Busuu Review

Sunday, December 5th

2021 Chinese Lesson Reviews

Busuu

• 2 options for Chinese lessons: Complete (with beginner, intermediate and advanced content) and Chinese for Travel
• Free basic membership
• Personalized study plans with Premium Plus membership
• Certification testing available
• 14-day money-back guarantee on paid plans

In Cameroon, there's an endangered language called Busuu - which is also the name of a language learning platform for many other languages, including Chinese. The company proudly states that if you use Busuu's Premium level for at least 22 hours, you'll come out with the equivalent of a college semester of learning (according to an independent study). Interested?

Easy to set up a free account

You can get started with Busuu with a free membership: just enter your email address and the language you want to learn (namely, Mandarin Chinese) and you're off! To set up your account, you'll indicate what fluency level you're hoping to achieve, ranging from A1 (beginner, introductions and asking simple questions) to B2 (upper intermediate, understanding most of a movie or TV program). You also set how often you'd like to study at what time of day you'd like Busuu to send you reminders. Then, once you've entered how many minutes you'll spend studying Chinese each day, you'll get an estimate for how long it will take you to achieve the fluency level you want. For example, starting as an absolute beginner and studying seven days a week for 10 minutes, we were told to expect to reach a B2 fluency level in about seven months.

Learn Chinese with characters and Pinyin

Busuu starts off by explaining that it uses both Chinese characters and Pinyin in their lessons. After teaching you how to say hello both ways, it teaches you that Chinese is tonal: an important distinction we don't see explained by all of the Chinese lessons in our review. You'll be introduced to basic words like hello, thanks, sorry and goodbye. Moving onward through the A1 lessons, you'll learn how to talk about yourself, get an introduction to Chinese characters, and much more: there are a total of 46 lessons in this level alone.

Chinese content from levels A1-B2

Too easy? No problem. You can move along to any of the other three levels on Busuu. There are 31 lessons in A2, 21 lessons in B1, and 24 lessons in B2. You can access content in all of the lessons across every level, but you won't be able to use all of the features unless you subscribe. For instance, the A1 Lesson 2: What's Your Name has Vocabulary, Dialogue, Quiz and Conversation, but the quiz is locked for anyone with a free account.

Costs

• Free for Basic membership
• Premium membership: $9.99/month
• Premium Plus membership: $13.99/month
• Discounts available when you pay for 12 or 24 months in advance

Two types of paid memberships

How much will you pay for full access to Busuu's Chinese lessons? There are actually two tiers to choose from, Premium and Premium Plus. At the Premium level, you'll pay $9.99 a month; that unlocks most features like offline learning and more lesson content. But, the bigger perks come at the Plus level for $13.99/month. That's where you can get your fluency certified by McGraw Hill, get unlimited feedback from native Chinese speakers who also use Busuu, and have a personalized study plan developed for you. A paid plan is also required if you want to study more than just Chinese. Pricing on Busuu is discounted when you pay for a full 12 or 24 months at a time, and there's a 14-day refund policy.

Chinese specifically for travelers too

We appreciate that Busuu offers travel-focused Chinese lessons too. Why learn how to introduce all of the members of your family when what you really need is to hail a taxi? If this is what you need, click where it says Complete Chinese and then select the travel course. There are nine lessons there, ranging from getting a restaurant recommendation to buying tickets for an event or a tour.

Not enough opportunity to speak Chinese

Our only hesitation with Busuu is its limited focus on speaking Chinese. Most lessons have a lot of opportunities to repeat words and phrases into a microphone, but the only place you record your spoken Chinese here is with those native speaker-assessed assignments - and then you're at the mercy of those volunteer helpers. Plus, despite Busuu kindly explaining that Chinese is tonal, we didn't see anything in the A1 lessons that addressed that.

Try the free content before subscribing

There's a ton of Chinese content for a wide range of fluency levels on Busuu, much of which can be accessed at no cost. That's great! It'll be a long time before you run out of new things to learn here. On the downside, the lack of speaking exercises is worth keeping in mind: if spoken fluency is your goal, Busuu won't give you the practice or the feedback that is going to be most useful. We suggest trying out Busuu's free account for a while before committing to a membership.