some really basic Mandarin but am not a native Mandarin speaker.)

Duolingo was way too repetitive, i was on the first lesson “greetings” and it repeated the same two words (“hello”) throughout 2-3 long lessons which was such a waste of time. ChineseSkill is not as mind-numbingly repetitive and even when it does try to teach you the same word/sentence a few times it will do it in a few different ways. Also, I really appreciate that ChineseSkill teaches not only the sounds of the words but also shows you the pinyin and how to write the words in Chinese characters, which duolingo does not do.

They are both fun apps, and I can see how they’d be a fun and easy way to teach people completely new to the language. But since I already know how to speak and understand some basic mandarin, and I am looking to increase my vocabulary more quickly in order to be able to carry conversations and would also like to learn how to read and write chinese, I think I need to take a more advanced maybe university level course, like on Coursera or something.