The amount of information on the Internet available to learn Chinese is astounding, but when it comes to quality and consistency, the list is whittled down.

Below you’ll find my five favorite online Chinese resources that always deliver with consistency, practicality, and quite often, humor.

Hacking Chinese

Olle gives advice that is straightforward, academically-backed, and full of practical tips for improving your Chinese as soon as you finish reading an article, or sometimes, even a paragraph or two. Even though he started learning Chinese with simplified characters, he spent four years in Taiwan and had to relearn traditional ones. Now, besides Hacking Chinese, he’s also one of the minds behind WordSwing and works with the team at Skritter.

Favorite articles:

— Benchmarking Progress to Stay Motivated

— The Art of Being Corrected

Yoyo Chinese

Yoyo Chinese is run by Yangyang Cheng, and while Yoyo Chinese is a comprehensive learning platform, you can find plenty of her videos on YouTube for free. She is from China, so she uses simplified characters, but her lessons are still entertaining and highly useful.

Favorite videos:

— The Most Effective Way to Learn Tones

— How Should I Address You?

Crazy Fresh Chinese (Bai Jie)

Jessica Beinecke is Bai Jie, and while she started off teaching Chinese teens American slang on YouTube, she has since added on teaching Chinese to Americans as well. You can watch both types of videos and find value from them. Just remember that her videos show simplified characters so you may have to convert them to traditional characters.

Favorite videos:

— No Way! 不会吧！BÚ HUÌ BA!

— How Do You Say “Oh Crap”?

— So Much to Do

Mandarin Made EZ

Fiona Tian grew up all over the world but her mother is from Taiwan and her father is Scottish. This gave her the unique positioning to become fluent in Chinese and English. Now she lives in Taiwan and works with a wonderful learning resource called ChinesePod.

While ChinesePod is a paid resource, many videos are published for free on her YouTube channel.

Favorite videos:

— Better Ways to Say “I Don’t Understand” in Chinese

— Riding the Subway in Chinese

All Set Learning

All Set Learning is a masterpiece of a resource filled to the brim with grammar lessons divided by level. It was created by John from Sinosplice (also a great resource), and it is wonderful. That being said, the characters are also written in simplified form, so you may have to convert them to traditional characters.

— Grammar lesson index

Have any other resources to add? Leave ’em in the comments below!