How to Use Du Chinese
In this post we’re going to introduce you to how to use Du Chinese and get the most out of it. Learning Chinese is one of the best investments you can make with your time! It opens up a new world of over 1 billion people you can communicate with, beautiful places to explore, a rich culture to enjoy, business opportunities, and personal relationships.
With Du Chinese you can immerse yourself in the language through reading. You also have easy access to the best tools to help your learning.
Find a Reading
Learn how to navigate our app to find readings that interest you.
Du Chinese has thousands of readings with new ones added each week! You have plenty of readings available to you on our Discover tab ①.
Once you’ve made it to our Discover tab, you can find something quick to dive into, select between Stories ②, Articles ➂, and Courses ④. From there, use filters ⑤ to select readings relevant to you, from Newbie all the way to Master.
From quick and flexible standalone articles to read when you have a spare moment, to immersive original and adapted stories to get lost in, and courses designed to help you reach language milestones, Du Chinese offers thousands of readings to ensure you always have something new to explore. You can filter articles by topic or dive into themed collections that go deeper into subjects like technology or finance, while some stories and courses expand into full series that unfold across longer narratives. Open the app to see just how much there is to discover.
Overview Page
After you select a reading, you’ll be taken to the overview page that has a short description of what you are about to read. On this page, you’ll see the following:
① Bookmark the reading to make it easier to find later
② Download the reading for offline study (premium subscribers)
➂ Mark it as read
④ Read & Listen button. Click through and you’ll be taken to the reading screen and you are ready to start reading Chinese.
⑤ Audiobook button. Click to listen to a reading to improve your listening skills (premium subscribers)
Reading Screen
Once you click “Read & Listen,” there are all sorts of things you can do!
① From the reading screen, you’ll find the translation box at the very top of the page. This translation box can be tapped to toggle showing and hiding the sentence translations.
② Shows the number of pages. Swipe left or right to flip through the pages of the reading.
➂ Tap here to adjust the reading speed of the audio playback (from x.5 – x1.5 speeds).
④ Tap the Play button to listen to the text read by a native speaker. This karaoke-style reading allows you to easily follow the audio while reading along. Tap on any word on the screen to start the audio from that point. Press the “pause” button whenever you need to pause the audio.
⑤ Tap 拼 “Pin” to turn pinyin, bopomofo, or tone marks on and off.
⑥ Within the ☰ icon, you can access reading preferences.
Reading Preferences
Tapping the ☰ icon from within the reading screen will allow you to adjust the following settings:
① Font size
② Font family (System, HeiTi, SongTi, KaiTi)
③ Always show sentence translations
④ Underline HSK words
⑤ Show grammar highlight to find grammar articles
⑥ Choose between Simplified and Traditional characters
⑦ Show character readings (拼 toggle setting)
⑧ Only show character readings for difficult characters. Pinyin will be hidden for all words below the level of the lesson you are reading (Newbie-Master)
⑨ Transliteration mode (pinyin/tone marks/bopomofo)
Listening to a Reading
After you select something to read, you have two ways to listen.
1. From the reading screen, tap the Play button to listen to any reading. As you listen to the audio, you can reference the words on the screen.
2. From the overview page, you’ll find the “Audiobook” button, which lets you play audio in the background while you’re doing other activities.
“Audiobook” mode will play through all the readings from the section that you came from (starred, studied, multi-chapter stories, etc.), so that you can listen without interruption. Click “Previous,” or “Next” to navigate through articles, chapters, or lessons.
Saving Words and Reviewing Flashcards
With extensive reading you can learn Chinese in a natural and enjoyable way. As you are reading, if you’d like to save a word to your word bank, just place your finger on the word, drag up and release on “Save“. The word will be saved to your word list and the flashcard system.
Studying Chinese is a bit like working out: A little bit every day will be much more effective than trying to do too much all at once. 10 minutes every day is better than 2 hours once a week.
Rather than reading, sometimes you just want to review and memorize words. You can find your flashcards by hitting the “Flashcards” tab at the bottom of the screen when you’re on the home page.
Du Chinese uses a Spaced Repetition Flashcard System (SRS) to make studying unfamiliar words more efficient. The system keeps track of how well you remember each word. Regularly forgotten words will be shown more frequently, while learned words are shown less frequently.
Click “Study” to start your word review for the day. Our system will present you with words that are due for review, and all you need to do is to mark how well you remember each word.
- Swipe Left or tap “Forgot” if you’ve forgotten the word
- Swipe Right or tap “Got it” if you remember the word.
- Tap “Almost” if you recall only partial knowledge for certain words, such as knowing the meaning but forgetting the pinyin or vice versa.
Within the test, you can review the words and test your own knowledge. On the flashcard, you can tap to show the pinyin, see the sentence from which you encountered the word, tap to reveal the translations, and tap to look at the dictionary definition if you’ve forgotten.
Final Note
If you’ve made it this far, you’re clearly a dedicated learner. We’ve created Du Chinese so that you can learn relevant Chinese that people actually use. Start reading Chinese now!
Our goal is to help as many people as possible learn to read Chinese and it also takes a whole team of people to create content and develop the app. If you find Du Chinese useful, please consider subscribing. Reading with Du Chinese for even just a few minutes each day, we’re confident that you’ll quickly see your Chinese improve. 加油!
