Welcome to Du Chinese — What is the Du Chinese Method?
Welcome to Du Chinese! Since 2015, our team has been dedicated to enhancing the experience of learning Chinese with our diverse articles, original and adapted stories, and themed courses. We’re thrilled to have you with us and are committed to making Du Chinese the best tool for your language learning journey.
Here’s an inside look at our Du Chinese Method, so you can feel confident in how we support your language learning every step of the way.
Why it works:
Our Educational Philosophy — Extensive Reading
Understanding why the Du Chinese method is effective begins with our educational philosophy. At the core of this approach lies the power of Extensive Reading, a technique that immerses learners in longer texts that are easier to comprehend. This method transforms the language learning experience into a journey that is both enjoyable and efficient.
Extensive Reading is one of the most natural and effective ways to learn a new language, especially Chinese. By seeing words and grammar used in real-life situations and stories, you pick up the language in a way that makes sense, making it easier to remember and use what you’ve learned. Our engaging content, which includes adaptations of classic stories, current events, and cultural insights, ensures that learners stay motivated and entertained, making the learning process feel less like a chore and more like a leisurely activity. Tailored to different skill levels, our writers ensure you’re always challenged just enough to grow without feeling overwhelmed.
What makes the Du Chinese method truly stand out is how our writers combine these extensive reading practices with scientific principles to create engaging and effective lessons that support natural language acquisition. Our interesting content keeps readers entertained, while the science-based principles, like spaced repetition and the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve, ensure effective learning and long-term retention. Our writers are careful to introduce new words at just the right moments and weave new and learned vocabulary into various contexts. By encountering new and learned information repeatedly at optimal intervals, your vocabulary and grammar skills are reinforced and stored in long-term memory, helping you learn faster. The Du Chinese method not only boosts motivation but also reinforces learning through meaningful, repeated exposure, making your journey to fluency both enjoyable and efficient.
Our method also leverages other effective language acquisition strategies:
- Comprehensible Input: Learning material is slightly above your current level, providing a manageable challenge.
- Scaffolding: Revisiting words, phrases, and grammar in various contexts builds on existing knowledge.
- Contextual Learning: Presenting language in real-life situations helps with retention and application.
With its focus on extensive reading and these scientifically-backed strategies, the Du Chinese method ensures a stress-free and engaging learning experience. It’s not just about learning a language; it’s about enjoying the journey and seeing real progress along the way.
Our Writing Team
Our writing team consists of native Chinese speakers from China with advanced degrees in linguistics, language education, and literature. Many are also experienced Chinese teachers, bringing both educational expertise and strong writing skills to our articles. Through a combination of experienced Chinese teachers and good writers, we ensure that Du Chinese articles are equal parts educational and interesting.
Our chief editor, Yueyuan
Yueyuan, one of our co-founders, holds a Master’s degree in Comparative Linguistics and leads content planning and development at Du Chinese. With extensive experience as both a language learner and teacher, she ensures that all our content meets the highest standards of quality, reliability, and consistency.
Our chief translator, Mark
Mark, our head translator, has a PhD in Political Science from National Taiwan University. He has been translating since 2007, specializing in Chinese texts for academia, legal, finance, and marketing fields. He also teaches International Relations at NTU and established an academic translation and editing company in 2020. Mark’s extensive expertise ensures that all Du Chinese translations are accurate, consistent, and natural.
How it works:
Our Process — Content Creation
From initial writing to final publication, every step is designed to ensure quality and effectiveness.
Step 1: Writing
Our content creation process begins with the writing phase, handled by a team of native Chinese speakers from China with advanced degrees in linguistics, language education, and literature. Many are also experienced Chinese teachers, bringing both educational expertise and strong writing skills to our readings.
We produce a variety of content, each tailored to specific learning needs:
Articles
We focus on diverse topics that our readers find engaging. Through user feedback, ratings, and surveys, we tailor content to match our readers’ interests.Based on these results, we carefully select appropriate topics and take the time to develop a comprehensive course or series so that readers can dive deeper into a subject they enjoy.
Stories
Our original and adapted stories focus on immersive storytelling and cultural richness, providing readers with a deeper understanding of Chinese culture. Research shows that a word needs to be repeated 6-20 times to be remembered. Our stories naturally incorporate vocabulary and grammar repetitions within engaging narratives, making language learning both fun and effective. We utilize the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve, spaced repetition, and memory retrieval techniques, to enhance memory retention, helping readers store new vocabulary in their long-term memory.
By using and repeating key words and phrases within engaging narratives, we create natural, memorable cues within the story itself. This makes it easier for you to recall those words later because you’re not just memorizing them in isolation; you’re seeing and using them in context, which strengthens your ability to remember and use them correctly in real-life situations.
Courses
Our courses help readers achieve specific milestones, such as mastering vocabulary or understanding business Chinese. These goal-oriented courses emphasize a gradual increase in difficulty, facilitating natural language acquisition. We introduce new words and repeat them in various contexts throughout the course, carefully controlling the number of new words in each lesson. Since courses are developed based on user feedback and interest, our writers put a lot of time and effort into making them equal parts relevant, educational, and interesting.
Step 2: Proofreading
After writing, each article is carefully reviewed by our writing staff and chief editor, Yueyuan. We check for character usage, punctuation, word choice, and internal logic. This review ensures the reading is suitable for the intended difficulty level and that the tone is accurate. Each article is reviewed and edited at least three times to make sure it meets our high-quality standards.
Step 3: Audio Recording
All of our lessons come with professionally recorded audio narration. Once the Chinese text is finalized, it’s recorded by our native voice actors in China. These actors are required to have passed the Putonghua proficiency test at Level 2A or above. This test is the official measure of spoken fluency in Standard Chinese (Mandarin) for native speakers, ensuring their pronunciation is standard and not dialectal.
Level 2A is the standard required for Chinese language teachers in schools, educators in higher institutions, public service roles like broadcasters, and other communication fields. By setting such high proficiency requirements, we guarantee that learners hear the most accurate and clear form of Chinese, which is crucial for developing proper pronunciation and listening skills. After recording, we meticulously check the audio for quality, accuracy, speed, and tone. This ensures that our audio content is clear, precise, and suitable for learners at all levels.
Step 4: Translating
Finally, Mark and his team translate the Chinese text into English. Since Du Chinese provides sentence-by-sentence translations and a pop-up dictionary for words, they translate the entire article, individual words, and key phrases to ensure everything fits together seamlessly. Accuracy and readability are their top priorities, balancing between the original Chinese text and natural-sounding English.
The Du Chinese dictionary is specially designed to ensure clarity and context-specific accuracy. For every word, a translator reviews its meaning in context, handpicking the correct meaning and creating a new entry if necessary. We ensure definitions are consistent across lessons and align with HSK and popular Chinese dictionaries.
While all lessons are written with HSK and CEFR standards in mind to make sure they can integrate well with any study plan, we’ve made improvements to these frameworks. Standardized frameworks can sometimes be outdated or lag behind the dynamic nature of language, missing key vocabulary and cultural relevance. At Du Chinese, we stay ahead of these changes, ensuring our content reflects the most current language usage and cultural context. This ensures our learners get an up-to-date, relevant, and engaging language learning experience. Our Du Chinese levels accurately represent the necessary vocabulary and grammar structures for reading at various levels, offering a more robust and effective learning experience.
Step 5: Quality Control
We finalize the cover image and description, ensuring they accurately represent the content and are visually appealing.
Then, the entire article, including its translation, undergoes a final review. This step ensures that every aspect, from the original text to the translated content to the audio, meets our high standards of quality and accuracy. We adhere to the “four eyes principle,” meaning everything in the app is double-checked by at least two different people. This approach guarantees that our content is reliable, accurate, and ready for our readers.
Chinese Learning for Everyone
Thank you to everyone who has supported Du Chinese since it was founded in 2015. We hope you enjoyed this look into our process and hope to continue to provide fun and interesting reading material for many more years to come!
