My Complete ChineseClass101 Review: Great for Beginners, but Not Challenging Enough for Higher Levels

It’s been floating around on language learning forums that ChineseClass101 is pretty good in terms of course flexibility and catering to all levels of learners, so I thought I’d give it a go.

If you’ve been curious about the program, I hope my experience with it will help you decide if ChineseClass101 is the right fit for you.

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What Is ChineseClass101?

ChineseClass101 is one of the many courses from Innovative Language, which you might recognize as the creators of the Pod101 series. The program uses short audio and video lessons based on real Chinese conversations. These dialogues are relatable to the learner so the content can be applied immediately to everyday life.

With audio clips ranging between 10 to 15 minutes, the lessons are the perfect amount of time to keep you engaged. Although the program is based primarily on these clips, there are also dedicated lessons on common phrases, grammar, reading, writing and culture to offer you a well-rounded Mandarin learning experience.

ChineseClass101 Features

ChineseClass101 has a lot to offer, so let’s go over all the features before making any evaluations or comparisons to other well-known learning programs.

Lesson Features

Above is a sample audio lesson. Here are all the lesson components:

• Various audio tracks: The lesson itself is one track that includes the dialogue and review. These can be downloaded separately as three audio tracks. On the platform, you can also listen to the dialogue line-by-line, as well as the native recordings of vocabulary and sample sentences.
• Slow audio playback: This feature lets you listen to pronunciation slowly and carefully, making it easier for you to pronounce words correctly.
• Voice recording tool: This feature allows you to compare your pronunciation with native speaker audio.
• Vocabulary: This section compiles all the main vocab from the lesson and sample sentences.
• Lesson Notes: This is where you’ll find any grammar and cultural notes and other information relevant to the lesson.
• Lesson Transcript: The lesson is downloadable in PDF form.
• Grammar: Not every lesson has this, but if it’s grammar-focused, it will have a “Grammar” section that will break down each point.

Just be aware that the availability of each feature depends on the subscription plan you sign up for. I signed up for the free trial right away so I was able to access all the premium features. I recommend the free trial as a way to play around with all the components and decide if it’s worth continuing your subscription.

Now, let’s talk about the mobile app. The app offers a slightly different experience from the web program.

The key differences include:

• The Lesson Audio, Dialogue and Review show up as three separate tracks.
• The Vocabulary section only contains the terms and audio pronunciation.
• The Expansion section contains sample sentences using the lesson vocabulary.
• The Hanzi Close Up section is a PDF worksheet for handwriting practice.
• There’s no voice recording tool on the app.

Additional Program Features

There are tons of other functions to help you study what you learn in your lessons.

• Various vocab tools: This includes their Word Lists, Word Bank, Flashcards, Common Words and Key Phrases so there are plenty of ways to reinforce your vocab knowledge.
• Online Dictionary: The handy search function is on the top navigation bar. Results will contain lessons and dictionary definitions.
• Grammar Bank: This is a compilation of all grammar points covered in lessons.
• Word of the Day: This is a separate email service that you can sign up for right at the beginning.
• Audiobooks: These can be bought at their online store and are super handy for learning on your commute.
• My Teacher: Premium PLUS users can get a personalized study plan, assignments and corrections from a tutor via messenger.
• Innovative Languages app: If you want to learn on the go, the Innovative Languages app is the answer. But if you have a choice between the app and the web program, choose the latter. The app has limited functionality in comparison.

How ChineseClass101 Works

First things first, you’ll need to sign up with your email. Once you’ve registered for an account, you’ll be asked about the Word of the Day email service, then their $1 promotion and finally, your proficiency level.

Levels, Series and Seasons

Lessons are divided into levels, series and seasons. In the beginning, I didn’t understand what the difference was between series and seasons, so let me just break it down for you.

There are five proficiency levels and a bonus:

• Absolute Beginner
• Beginner
• Intermediate
• Upper Intermediate
• Advanced
• Bonus

The Upper Intermediate and Advanced levels align with HSK 4 and 5 respectively. You can change your level at any time so you can move up or down a level if you need to.

Moving onto series.

Series are the subcategories of levels, further pinpointing your proficiency. For example, the Beginner level is divided into series like Lower Beginner, Beginner and Upper Beginner.

Seasons are sets of lessons under series. The seasons average around 25 lessons and are grouped together according to a theme. There are about 1,300 lessons in total.

Guided Learning with the Dashboard

There are essentially two routes you can take. If you’re not really looking for a particular learning “pathway” and just need a general Mandarin language course, then you can start off with the Dashboard.

Once you get to the Dashboard, you’ll already see a series under “My Pathways” and the very first lesson in that series (or whichever one comes next) will show up. Once you finish a series, the following series with higher difficulty will be added to “My Pathways.”

Customized Learning by Browsing Lessons

If you have an idea of what you want to learn or don’t necessarily want to study what’s been suggested on your Dashboard, the alternative is to manually search for lessons. You can filter your search by Audio Lessons or Video Lessons.

To add a pathway, just click on the course and click “Follow.”

Mandarin Progression

Before your first lesson, you’ll be asked to take a diagnostic or assessment according to your chosen level to get a better gauge of your proficiency.

If you’re learning Mandarin from scratch, you’ll begin your journey by learning pinyin first, then move on to an introduction to Hanzi. From there, you can choose to take the Simplified or Traditional route. Both versions are shown in lessons, but you can choose to hide the Traditional Hanzi.

If you sign up for one of the Premium plans, you can also get a better idea of your Mandarin progress with multiple-choice quizzes. For PLUS users, you also get handwritten assessments.

To see how you’re doing overall, you can view your Dashboard. There you’ll find an overview, including the number of lessons completed, flashcards reviewed and hours studied. It also displays the percentage studied of your current seasons, though you’ll need to make sure to mark lessons as complete so everything is up to date.

What I Love About ChineseClass101

Emphasis on Pronunciation

Generally, podcast lessons focus on improving your listening skills, but I was pleasantly surprised to see all the features dedicated to pronunciation practice.

As you might have experienced already, Chinese pronunciation is probably the biggest hurdle for native English speakers. Thus, extras like slow playback, review tracks perfect for shadow practice and voice recording are extremely useful for refining your accent and pronunciation.

Though I didn’t personally try it, the “My Teacher” chat also seems like a safe space to practice your pronunciation with a native speaker.

Flexible Course Structure

I find that a lot of online Chinese courses follow a linear path. It isn’t a bad thing—it’s definitely helpful for those who require structure in their studies.

ChineseClass101 has that structure too, but I do love that I can either go with their flow or pick up another season or two according to my interests and curiosities.

Because I’ve studied Mandarin in a formal classroom setting in the past, I tend to go for online programs that offer a sense of autonomy. ChineseClass101 may not be as flexible as other options, but I appreciate the control you have over what topics you study.

Offline Studying Available

Not only is it possible to study on the go, but ChineseClass101 also makes it convenient for you to study without an internet connection. Whether you want a copy of all the audio files, a printed version of lesson notes that you can scribble on or PDF worksheets, it offers a wealth of resources that make it easy to study on and offline.

Tons of Vocabulary Practice

From the spaced repetition flashcards to the Word Bank and vocab slideshows, there are so many ways you can practice new terms. It’s extra tools like these that help you interact with and reinforce the lesson content, and therefore remember new words in the long run.

Let’s not forget the fact that many of these tools are accessible with a free lifetime account, making it that much more convenient to build your vocabulary without breaking the bank.

What I Don’t Love About ChineseClass101

Limited Feedback

One of the biggest things missing from ChineseClass101 is feedback from native speakers, which is really important if you want to be able to speak in Chinese.

You can ask questions in the comments section of lessons, but it’s unfortunate that there are limited communication channels. It would also be nice to connect with fellow learners.

Sure, you can still track your progress without a teacher, namely with the multiple-choice quizzes. They indicate what areas you need to improve, but you’d benefit more from teacher corrections than from computer-generated results. As mentioned earlier, teacher communication is only available through the most expensive subscription plan.

While there’s no doubt that the Premium PLUS subscription is an affordable option for a tutor, I can’t justify the cost in terms of the feedback offered. And as for the personalized program, the teacher just assigns you learning pathways that you could have figured out on your own.

Also, it can take a couple of days before you get any response from your teacher. For that reason, I’d rather pay an hourly fee on a tutoring app for immediate feedback than have to wait for a response that I’ll probably receive outside of my study schedule.

Lack of Writing Practice

While there are writing lessons and extra resources to help you with handwriting, stroke order and whatnot, I feel like ChineseClass101 is still lacking in the development of writing skills.

Yes, there are some handwriting lessons and assessments, but those particular assessments are only accessible to Premium PLUS members, which is extremely limiting.

Mandarin Chinese is a character-based language with a vastly different writing structure from English, making reading and writing just as important as listening and speaking in terms of overall fluency. As a tactile learner, I remember better by doing. I remember characters better by writing them. By writing, I essentially improve my reading comprehension.

I might be nitpicking over here. ChineseClass101 is a podcast-learning program, ergo the focus is more so on listening. But if you’re going to market yourself as an app that covers all language skills, there needs to be a balance between all of them.

Too Much Spoken English in Lessons

To learn Chinese (or any other target language, for that matter), you need to constantly be pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. That said, the comfort zone is English, assuming you’re either native or fluent in it.

Even with intermediate and advanced levels, the lessons weren’t as challenging as I needed them to be, meaning there was just way too much English spoken. I understand the English usage in the beginning, but as you progress, the amount of English needs to be minimized.

The lesson notes are mostly in English anyway, so why can’t there be more Mandarin in the audio portion? It’s just a missed opportunity for more advanced listening practice. At some point, you have to be fully immersed in the language to progress, which many existing programs already recognize.

Too Many Emails

It’s good to have reminders for studying Chinese to hold yourself accountable, especially on days you’re feeling really unmotivated. But when you receive up to five emails a day, it can definitely have the opposite effect. It did for me, at least.

Obviously, you can change your settings so that you don’t have to be part of their blatant email marketing scheme. It’s just that these emails are excessive and totally unnecessary to begin with.

Even the Word of the Day email service isn’t worth signing up for. The emails show a term with a picture to match but no pinyin, which could be frustrating for beginners who need pronunciation clues. The email does include links to the website’s audio dictionary, though the least they could do is include pinyin.

I get that this is meant to motivate you to study on the website, but it definitely manifests more as a marketing tactic than anything.

ChineseClass101 Plans and Pricing

Earlier, I mentioned that some features are limited to certain plans, so let’s go over all of them. They do have sales pretty often, but I’ll only be giving their regular prices, which are pretty affordable anyway. There’s also a seven-day free trial and a 60-day refund policy.

There are three membership options: Basic, Premium and Premium PLUS.

The Basic plan starts at $4 a month. It gives you access to all lessons and some of the built-in learning tools. You’ll also have access to many of the vocab tools, except for 2,000 Most Common Words, Word Bank and Flashcards.

The Premium plan starts at $10 a month. It grants you access to all the lesson tools, such as multiple-choice quizzes, Line-by-Line audio and the voice recording tool. You can also use all the additional program functions (except My Teacher). As for the vocab tools specifically, you’ll be able to use the Word Bank, 2,000 Chinese Core Words and Phrases and create custom word lists.

The Premium PLUS plan starts at $23 a month. If you sign up for Premium PLUS, you can take advantage of the $1 promotion instead of the free trial, where you only have to pay a buck for the first month. Other than Premium PLUS access, you also get exclusive freebies such as a free product download from their store and a bundle of 60 beginner audio lessons and worksheets. There’s also a 7-Day Fluency Fast Course that you won’t find anywhere else on the site.

There’s a considerable jump in price from the Premium to Premium PLUS plans because of My Teacher, which includes the following:

• A thorough assessment placement test
• A personalized program
• A messenger for feedback, chatting and sharing files
• Assignments and corrections
• Graded assessments
• A certificate of completion

There is a free lifetime account, but you can only view the first three lessons of every series. A few of the vocabulary tools (Chinese Dictionary, Word Lists, Word of the Day, 100 Common Words and Key Phrases) come for free as well.

Of course, you don’t have to sign up at all and can just listen to the ChineseClass101 podcast on Apple Podcasts. Or subscribe to their YouTube channel.

ChineseClass101 Alternatives

Yoyo Chinese

Yoyo Chinese is a video-based Chinese course founded and hosted by Yang Yang, a native speaker from China.

They offer eight courses in total and promise to take you to a conversational level in as little as six months.

There are three conversation-focused courses—Beginner Conversational, Intermediate Conversational and Upper Intermediate Conversational. Three character courses: Chinese Characters, Chinese Characters II and Chinese Character Reader. And two extra courses with 50-70 video lessons each: Chinese Grammar Series and How to Say in Chinese.

The courses are divided into six levels, which are broken down into units. Each unit has about two to five lessons. The lessons start with a video that explains the new vocabulary and grammar. Each lesson comes with a dialogue transcript, flashcards, downloadable PDF lesson notes, audio review and an FAQ section where you can ask questions and get a response from a staff member.

FluentU

FluentU takes a heavy immersion-based approach to teach you Chinese, from the very beginner to the advanced level.

Like ChineseClass101, FluentU has playlists in different levels, but you can also browse videos based on what catches your eye by selecting your level and choosing from the huge collection. The videos are authentic, meaning they’re what native speakers would actually watch—think movie trailers, music videos, commercials, TV show clips, inspiring talks and more.

Each video comes with interactive subtitles, meaning you can click on words you don’t know. This instantly brings up the word’s definition, pronunciation and example sentences. Plus, you can add it to a flashcard deck.

FluentU also has a video-based dictionary feature that lets you look up any word. Not only will you get its translation, but also a list of curated videos that use the word in context.

Pimsleur

Pimsleur is an audio-only course and like FluentU, takes a much more immersion-based approach than ChineseClass101.

There are five levels total with 30 lessons in each. Each lesson is 30 minutes and is based on a conversation you hear in the beginning. Even from the very first lesson, you’ll start by hearing an exchange between two native speakers. You won’t understand anything at first—but as the lesson goes on, the hosts prompt you to repeat after the native speakers to learn new words and grammar points naturally.

Within a few minutes, you’ll find yourself participating in “conversations” with the hosts, as they ask you questions you must respond to in Chinese and ask you if you remember how to say certain phrases. By the end of the lesson, you’ll understand the entire conversation you heard in the beginning.

You can read our full Pimsleur review here.

So Is ChineseClass 101 Worth It?

For the most part, yes, I recommend ChineseClass101. But it really depends on the kind of outcomes you’re looking for.

It’s best for beginners, travelers, working on pronunciation and building your vocabulary.

But I’d say it’s not for you if you’re planning on taking the HSK or already have an upper intermediate or advanced level.

ChineseClass101 is suitable for various types of learners. At the same time, it might not work well under certain circumstances. When you compare the website to this review, you’ll notice that they do exaggerate the services they offer, so I don’t see the Premium PLUS subscription being totally worth the extra money. However, a Premium account is definitely worth considering.

Personally, I don’t think I’m a good fit for the program. While the lessons were enjoyable, I didn’t feel challenged enough with all the English that was included. As a comprehensive online language course, I expect a better balance between all the Chinese language skills.

Overall, I still do believe that this is an excellent program for beginners though.