How to Use Mandarin Mosaic

Mandarin Mosaic teaches Chinese through sentences. It keeps track of every word you know, picks sentences with just one new word where it can, and brings words back for review before you forget them. This guide walks through the whole app, from your first lesson to the settings worth changing, using the same screen and button names you'll see on your phone.

Guides to each feature

Each of these goes into one part of the app in more detail. The rest of this page is the tour of everything.

On this page:

• Getting started
• The Home screen
• How a lesson works
• Spaced repetition and Review Lessons
• Focus Words
• Your own packs and sentences
• Importing Anki decks, CSV and text files
• Chinese Articles and Listen Later
• Sentence Generator
• Your Vocabulary and Stats
• Settings worth knowing
• Sync, the free plan and Premium
• A simple daily routine

Getting started

Install the app

Mandarin Mosaic is a phone app for iPhone (App Store) and Android (Google Play). You can use it for free on the free plan, and Premium starts with a free month (see the free plan and Premium below).

Set up your level

The first time you open the app, you take a short lesson before you make an account. Tap Start your first lesson (or Log in if you already have an account), then answer two questions:

1. Which characters do you want to learn? Simplified (used in mainland China and Singapore) or Traditional (used in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau). If you're not sure, our post on Traditional characters may help. You can switch later in Settings.
2. How much Chinese do you know? New to Chinese, Elementary (HSK 1–2) or Intermediate (HSK 3+). The lesson is pitched to match: 8 sentences, each with one new word blanked out.

When you finish, First lesson done shows how you did and the words you met. Tap Create free account to keep them. A few more steps then finish the setup:

1. Choose your voice. Tap any voice to hear how it sounds. Every sentence and word is read aloud in the voice you pick, and you can change it any time in Settings.
2. Your Chinese level. Now choose an exact level: No Chinese, Beginner 1 (HSK 1), Beginner 2 (HSK 2), Intermediate 1 (HSK 3), Intermediate 2 (HSK 4), Advanced 1 (HSK 5) or Advanced 2 (HSK 6). Each level shows three sample words, so you can check which ones you can read; our guide to the HSK tests explains the levels. The app marks the common words up to that level as known, so your sentences are pitched at the right difficulty. As the app itself says: not sure? Pick one level lower.

A quick tutorial then shows you tapping a word to see its meaning, filling in a blank, and how the app tracks the words you know. At the end, You're all set recommends a pack for your level (for example "HSK3 Examples", or "Chinese Beginner Super Basics" if you chose No Chinese), with a Start first lesson button. As the app says, your first lesson takes about 2 minutes.

Start your first lesson

Start first lesson opens the recommended pack. After that, from the Home screen, tap Lessons, choose a course (such as HSK Lessons) and tap a pack. The Lesson preview screen lists the words that will appear as blanks, each marked New or Revision, so you can look them over before you begin. Tap Start lesson to begin. A lesson has up to 10 sentences.

The Home screen

Everything in the app starts from Home. The icons at the top open your Account and Settings. Below them, a Continue where you left off card has a Start lesson button for your current pack, with your streak, known words and words to review underneath. The rest is grouped into two sections:

Below these is the Your Referrals banner. If you share your referral link and someone subscribes to Premium through it, you earn 20% of every Premium payment they make, renewals included, and can request a PayPal payout once your balance is £10 or more (at the time of writing).

How a lesson works

Each lesson screen shows one Chinese sentence with a word blanked out. Any other word that's new to you is underlined in blue. You can:

• Tap any word to open its definition in a sheet that slides up: pinyin, meanings, HSK level, an audio button, your progress on the word and a Learning / Known switch. Tap Add to Focus Words to add it to Focus Words. If you don't like a definition, you can write your own.
• Tap English if you need the translation before answering. It replaces the pinyin under the sentence.
• Choose the missing word from the four choices under the sentence, then tap Check.

After you answer, a panel at the bottom shows Correct or Not quite with the right word and its meaning, and the English appears under the sentence. The speaker button plays the sentence, and Continue moves you on. The menu button (the three dots) at the top of the lesson has Rate this sentence (see it more often, or never again), Report a problem (please use it if anything looks wrong) and, in your own packs, Edit sentence. Below those are Change voice, Chinese font, Show pinyin or Hide pinyin, and Help.

When the lesson ends, the Lesson finished screen shows how many you got right first time, your streak (once it's two days or more), how many sentences you did and how many words were new or revised, your total of known words (with a chart when it has changed), and lists of the new and revised words (tap one for its meaning). Next lesson starts another from the same pack. One sentence a day is enough to keep your streak going.

The HSK packs run from Chinese Beginner Super Basics to New HSK 7–9. Which packs there are, how to choose a level and how each pack moves on to the New HSK words are in how HSK lessons work.

Learning and Known: keeping your vocabulary accurate

Mandarin Mosaic chooses sentences based on the words it thinks you know, so the more accurate your vocabulary, the better your lessons. Words become known in two ways:

• Automatically: after a set number of correct answers on a new word (three by default). You can change this anywhere from 1 to 10 under Settings, Guesses to mark as known. The word's sheet shows how far it has got under Your progress, for example "1 of 3 correct answers".
• By hand: tap the word and switch it to Known. Switch it back to Learning if you realise you've forgotten a word.

Fill in the blanks or Free reading

The default lesson type is Fill in the blanks, a cloze test that hides one word for you to recall. The app blanks the new word, or the word due for review, so you practise the word the sentence was chosen for. If you prefer to simply read, switch Lesson type to Free reading in Settings, which shows the full sentence. There's more on how blanks are chosen in how cloze tests work in Mandarin Mosaic.

Spaced repetition and Review Lessons

Every word you know has a review date. Each time you answer it correctly, the gap before its next review grows; get a known word wrong and it comes back sooner. Simply seeing a known word in a sentence also counts as a light review. This is spaced repetition, and it's the most efficient way to fight the forgetting curve.

Words that are due appear under Lessons, then Review Lessons, then Words to review, which shows how many are waiting. Each review sentence features one word that's due, and the sentences can come from any of your packs, so you'll rarely meet new words there. Try to clear your reviews before learning new words.

Tap the three dots on Words to review to open the Word Review settings:

• Categories and Minimum difficulty: limit reviews to certain pack categories, or skip easy words below an HSK level.
• Stick to lessons I've started: only use sentences from packs you've opened (on by default for new accounts).
• SRS speed: how soon words come back after you get them right.
• Daily limit: cap the number of reviews a day, so you can finish and stop.
• Scheduling method: the app's own Default scheduler, or SM-2, FSRS, HLR / DASH, SSP-MMC or Leitner if you have a favourite.
• Review order: which due words come first (Oldest first, Random, Word frequency, Hardest first or Newest first).
• Rate answer difficulty: after a correct answer on a known word, rate it Again, Hard, Good or Easy, as in Anki.

For more detail, read how spaced repetition works in Mandarin Mosaic.

Focus Words

Focus Words are words you want extra practice with, whether you already know them or not. Add them from the Focus Words screen on Home (Add focus word), or tap Add to Focus Words in any word's definition during a lesson.

Your focus words get their own lesson under Review Lessons, then Focus Words, or from Practise focus words on the Focus Words screen. Each sentence features one of them, drawn from every pack you have. They're also given priority in HSK pack lessons and in Words to review. If no sentence contains one of your focus words, add your own sentence with it to a custom pack. The free plan allows 10 focus words. See how focus words work for more.

Your own packs and sentences

Every built-in sentence has been verified by a native speaker, but the real power of sentence mining is adding sentences that matter to you. To make a pack, go to Lessons, then Your Packs, tap Add pack and choose Create a new pack. Give it a name and, if you like, a description and a cover picture (Choose image).

To add sentences, tap the three dots on your pack and choose Add sentence:

• Type or paste the sentence into English or Mandarin, then tap Translate to fill in the other.
• Choose the blank lets you choose which word is blanked in lessons. Leave it and the app chooses each time the sentence comes up.
• Fix word breaks corrects the split if the app has divided the Chinese into words the wrong way.
• Choose image finds a small picture for the sentence.

Tap Save sentence, and the form clears for the next one.

Tap a pack to start a lesson from it, exactly like a built-in pack. The free plan allows one custom pack and 10 custom sentences. Our guide to custom packs and your own sentences covers every option, from saving sentences as you read to importing words you already know.

Importing Anki decks, CSV and text files

If you already have sentences in Anki or a spreadsheet, you don't need to type them in again. In Your Packs, tap Add pack, then Import sentences (or use Import sentences from a pack's three dots to add to an existing pack). Tap Choose file and pick an Anki deck (.apkg), a CSV file or a text file. Then:

1. Choose which column holds the Chinese and which holds the English. Leave English as None for a Chinese-only deck.
2. For CSV and text files, set Separated by to Comma, Tab or Pipe.
3. Check the preview looks right, then tap the button, such as Create pack with 354 sentences. Sentences already in the pack are skipped.

The full walkthrough is in how to import decks into Mandarin Mosaic, and our list of Chinese Anki decks only includes decks we've verified import correctly.

Already know lots of words from another app? Settings, Import known words, takes a CSV or text file with one word per line and adds those words to your known words, so lessons don't treat them as new.

Chinese Articles and Listen Later

Chinese Articles is a reader for longer texts. Its collections are grouped into Written for learners (such as Graded Stories, the Article Generator and Chunking Chinese) and News for native speakers, and a Continue reading card at the top takes you back to the article you were last reading. Pick a collection, then a topic where there is one, then an article. In an article list, the settings button at the top opens Sort and filter, where Easiest puts the articles with the fewest new words first, so you can find one at the right level. You read page by page: tap any word for its meaning, use the play button and Show English, and tap Next to turn the page. The reader's menu has Bookmark, Add to Listen Later, Save sentence (to put a sentence you like into one of your packs), Text size, Chinese font, Page length and Change voice.

Tap the three dots on any article in a list for more options: Bookmark, Add to Listen Later, Take a focus lesson (a lesson built from the article's new words) or, where offered, Simplify (a rewrite at a lower HSK level). In Article Generator, Generate article writes a story from your own description, or adapts an article from a link you paste, at the level you choose. Generating and simplifying articles need Premium (30 articles a month at the time of writing), and on the free plan you can read the first five pages of any article.

Our Chinese Articles guide covers the reader and Article Generation in more detail. For ideas on what to read outside the app, see how to read Chinese news and comprehensible input for Chinese.

Listen Later

Listen Later turns articles into a playlist you can listen to with the screen off. In Chinese Articles, tap the three dots on an article and choose Add to Listen Later; its audio is prepared and downloaded for you. Open Listen Later from Home to play, skip and clear finished items with Remove finished. At the time of writing, free accounts get 15 minutes of Listen Later audio a month and Premium includes 5 hours.

Sentence Generator

The Sentence Generator writes an example sentence for any word, using words you already know plus the one you asked for. Type a Chinese word, or search in English and pick from the suggestions, then tap Generate. Tap any word in the result for its definition, Regenerate for a different sentence, or Save sentence to add it to one of your packs (if you have none yet, you can create one as you save). Free accounts can generate 10 sentences a day, and Premium 100 (at the time of writing).

Your Vocabulary and Stats

Your Vocabulary shows your progress through the HSK word lists. Choose the list with the switch at the top (Original HSK, New HSK 3.0 or HSK Extra) to see your total known words for it and your progress through each level, then tap a level to see its known and unknown words. Tap any word to see its definition or switch it between Learning and Known, which makes this the quickest place to tidy up your vocabulary.

Stats charts your known words, words to review or estimated HSK level over a period you choose, from a week to all time. Below that, Today shows the sentences you've reviewed, new words, words to review and your estimated HSK level, and Daily activity shows which days you learned new words or did reviews.

Settings worth knowing

Open Settings from the icon at the top of the Home screen. The ones that make the biggest difference:

• Lesson type: Fill in the blanks or Free reading.
• SRS speed: Super slow, Slow, Medium or Fast. Faster means reviews come back more often.
• Guesses to mark as known: how many correct answers before a new word is marked known.
• Only review new sentences: review lessons only use sentences you haven't seen before.
• Type word answer: replaces the four answer choices with a box where you type the missing word in characters instead of choosing it (needs a Chinese keyboard).
• Choose voice: over 20 voices, including Cantonese and Taiwanese options, plus audio speed. Play audio before answering lets you hear the sentence first, which is good listening practice.
• Show sentence images, Theme and Character set (custom packs you've added aren't converted).
• Reset vocabulary: starts again from a chosen HSK level. It erases your known words and can't be undone, so use it only if your level was set badly wrong.

Sync, the free plan and Premium

You can keep using Mandarin Mosaic on the free plan for as long as you like, or subscribe to Premium, whose first month is free. See pricing for current prices. At the time of writing, the plans compare like this:

With Premium, your progress syncs automatically every few hours, and you can sync straight away with Sync progress in Settings. You can change or cancel your subscription from Account, Manage subscription.

A simple daily routine

Fifteen to twenty minutes a day works well (on the free plan, review lessons count towards your daily lessons too):

1. Clear Words to review first. If the number keeps growing, set a Daily limit or a slower SRS speed rather than skipping reviews.
2. Do one or two new lessons from your current pack. Glance at the Lesson Preview before you start.
3. Tap freely. Look up any word you're unsure of, listen to it, and add the tricky ones to Focus Words.
4. Keep Learning and Known honest. If you realise you've forgotten a "known" word, switch it back to Learning.
5. Read or listen to something longer a few times a week: a page of an article, or your Listen Later playlist on a walk.
6. Save good sentences you meet elsewhere into your own pack.

For more habits that help, see a Chinese learning morning routine.

For a closer look at any part of the app, go back to the guides to each feature.