About Hanzi Hunter
Introduction
Hanzi Hunter helps you quickly learn Chinese characters through short reviews and a fun "bubbles" session that stimulates your eyes and brain. In preliminary testing, participants reported studying for longer periods and retaining more information with the "Bubble Hunt" feature. Based on our initial tests, motivated learners can realistically expect to learn 500 characters or 500–1,000 words per month by studying about an hour per day.
If you are new to Chinese, we recommend starting with "1. C49" which contains 682 characters from our free C49 Basic Vocabulary.
You may also be interested in the Hanzi Hunter Abstract.
Quick-start — first day + daily routine
- Review the words due today using the red button.
- Expand your vocabulary by learning new words. Use the range slider to select the characters that will be included in the learning pool. The recommended approach is to expand the range by 10 each day - Day 1: 1–10 → Day 2: 1–20 → Day 3: 1–30 → …
- Complete the blue Bubble Hunt training twice.
In the evening, finish one final round of Bubble Hunt, and then review 10–20 green Prey cards.
Spaced Repetition — promoting words
Hanzi Hunter uses a spaced-repetition system. Each time you correctly answer a question about a character or word, that item moves up one level, and the next time you are asked about it is scheduled further in the future. For example: Level 1 is after two days, Level 2 is after four days, Level 3 is after eight days, Level 4 is after 16 days, and Level 5 is after 32 days, and so on. Tapping "Again" (which is equivalent to answering incorrectly) takes the characters level back to zero and schedules the next review for the following day.
Optional: Train your ears
Improve your listening skills by using the audio drill (long-press the yellow button).
The following features make the Hanzi Hunter cards uniquely powerful
- Click on a Chinese sentence to hear it spoken.
- Click the pinyin or translation to switch to a different Chinese sentence, if available.
- Click the Pleco button to send the current sentence directly to the Pleco dictionary.
Design
Hanzi Hunter was designed by a fifth-year Chinese language student and a programmer with decades of experience.