Completely neglects to teach the different tones – Chineasy Cards Review

I learned Mandarin in college and wanted to see what this app had to offer. I don’t think that this would be a very good way to learn Chinese if you want to do a good job. The illustrations look nice but don’t do much else. In terms of learning, this is all straight memorization. There’s no explanation or intro for pinyin. Learning the tones is very important but there’s no mention of that. You see the word, hear the pronunciation, and can see the pinyin. But they don’t explain what the marks mean on the letters. There are some questions where you listen to an audio clip where they say a word or phrase and they ask you which is the correct pinyin. Sometimes they have two options with the same spelling and the only difference is in the tones. But that was never taught. If you remembered what the mark looked like and which letter it was on, you would guess correctly, but that’s just memorization, not true understanding.
Review by JuIieIsME on Chineasy Cards.