What resources do you actively use to study Chinese, and why?

Question

Resource questions are sometimes closed and redirected to Resources for learning Mandarin Chinese. This seems like a great idea, until you actually use it:

1. there's no quality control; many links are virtually useless, obsolete, you have to pay for them, or are just plain broken (aside from other issues, e.g. links containing customer codes, copy/pasted advertisements), and
2. there's hundreds of links to go through.

Since any Chinese resource can be added, I don't see it as more helpful than dysfunctional version of Google. So... what can we do instead?

Q: What resources do you actively use to study Chinese, and why?

I ask the community to describe the tools they actually use for learning Chinese, and explain how they use them.

• Please indicate your Chinese level.
• Please don't include anything you don't actually use, i.e., quality control.
• Please don't copy/paste from the links (i.e., explain how you use it; don't just repeat advertisements), i.e., quality control.
• Please ignore other answers when writing your own. Obsolete answers are meant to "drop to the bottom".

Answers sorted by activity...

The idea is for users to sort the answers by activity, and thus see non-obsolete answers on top.

Answer 1

My recommendations are below; everything in bold I actively use. (My current level: I'm at the early stages of HSK6.)

Electronic resources...

1. Mobile dictionary: I use Pleco on my iPhone as a portable dictionary. I find it useful for inputting characters by drawing them by hand. It's also useful for breaking apart words into characters, and characters into radicals.

2. Web dictionary: My primary web dictionary is YouDao. YouDao has some example sentences. I also occasionally use Xiaoma Cidian, Yabla dictionary, Dict.cn, and LineDict; sometimes it's useful to compare multiple definitions. (JinYiFanYi is my current thesaurus.)

   I also find it useful to simply download the whole CC-CEDICT dictionary and search for it using command line functions like grep.

3. Web popup dictionary: I use the Zhongwen: Chinese-English Dictionary as a Firefox browser popup dictionary (i.e., you hover your mouse over the Chinese and the popup contains a translation); it gives the CC-CEDICT definitions. There's also Perapera, which is much the same.

4. Web example sentences: I sometimes use Jukuu for example sentences (aside from YouDao). It's not perfect (many examples are far too lengthy and technical), but it's okay. Alternatives include ZaoJuWang and ChinesePod. However, sometimes simply using Baidu works (clicking 资讯 = "information" gives more reliable examples).

5. Chinese grammar: I use the Chinese Grammar Wiki. It's incomplete, but seems to be the most reliable resource I'm aware of.

6. Translation: I use Google Translate. The results are often mediocre, so it's important to edit the results. It's useful to copy/paste the results into Baidu to compare against native Chinese sentences. Another possibility is the MDBG Translate which can segment and annotate the text.

7. OCR: The Baidu Hanyu iPhone app has good enough OCR to work with my handwriting.

8. Mobile character writing practice: I now pay for Skritter; I find it expensive, but it's a quality app. The free alternative is TOFU Learn.

9. Web search by radical: I think the best option is the MDBG Radical/Strokes Lookup, although Chinese-Tools Search by Radical is also good.

10. Creating Chinese names: I use RenRenWang for creating character names in my writing.

11. Reading practice: I mostly read native Chinese opinion pieces from MSN 中国, Sina, and ABC Chinese and on apps such as 看点快报 and 今日头条; I find CCTV News and the Chinese New York Times too difficult. I also use DuChinese on my iPhone. I sometimes read news articles at Chinese News Club (there's also The Chairman's Bao and FourthTone Mandarin, although I don't often use them).

    RuiWang has essays written by Chinese primary school children sorted by year level (I read 五年级 = grade 5). I have also read parts of Chinese 语文 books (for Chinese school students), some are available from 电子课本网.

    Many novels can be downloaded from Blah.me and web novels from ZhWenPg. Sometimes I listen to audiobooks via 懒人听书.

12. HSK: I'm currently taking the HSK6 Coursera course from 北京大学 (there's also HSK 1 2 3 4 5). For analyzing the difficulty of a sample text, I use HSK东西, selecting "Analyse HSK words", "Analyse HSK characters", and "Big block of text". I make use of the HSK 2012 vocabulary list along with HSK东西's data files. I used the HSK-5 Online Test app to take a past HSK-5 test. I'm also fond of the Facebook groups HSK 5 with Richard Wu and HSK 6.

13. Handwriting: 抖音 (with a Chinese Apple account) has many useful videos of handwriting, identifying common mistakes (examples 1 2).

14. LaTeX: For writing Chinese in LaTeX, I use the XeLaTeX compiler with the xeCJK package and gbsn00lp.ttf font. The xpinyin package is useful for adding pinyin.

15. Wikipedia: The pages Appendix:Mandarin Frequency lists and Appendix:Easily confused Chinese characters are useful references.

(I also use Chinese Stack Exchange, Reddit /r/ChineseLanguage, and a Chinese-learning Discord. Sometimes watch Chinese-learning YouTube videos, and I listen to the YouCanLearnChinese podcast. I also use XX-net to get around Google, etc., being blocked in China.)

Other resources...

1. Chinese lessons: I have a tutor from LTL Mandarin School (I'm in Beijing currently). It's not cheap, but I've found it more than worthwhile, and I haven't encountered any "tricks". (I hear italki is the norm for web classes, but I have never used it.)

2. Textbooks: I'm slowly working through 发展汉语；高级口语（I), but I find it very difficult. Previously, I finished HSK4标准教程 "HSK Standard Course 4" (both 上 and 下), but they're too boring. (Most of the grammar points are on now the Chinese Grammar Wiki: 上 and 下.)

   I bought the book 21天征服新HSK六级写作 to help with the HSK6 composition (缩写) component although I haven't started it yet. I also use the reference books HSK汉语水平考试 - 精选词汇辨析与练习 and 1700对近义词语用法对比 for distinguishing between near-synonyms.

3. Novels: I'm currently on-and-off reading 喜欢你，我也是 (teen romance), 猫城记 (science fiction), and the Chinese version of The Witches (女巫) [and previously Matilda (玛蒂尔达)]. (There's a Reddit post which calculates the difficulty of a large selection of Chinese books.) I also own the books 活着 and 山楂树恋爱, but I find them too difficult.

4. Movies: I often watch movies in Chinese on TV (here in Beijing); rom-coms are mostly understandable. It's very satisfying (and reinforcing) when I've studied some grammar point and see it on the big screen. My movie recommendations for learning Chinese: 半个喜剧 and 宠爱 and 亲爱的新年好. (Graded watching is a list of movies and TV series sorted by difficulty.)