Learning Chinese
Finished Duolingo Chinese? Here's what to do next
3 November 2026 · 5 min read
You kept the streak, you finished the tree, and now Chinese on Duolingo feels like a loop of things you already know. That's normal. Here's roughly where it leaves you, and how to keep growing from there.
Where Duolingo leaves you
It varies with the course version and how much you practised, but most people who finish Duolingo's Chinese course know somewhere in the region of a few hundred to a thousand words — mostly HSK 1 and HSK 2 territory under the new HSK 3.0 standard, with gaps and a few words from higher up. You'll probably recognise more than you can produce, and read pinyin more comfortably than characters.
That's a real foundation. It's also the point where the most common words are behind you, and the next thousand are less common, more abstract and harder to pick up by repetition alone.
Why progress stalls
The words get rarer. HSK 1 words appear in almost every sentence, so you review them without trying. HSK 3 and 4 words don't, so without a schedule they fade.
Sentences repeat, vocabulary doesn't grow. Practising the same sentences keeps them fresh, but it doesn't add words. Many learners finish with a great streak and the same vocabulary they had three months earlier.
Nobody knows what you know. Starting another beginner course means relearning 你好 and 谢谢. Skipping ahead to "intermediate" material means drowning in unknown words. Neither fits someone who's somewhere in between.
A simple plan for what's next
- Find out where your vocabulary actually ends. Not the level of the course you finished — the words you know, level by level. Most learners after Duolingo have most of HSK 1, a good part of HSK 2 and patches beyond.
- Fill the gaps, then go forward. Learn the missing words of your current level and start the next one, most common words first. The HSK 3.0 word lists are a good map: every level, in frequency order.
- Review on a schedule. Spaced repetition brings each word back right before you'd forget it, so rarer words stick too. See spaced repetition, explained.
- Keep the habit small. If the streak got you this far, keep the daily habit — five or ten minutes is enough, as long as it's every day. A few new words a day adds up to the next HSK level within months; here's the arithmetic.
- Add real Chinese. Graded readers, podcasts for learners, shows with Chinese subtitles. Words you've learned start turning up everywhere, and that's the best review there is.
Where Ming fits
Ming is built for exactly this point. A two-minute level test works out where your vocabulary ends — from HSK 1 up to HSK 7–9 — and starts you there, so you don't repeat what you know. Then it's a few minutes a day: new words most-common-first, real sentences, audio for every word, and reviews timed so words stay learned. It won't replace speaking with people, but it'll make sure you have the words when you do.
Not sure where to start? Look through the HSK 2 word list — if you know most of it, try HSK 3.