Chinese Tips

Chinese Tips (中文通 in the app) teaches the vocabulary of HSK 3.0 — the words themselves, and what to do with them. WHAT IS INSIDE Seven story worlds, one for each HSK level and two for Level 6: a teahouse, a campus and its residence, a creative park, a riverside agency, a tech incubator, a biopharma centre and a green-energy hub, each with its own map and its own people. 479 story lessons. Each opens with a scene of about twelve lines, with pinyin over every character and a tap to hear any line, and its new words come from that scene, each with a word card. Then the words go through eight stages: read the pinyin, match word to meaning, choose the English, find the word in a sentence, build the sentence, fill the gap, explain the meaning in Chinese, and write from memory. 听写 — spelling. The word is spoken, and it is written character by character on a 米字格 grid, stroke by stroke, the way it is taught in school. Words written wrongly go to a 错词本 and come back. 默写 — dictation from memory. A whole sentence, six activities deep: hear it, put it back together, fill one gap, fill every gap from the sound alone, write it with the sound to lean on, then write it from memory with nothing to lean on. 口试 — reading aloud. Model passages with pinyin above every character, tap any line to hear it, tap a highlighted word for its meaning, and slow the reading down when it goes too fast. 模拟 — mock exam papers, listed by HSK level. Each paper takes the shape of the real sitting at its level: 60 to 82 questions, 55 to 120 minutes, listening then reading then writing. A practice switch turns off the clock, marks each question as you go, and lets you sit a paper as often as you like. 汉字 — character handwriting. Search 9,546 characters by pinyin or by character, and write any of them stroke by stroke on a 米字格 grid, with the stroke order drawn out. Free, with no account, always. A word book lists every story world's words in lesson order and shows which are learned; 我的 shows the stamps each word has earned and the people met in the stories. WHAT IT COSTS Everything is free for the first two weeks after you open the app. After that, the first ten lessons of every HSK level stay free — with the read-aloud passages of their themes — and so do 听写 and the whole 汉字 character practice, for good. No account and no payment details are needed for any of it. A subscription opens the rest: every lesson, dictation sentence and passage in the catalogue. Cancel any time; access runs to the end of the period already paid for. There are no adverts and no third-party trackers. Progress is stored on the device, and follows you to other devices when you sign in with Google. WHO IT IS FOR Learners working through HSK 3.0, Levels 1 to 6 — school students, adult learners, and anyone preparing for the exam. Hints sit beside the Chinese in your own language, 12 to choose from, so a parent who does not read Chinese can follow along. They step back at the higher levels, and you can pin them on or off in Settings.