Editor’s Note: This Yoyo Chinese Review has been checked for accuracy and updated as of October 1, 2024.
What’s the best way to learn Chinese? Over the past year, our editors have tested and compared the most popular Chinese language learning resources available. Read on to find out what we thought of Yoyo Chinese, one of the more popular language programs, in our Yoyo Chinese review!
Yoyo Chinese Review: Summary
Quality:
Quantity:
Effectiveness:
Practicality:
Price:
Overall Score: 4.2
Pros
- High quality professional video lessons
- Teaches Chinese characters effectively
- A very engaging and likable host
- Brilliant grammar explanations
- Courses are logical and structured very well
- Integrated spaced-repetition flashcards, review quizzes and lesson tracking
- 75+ free video lessons!
Cons
- Uses more English instruction than competitor programs
- Limited to beginner & advanced learners
- No mobile app for on-the-go lessons
- The Chinese character courses only focus on simplified Chinese
- Better programs exist for Chinese writing (like Skritter, for example)
Yoyo Chinese Review: Overview
Yoyo Chinese is continuously updated and improved, and it’s gone through some pretty major changes since when we first wrote this review, however the essence of the program is still the same—high quality video lessons delivered by the very likable host (and founder) Yangyang Cheng.
The program actually consists of 8 unique courses, focusing on both conversational Chinese and the Chinese writing system. These courses are:
- Beginner Conversational: 60 units, roughly equivalent to HSK L1-2
- Chinese Characters: 300 commonly-used characters spread over 24 units, roughly equivalent to HSK L2
- Intermediate Conversational: 60 units, roughly equivalent to HSK L3-4
- Chinese Characters 2: 300 commonly-used characters spread over 24 units, roughly equivalent to HSK L3
- Upper Intermediate Conversational: 48 units, roughly equivalent to HSK L4-5
- Chinese Character Reader: 6 books over 30 units, roughly equivalent to HSK L3
- Chinese Grammar Series: 12 units with a total of 71 lessons
- How to Say in Chinese Series: 10 units with a total of 51 lessons
Each unit focuses on a single topic or aspect of the Chinese language such as ‘Talking About Hobbies’ or ‘Measure Words’. Some units are also designed to help you review what you’ve learned so far in the course.
The Pros: Here’s What We Liked Most About Yoyo Chinese
Pro #1: Makes a ‘Difficult’ Language Easy
The Yoyo Chinese curriculum and language are broken down for complete beginners, using concepts that are easy for English speakers to understand. The lessons often utilize mnemonic devices, songs and even some rather comical raps to help you remember what you’ve learnt! Within a few lessons, you’re already learning usable vocabulary and building basic sentences in Chinese.
Pro #2: Consistently Good Quality Lessons
One of the things we loved most about Yoyo Chinese is that the program makes it feel as though the founder, YangYang Cheng, is our personal Chinese instructor. Every lesson is taught by her and she maintains a high level of engagement and professionalism throughout the entire course.
This level of personal dedication to quality content by the founder is something largely missing from competing Chinese language programs and is one of the many reasons that Yoyo Chinese truly stands out amongst the competition.
Pro #3: It’s Very Motivating
Yangyang is very upbeat and positive, frequently offering praise like “good job” at the end of each lesson. The progress tracker also provides extra motivation, helping you maintain your study streak as you watch your progress bars fill up. Lastly, the study schedule is a great tool, as knowing exactly what to study each day—complete with a checklist—helps you stay focused on your end goal and remain motivated.
Pro #4: Downloadable Resources
Best of all, everything, aside from the videos, can be downloaded. This allows you to study completely on your own time and fit your learning around your busy schedule. You can listen to the audios while driving to work, at the gym, or on a lunch break. The Chinese books can even be uploaded onto your Kindle and you can browse through vocabulary lists in your spare time.
Pro #5: Active FAQs & Social Media Channels
Yoyo Chinese has a BIG YouTube presence with over 375,000 subscribers! Here, they share a lot of free and informative content and consistently upload new videos. In addition to their growing social media channels, they’re also continually growing the course, adding new updates and more content to the blog on a regular basis.
The FAQ section featured in each lesson is also quite active and filled with comments and questions from fellow students that may help you while studying. It’s encouraging to see that the support team responds to almost every message, clarifying any confusion and providing further explanations.
Pro #6: Focus on People and Culture
The lessons are often different from the typical “stand in front of a digital whiteboard and talk” format. Instead, they’re quite immersive and take you out into the streets of China where you can visit a restaurant or supermarket. These interviews give you insight into how the language is used in real-life contexts and how people actually speak. Most of the time, people don’t use complete sentences or perfect grammar, so this exposure is really useful. It’s also an excellent way to test your listening skills.
The Cons: Yoyo Chinese Is Very Good, But Not Perfect
So what’s the catch? It’s true, Yoyo Chinese is a brilliant resource for learning Chinese but it’s not perfect. Here’s a few of the things we didn’t like as much:
Con #1: Simplified Chinese Only
Yoyo Chinese only teaches Simplified Chinese characters and completely ignores the traditional characters that are widely used in places like Hong Kong and Taiwan. So, if you are looking to base your travels or the majority of your Chinese speaking in either of those places, then Yoyo Chinese might not be the language learning program for you.
Con #2: No Mobile Application
Yoyo Chinese is a great program on both a desktop computer and even mobile browser. However, not having its own mobile app is a significant downside, especially since the majority of Yoyo Chinese’s competitors offer great mobile apps that can be easily used on the go.
Con #3: Too Much English!
To learn a language, you really need to be as exposed to it as possible by seeing it repeatedly used in different contexts. Unfortunately, the video lessons contain more English explanations than spoken Chinese which can be quite limiting and even time consuming when you just want to hear Chinese being used. The street interviews are great, but there aren’t many of them. So you may want to supplement the course with outside material if you want to progress faster.
Con #4: The Writing Lessons Could Be Better
There are a number of better options out there for learning how to write in Chinese such as Skritter. Yoyo Chinese simply shows you the stroke order and lets you practice on your own, whereas Skritter provides real-time grading and stroke-level feedback, which is crucial for any pictorial language, especially Chinese.
Con 5: Limited To Beginner/Intermediate Learners
While the quality of Yoyo Chinese’s content is very high, it is also quite limited. Each module contains between 100-200 lessons and those lessons tend to be on the shorter side.
Learning Chinese is no casual affair, and while we believe Yoyo Chinese is great for beginner and intermediate learners of the language, the program does not contain materials that will help someone become completely fluent. You’ll need to supplement the course with extra materials and look elsewhere for an advanced course.
The Main Dashboard & Course Layout
The new update brought about a new sleek facelift to the main dashboard and how everything is laid out. On the top you’ll find Courses, Mastery, Blog, Resources, and Plans.
Clicking on ‘Courses’ will take you straight to all of the lessons. You can toggle between the 8 courses and move between all the levels. Completed lessons will be shown with a green ring around them.
The ‘Mastery’ option grants you access to additional learning resources such as flashcards, quizzes, a Pinyin chart, and the download center where you can find all downloadable PDFs and so much more.
The interactive Pinyin chart is incredibly useful for practicing pronunciation. It displays all the possible sounds in the Chinese language, including the tones. Yangyang has even added videos demonstrating how to pronounce each sound correctly, and you can listen to each sound by hovering your mouse over it. It’s something that we found ourselves returning to time and time again.
The download center is an absolute treasure trove of content! Here, you’ll find all the lesson notes (for every course), complete study schedules, vocabulary glossaries, all the audio files, quiz worksheets, ebooks, HSK word lists, Chinese resume templates, infographics— the list goes on.
So, what are the lessons like?
Every lesson follows the same basic format: First, you have the video, where Yangyang usually reviews what you’ve learned in previous lessons and then builds upon it by introducing new vocabulary, explaining the grammar, and providing many examples. These videos are very engaging and you can easily find yourself binge watching your way through them with all the interesting examples and cultural cues.
Underneath the video, you’ll find a full list of all the vocabulary and phrases from the lesson. You can click on each one independently to listen to the audio again. You can also toggle on/off the English, Chinese characters or Pinyin. Plus, you can select either a fast or slow pronunciation.
There are 3 ways to practice what you’ve learnt in the lesson: First, you can click ‘Practice’, which brings up the flashcards onto the screen for you to test yourself and record your own pronunciation. Second, you can listen to the audio which prompts you to repeat the words and phrases in the lesson.
And finally, there’s the FAQ section which is sometimes very useful since you’ll often find other students have exactly the same questions as you, and the support team is very quick to clarify them. Plus you can ask you’re own.
Once you feel you are ready, you can take the lesson quiz. You’ll be guided through 10 questions, asking you to translate specific phrases/words, write down what you hear, put the words into the correct order etc. It’s not necessary to get 10/10 to continue; however if you get anything below around 7 they’ll recommend you review the materials and try again.
The lesson quiz has a variety of diffent question styles.
Who Is Yoyo Chinese For?
Those who’ll benefit the most from Yoyo Chinese are those who:
- are serious about learning Chinese and can dedicate time each day to completing the lessons
- are independent learners who can study in their own time
- plan to travel or work/study in China
- are looking for an all-in-one structured beginners course for learning the Chinese language
Who Is Yoyo Chinese NOT For?
Those who might not find Yoyo Chinese as helpful and may want to look elsewhere are those who:
- are already at an intermediate / upper-intermediate level in Chinese
- lack the motivation or time to maintain a daily study habit
- prefer a traditional classroom environment over an online learning platform
Yoyo Chinese Alternatives
Chinese is indeed a challenging language, and it’s not something you can pick up just by passively watching Chinese TV. It requires dedication, commitment, and a lot of memorization.
Thankfully, there are many different options out there. When compared to competitors such as Rocket Chinese and FluentU, we believe Yoyo Chinese stands as the strongest competitor for self-study of Chinese.
ChineseClass101 Is Our Favorite Alternative
The one program we’ve tried that really competes is ChineseClass101. That said, whichever one you choose will really depend on your learning style preferences and which personality you want teaching you Chinese. We’d recommend reading our review of ChineseClass101 and signing up for both free trials to see which one you like more.
Yoyo Chinese Pricing
Yoyo Chinese used to be only available for a one-time fee, which restricted you to a specific course (unless you bought them all). However, you’ll be glad to know that they now offer a subscription plan so you don’t have to make that big commitment from the very start. Best of all, you’ll receive 40% discount when you choose the monthly subscription plan. The subscription plan options offered include:
- Free: Full access to Pinyin chart, 75+ videos, 750+ quiz questions, and dozens of downloads
- $8.99/month: Everything in the free plan, 1000+ video lessons, and downloadable notes
- $11.99/month: Access to all courses, 1000+ video lessons, 10,000+ quiz questions, and 25,000+ flashcards
- $299/One-time Payment: Lifetime access to all lessons with no recurring payments
Yoyo Chinese Review: Conclusion
We loved reviewing this product and are more than confident that Yoyo Chinese will help make you a better Chinese speaker from day one. YangYang’s over 15 years of experience being a Chinese language instructor is well-reflected in this product. We believe that the combination of lessons focusing on both Chinese grammar and Simplified Chinese characters will make you a very capable and adept Chinese speaker in a short period of time!
Michael has lived in Japan on and off for almost 10 years. He loves studying Japanese, and is currently working on going from N2 to N1 on the JLPT.
