mousemic

ChineseSkill www.chinese-skill.com recommended by Benny the Irish Polyglot, of fluent in 3 months. The app is very useful and entertaining, it does do a good job at incorporating most of the fundamental language skills, namely reading, writing, and listening (to my knowledge, speaking is not an aspect of this program yet). New words are presented with photos, audio, and Chinese characters, pinyin or both, depending on user preference. Chinese grammar is also introduced within the app, and to a great extent. One fault, in my opinion, is that new grammatical patterns just appear in sentences. I would prefer to have maybe one screen explaining the grammar either at the beginning or end of the session for clarification. I already speak some Mandarin so the grammar I knew was simple, but new grammar was a bit hard to understand. I do believe that this app is a helpful tool for learners of Mandarin Chinese and helps to fill the gap of materials for learners of non-European languages. With the few improvements I noted, I would use this app frequently.