Helping learners everywhere
learn Mandarin well, for free
The Huayu Online Self-Learning and Smart Learning Platform is a public education service supervised by the Ministry of Education (Taiwan) and run by National Taiwan Normal University — formal course materials plus smart learning tools, free to learners worldwide.
Open to everyone
Whatever your time zone, sign up and start learning — completely free. The interface is available in Traditional Chinese and English.
Formal course materials
Lessons are drawn from the published textbook Practical Audio-Visual Chinese (New Edition), aligned to TOCFL levels, with a certificate awarded for each completed book.
Smart learning companions
An AI tutor answers questions about each lesson and the writing coach gives sentence-by-sentence suggestions; features like smart review will roll out as the platform grows.
How a lesson works
Lessons map to TOCFL A1–B1, take about 30 minutes each, and cycle through four steps.
- 1
Watch
A real-life dialogue video, with the lesson text annotated line by line.
- 2
Learn words
Vocabulary cards carry both zhuyin and pinyin, with tap-to-hear pronunciation.
- 3
Practise
Listening, speaking, reading, writing and dialogue exercises, graded instantly.
- 4
Speak up
Record yourself in the browser and listen back, or chat with the AI tutor in Chinese.
AI is the teaching assistant,
not the teacher
The AI tutor and writing coach are there around the clock; what they give you are suggestions to learn from, not grades — the pace and the choices stay yours.
AI content is always labelled
AI-generated content on the platform is clearly identified, so you always know who you are talking to.
AI only suggests
The writing coach's feedback is sentence-level suggestions you choose to accept or reject; grades and certificate requirements are set by the course rules, not by AI.
Data minimisation
Your learning data is used only for your own feedback and never to train general-purpose AI models; speaking recordings stay in your browser and are never uploaded.
Programme information
- Programme
- Huayu Online Self-Learning and Smart Learning Platform Programme
- Supervised by
- Ministry of Education (Taiwan)
- Course levels
- TOCFL A1 (Novice) – B1 (Intermediate); Traditional Chinese with zhuyin and pinyin annotation
- Pricing
- Entirely free, certificates included
- Contact
- mandarin@rcpet.edu.tw
For institutional adoption (Mandarin centres, international schools, employers), write to us about partnership options.