Dong Chinese Review 💡 Your Next Vocabulary Tool

An Honest Dong Chinese Review to Save You Time || Should I Download It? (2024 Updates)

Dong Chinese Review: 8.5/10
A new one in the Chinese learning apps, this innovative language platform – although may appear slightly outdated – offers modern learning techniques. A comprehensive Chinese learning platform with courses about Chinese phonetics, pinyin and tones, including a great Tone Trainer to help you crack Chinese tones!

Coming next in our adventure to find the best Chinese learning tools: Dong Chinese!

In this Dong Chinese review, as usual, you will find a short introduction to the app and a full review of the content offered: lessons, exercises and more.

The whole LTL team is always thrilled to find out about new Chinese learning apps and websites, and even more so when they come to us to review them!

If you haven’t already you can check out our other reviews in the App Reviews category of our blog.

We have reviewed famous apps as well as newcomers in the Chinese learning field, all with their specific features and focus, so you’ll definitely find something you’d like.

But for now, let’s start with our Dong Chinese Review!

Dong Chinese Review 1 // Key Info & Stats

Dong Chinese Review 2 // Pros & Cons

Dong Chinese Review 3 // Cost (is it free?)

Dong Chinese Review 4 // Introduction & How to Use

Dong Chinese Review 5 // Main Features

Dong Chinese Review 6 // The Learn Section

Dong Chinese Review 7 // Final Thoughts & Conclusion

Dong Chinese Review 8 // Where to Download

Dont Chinese Review 9 // 2024 Update – 1000 Most Common Characters

Dong Chinese Review // FAQs

Dong Chinese Review // Bonus! Recommended Channels

Dong Chinese Review // Key Info & Stats

Dong Chinese Key Stats

Dong Chinese Review // Pros & Cons

A short summary of the pros & cons of Dong Chinese App.

Intro

Dong Chinese is a Chinese learning app available on desktop, focusing on vocabulary as well as the reading, listening and writing aspects of the language.

Dong Chinese Review // Cost: is it free?

As almost every Chinese learning app (I say that every time, but it is true), there is a FREE version and a paid one, which works on a subscription basis.

You can start studying on Dong Chinese for free the first 7 days, after that, you’ll get 1 lesson every 12 hours.

The prices are as following:

• $9.99 – Monthly
• $25.99 – Quarterly
• $49.99 – Semi-annual
• $79.99 – Yearly

I suggest to fully try the app during the 7 days free trial before committing to a subscription, so you can see if this learning tool is the right one for you.

Dong Chinese Review // Introduction & How to Use

What is Dong Chinese?

“[Dong Chinese is] an app to help you learn to understand Chinese through thousands of real example sentences, captioned images, videos, podcasts, and songs”

Using their own words: “the main philosophy of Dong Chinese is that language should be learned through context, rather than memorizing individual words in isolation.”

This gives you an idea of what the app is all about. It is not your usual flashcard kind of app.

Dong Chinese was developed by Peter and Patrick, two Chinese language enthusiasts, and is actually a very recent tool, dating back only from 2019.

They came to us earlier this year to ask us to review their app, however, with the app being in its early stages of development, more developments still had to be done to be able to make a full, comprehensive review.

I sent them a list of recommendations and things to add to help them make their tool an even better one!

I am glad they took them into account and even added a fantastic PINYIN category, which we will talk more about later.

How to log in?

The login process is fairly easy.

You can choose to log in via Facebook, Twitter and Google, or choose to sign up manually with an email address.

That’s it! You’ll be directed to the main menu.

Have a look at Dong Chinese introductory video before reading further:

Dong Chinese Review // Main Features

So, you just logged in.

You’ll have a look at the app for yourself and explore all they have to offer, but let me introduce the main features for those who are still hesitating to try it out.

There are many features to explore, but I’d like to introduce the following three:

• Learn Alphabet (pinyin)
• Media
• Dictionary

On your first log-in, you’ll be directed to the main page, called LEARN. I will talk more about it and its exercises in the next chapter, but I’d like us to focus on the LEARN ALPHABET section for a moment.

Learn Alphabet

This is a suggestion I made when first having a look at Dong Chinese.

How can we learn Chinese, or any language, if we don’t start with the alphabet and the pronunciation?

For that matter, the Chinese language doesn’t have an alphabet as it is solely composed of characters. However, we can learn pinyin.

For all the beginners reading this blog, Pinyin is the official romanisation system for standard Chinese. This way, you can read a character and learn the correct tones for each character.

Example:

• English: Hello
• Chinese characters: 你好
• Pinyin: nǐ hǎo

BONUS – You can study pinyin, AND zhuyin as well!

Zhuyin, also called Bopofomo is the Chinese phonetic instruction nowadays only used in Taiwan.

In this category, you’ll have 10 lessons about Pinyin, an Introduction, Tone Trainer, as well as a speaking category.

• Introduction – Find out about Chinese pronunciation and the pinyin/zhuyin systems.
• Tone Trainer – Practice hearing the different tones.
• Speaking – Use speech recognition to practice your pronunciation.

I highly recommend you use the Tone Trainer to master the tones.

I thought I had them pinned down until I challenged my knowledge on this feature! Turns out I don’t know them perfectly…

Same goes for the Speaking section. It is not common to find speech recognition tools to help practice the speaking aspect of the language, and this one works!

You just need to allow Dong Chinese to have access to your microphone.

It is well hidden in the pinyin category, but it is going to be very helpful in your learning journey.

I tried to fool the system by saying something completely different from what was displayed, and they got me!

They instantly recognised what I was saying, which obviously didn’t match at all their exercise.

It works.

Media

In this category you will find more than 2,500+ videos for you to watch and learn along.

It goes from Chinese TV shows, children’s cartoons and songs to TED talks, cooking shows and more!

But that’s not all. Click on a video you’d like to watch and you’ll see ALL sentences translations in Chinese on the right side of your screen.

Click on the play button ▶️ to start the video and follow along with the sentences.

Click on a character you don’t know to make the Pinyin appear.

Doesn’t it make you think of the extension Language Learning with Netflix? It is basically the same system, which is a fantastic way to learn.

It’s always good to get away from books and standard school materials!

BONUS – You can also add your OWN media to study.

Dictionary

The Dong Chinese Dictionary is another category worth mentioning, and if you are preparing for a HSK exam, you’ll like it too!

Not only will you be able to have a look at the most common characters and words in movies and books, but you can also have access to a list of HSK words to learn.

In the table, you can see if you have learned the character or if it is still unknown to you.

Click on a word to have a full definition and explanation of the word. And when I say full, I mean it. You’ll get:

• Definitions
• Stroke order
• Components break down
• Evolution of the character through history
• Sentence examples
• Writing practice
• Statistics

You can also change the status of the word from unknown to new, familiar, known, well-known and mastered.

Be aware though, Dong Chinese lists the words differently than the official HSK vocabulary lists.

See the table below:

To be clear, in Dong Chinese HSK1 list you learn the words from #1 to #150. In the HSK2 list, you’ll learn the words from #151 to #301. In the HSK3 list, you’ll learn the words from #302 to #601, etc.

Whereas official HSK lists include the previous HSK level words, Dong Chinese only includes the NEW ones in its lists.

I’ll let you have a look for yourself at the other features offered by Dong Chinese such as their blog and roadmap, but we will now have a look in more details at the exercises from the LEARN category.

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Dong Chinese Review // LEARN

As we have seen earlier the LEARN category can be considered the main page of the tool.

In this category you’ll have different options:

• Learn the alphabet (pinyin)
• Learn reading
• Learn writing
• Learn both

Learn Alphabet we already talked about in the previous chapter so I’ll directly skip over to the next ones.

Whether you choose to learn reading or writing (or both), you’ll first have a lesson summary.

You’ll see what new characters you’ll learn, and which ones you’ll review, and will have the option to choose between “too easy” or “too hard” to help personalise the exercises to fit your level best.

If you choose to go ahead, you can now complete various exercises.

Exercises such as:

• Fill in the blanks
• Image/sentence matching
• Chinese/English matching
• Handwriting

• Fill in the blanks is an exercise we regularly see in learning apps. Choose the correct word amongst the options offered to complete the sentence.

• Image/sentence matching will require you to select the correct image or sentence according to what is displayed.

• Chinese/English matching is pretty much the same, just select the correct translation.

• Handwriting is a useful exercise that’ll allow you to learn the stroke order and how to write characters. Double-click on a word, and you’ll also learn more about it, such as its definition, stroke order, examples of use and statistics.

If you don’t know the character and have some trouble writing it, the system will give you hints and make you write the character until you know it.

After completing all exercises, Dong Chinese will let you know how many characters you learned and how many you can read. It will offer some media you can now understand thanks to what you’ve learned.

There is no time limit during the exercises so you can take your time in reading the sentences and checking the characters.

TOP TIP – Double click on a character to make its whole description appear: pinyin, translation, example of use etc.

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Dong Chinese Review // Final Thoughts & Conclusion

So there you go! That’s the end of our Dong Chinese introduction, and we will now have a closer look at the REVIEW part of this blog!

Overall Dong Chinese is a great complement to a Chinese language program, not only to review vocabulary but also learn more words on the side.

Even though Dong Chinese cannot be considered a standalone course (as with most apps to be honest) it has many interesting features and tools that are a great addition to your Chinese learning.

First of all, the Alphabet course is GREAT, and you’ll get a deep dive into Chinese phonetics, pinyin, zhuyin and tones.

I absolutely love the Tone Trainer, that I whole-heartedly recommend you try out.

I thought I was pretty good at making the differences between the Chinese tones until I used the Tone Trainer! It seems like I still need some training after all…

The exercises are standard exercises, but effective in really integrating vocabulary through repetition (especially the handwriting ones!).

The fact that we can practice the writing and speaking aspects of the language is a strong advantage as it is not available on every app.

TOP TIP – If you are of an advanced level, go to dictionary and check the words you already know. It will help better improve the user experience and tailor your exercises to your level.

Using Dong Chinese for the first time you might think the layout and general design of the app are a bit outdated. But don’t be fooled by the looks, there are some hidden gems here.

It is also important to keep in mind that Dong Chinese is still currently under development, and the team is working hard on many improvements at the moment. Check their Roadmap here.

• If you are looking for a way to learn new vocabulary while reviewing what you already know, check Dong Chinese.

• If you are looking for a Chinese learning platform with a comprehensive course about Chinese phonetics, pinyin and tones, check Dong Chinese.

• If you are looking for a structured course to learn how to build sentences and learn about the Chinese grammar, you might want to have a look at an online course with a native professional teacher.

I hope this Dong Chinese Review helped you decide if you wish to subscribe or not, but you can at least take a look, there’s a free trial!

Dong Chinese Review // Where to Download

Dong Chinese is available on desktop and now the Play Store for Android. It is not (yet) available on IoS for Apple.

Desktop

https://www.dong-chinese.com/

Android

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.peterolson.chinse.dongchinese&hl=en&gl=US

Dong Chinese Review // 2024 Updates

New year, new updates!

In 2024 Dong Chinese also added the ‘1000 Most Common Characters’ element to Dong Chinese Wiki.

This means if you want to take a systematic approach to learning Mandarin.

With this tool, you can zone in on the most common characters first, which can help your conversational comprehension.

You can look at the most common 1000 characters:

👉 In movie subtitles

👉 In books

👉 From HSK levels 1-4

👉 From Dong Chinese difficulty levels

And it doesn’t stop there!

You can explore each character in more depth on the Dong Chinese Character Wiki dictionary and look at elements such as the meaning component, sound component and simplified component.

You can check out the online dictionary here.

Bonus // Recommended Channels

Here’s some bonus content!

Dong Chinese has over 20 different channels with thousands of different videos between them – so what’s best to start off with?

Good question!

Here are our personal recommendations by HSK level:

HSK 1-2: Mandarin Click, Learn Chinese with Dolores

Mandarin Click has short stories told at a slow speed, with accompanying images, hanzi, pinyin, and optional subtitles in your native language.

The videos are typically 3-4 minutes long.

It’s a great resource for beginners!

Learn Chinese with Dolores consists of short videos explaining different words, grammar points, idioms, and cultural customs.

Dolores is very funny and has hundreds of videos that range from under a minute to two minutes long.

Hanzi and pinyin are included.

HSK 3-4: GoEast Mandarin

For those at the HSK 3-4 level, GoEast Mandarin has great videos that focus on teaching slang that you won’t hear in a classroom.

Their videos are funny and are spoken at a faster speed than Dolores or Mandarin Click’s videos, so they’re great resources for intermediate and advanced learners!

That said, English subtitles and pinyin are included.

HSK 5-6: Happy Chinese

Happy Chinese is a fantastic resource for learners who want to get into dramas but don’t have the right level yet!

Each episode is 15 minutes long, and includes hanzi and English translations (which are particularly helpful when idioms are present).

The show follows the daily life of Susan, an American girl living with her friend Maomao’s family in China.

It’s quite funny and was made for learners, so there are a couple of times each episode where the basics of Chinese are explained.

You can choose to watch or skip these parts depending on your interest in them.

I hope you enjoy my recommendations!

Have you tried Dong Chinese before? What do you think?

Let us know in the comments! 👇

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