Top 10 Websites to Learn Chinese For Free

Many vistors asked me about where to learn Chinese online, and here I gathered what I consider the best free resources for learning Chinese. You could learn Mandarin very effectively for free with only these resources.

1. Chinese-tools.com

Chinese-tools.com offers basic Chinese courses and useful language tools, you can learn Chinese pinyin, slang, calligraphy, and some other Chinese basic knowledge or skills, and the site also owns articles about traditional China, travel, study, news, business.

2. CCTV Learn Chinese

The site offers cool and free Mandarin video lessons on CCTV. Different courses are prepared from beginners to intermediate and advanced learners. Its “Survival Chinese” and “Happy Chinese” series videos are very good resources to learn Chinese.

3. Chinese Learner

Chineselearner.com offers flash videos about Chinese pronunciation, Chinese writing,  Chinese reading, Chinese grammar, Chinese songs. All these lessons are free.

4. Clear Chinese

Clear Chinese is a free Mandarin Chinese online course including 15 units. Each has easy-to-understand dialogues with useful phrases. Each sentence in this course is written in Chinese characters, pinyin and English. Audio is also available for each sentence.

5. CRI English

The Learn Chinese channel on China Radio International (CRI) is a cool place to find some useful text and video resources. The lessons here are well made and Chinese learning videos, audios and characters and all available.

6. BBC Chinese 

BBC Chinese offers you some mini-guides for Chinese pinyin, tones and characters, you can watch some videos of real conversations, take some tests or play some funny character games there.

7. Study More Chinese

Study More Chinese is a forum for Mandarin learner. It allows people to post questions, interesting Chinese-learning pictures and other useful resources. Users can create profiles and interact with each other and learn together.

8. Chinese Forums

This website is actually a fantastic community. It’s got a lot of very active users, including native Chinese speakers who will rapidly tackle any question you post.

9. Free Chinese Lessons

Starting with the very basic things, Free Chinese Lessons is open to anyone with no basic Chinese. Each course has instruction on phrase pronunciation, character recognition, and writing.

10. Lao Wai Chinese 

Lao Wai Chinese, run by Albert Wolfe, offers Chinese learners a comprehensive guide to learn Chinese with audio. The author will give your his experience on how to learn Chinese and some learning tips.

Other Chinese learning websites: 

The Chairman’s Bao

the chairmans bao

The Chairman’s Bao is an online simplified Chinese newspaper, written for those learning Mandarin. As well as daily bite-sized HSK-leveled news content, the website and synchronized apps also play host to a variety of resources to aid students, such as a live dictionary, intelligent flashcard system and bookmark feature. Each article also comes equipped with audio, grammatical structures, keywords and idioms – in essence, everything you would expect from a textbook but much more!

16 Responses

  1. Yuliang says:

    Are you Looking for the best way to learn Chinese vocabulary?
    Learn more than 8000 Essential Chinese Vocabulary to speed up your Chinese level.
    Here’s how you can efficiently learn Chinese words and retain them in your memory by category. If you want to learn from lifestyle related vocabulary, Just go to learn from lifestyle words.

    Learn more than 8000 Essential Chinese Vocabulary to speed up your Chinese conversation. We’ve created this to be a helpful Chinese directory with category. Here is a comprehensive list of all the Chinese vocabulary for HSK, YCT, business Chinese, daily used words, etc. This app is designed for rapid learning of Chinese vocabulary and phrases.

    Learn Chinese Vocabulary Free App’s intended for helping you learn, memorize and review Chinese words & phrases. This app’s contains over 8000 commonly used words arranged thematically.

    https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.immfytech.chinesevocabulary

  2. tonywang says:

    Chinese Bridge is a totally free Chinese learning website http://www.echinesebridge.com/

  3. Patricia says:

    Many thanks to the author of the site chinawhisper for the list of sites for free learning Chinese. Your list was compiled a long time ago, I want to refresh your list of sites and add one more. Website – https://studyblog.org . It has a “Chinese language” section, and this section has a lot of free information to learn Chinese for free. All about the HSK exam, HSK Vocabulary List, Download HSK tests, Chinese vocabulary by topics, Chinese tongue twisters and Wishes in Chinese. I think it will be useful information for people learning Chinese.

  4. i think tprs Chinese is the best way learn chinese http://www.tprsc.com

  5. Dariya says:

    Great article, thanks for putting this together! You have come up with some interesting suggestions, like The Chairman’s Bao. I’d like to add a couple more free online resources for learning Chinese that I have been using recently. The first one is Chinese Language Stack Exchange. This is my favorite Chinese learning community so far. There are many native speakers and second language learners answering questions, and the voting process helps to weed out the good answers from the bad. Another one is https://www.hackchinese.com/blog. I love this blog as they share really helpful practical tips for Chinese learners.

  6. Artur says:

    Hello, I also recommend a very good site for preparing for the Chinese HSK exam. A lot of tests and a good base for preparation. Everything is absolutely free and there is no advertising. The site is called https://my-hsk.com

  7. Jack says:

    When I began, I was pretty overwhelmed with all the free resources out there. One after another I was kinda hoarding different sites and apps, blogs, etc, all were helpful but I didn’t get a full grasp on the language until I started one-on-one classes. It’s one thing to just intake content, but another to have a native Chinese speaker help you learn how to organize all the content into a fluid stream. If anyone’s curious, highly recommend Omeida, omeidachinese.com

  8. lele says:

    i see this video with 2 women on it. I believe its helpful for you to learn chinese

  9. Kate says:

    Ninchanese.com has been the most fun so far.

  10. Tim says:

    You can start from learning HSK. Ten min a day is good enough. I learn Chinese at : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCQmKxqC9h8OknMgw4_Jsqw/featured?view_as=subscriber

  11. cnpinyin.com says:

    Introducing a great free website for learning Chinese cnpinyin.com. Smart, interactive and fastest way to learn Chinese Language. cnpinyin.com is the choice of all foreigners in China to learn Chinese.

  12. Lisa says:

    Good article. I often ask questions in Chinese Forums. It can help answer many questions about Chinese learning. Very useful. I feel you can add one more site: http://www.echineselearning.com. Lots of Chinese test resources and free ebooks resources can be download there!

  13. watsondan825 says:

    You made my work very easy thank you. I w as really confused which site to get help from to learn Chinese. The sites you recommended was also good.

Leave a Reply to Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *