I was given the opportunity to try out HSKCourse.com and after a little over two weeks, here’s my honest take. I’m just excited about it.
Timing was good on my end. I’d been on a Mandarin hiatus for a while and needed to do some revision before getting back to my weekly speaking practice with a tutor on Preply earlier this month. So this came at the right moment.
The site covers video courses from HSK 1 through 3. HSK 1 and 2 are fully complete. HSK 3 is still being added to, with 10 out of 20 lessons up so far and more on the way.
What I liked
Honestly, the best way I can describe it is: it feels like having a tutor sit with you and walk you through the material. The teacher has a calm, clear voice and explains things in a way that actually makes sense rather than just throwing information at you. For new lessons I’d sit down properly and pay attention. But for lessons I’d already covered? I’d put my headset on and let it play while doing housework, folding laundry, washing dishes. It held up as revision even without watching the screen, which says a lot.
For HSK 3, each video lesson has four parts, each roughly 19 to 20 minutes. A full lesson is about 70 to 80 minutes if you do it all in one go, but you don’t have to. One part a day works just as well.
The structure for HSK 1 and 2 is slightly different. HSK 1 starts with Pinyin and Hanzi sections before moving into the lesson content, while HSK 2 opens with a quiz. By HSK 3 the format shifts to four full lesson segments. It makes sense as a progression. Since I’m already at HSK 3 level, I only had a quick look through the earlier levels, but it’s good to know the structure adapts as you go.
One thing I appreciated: he doesn’t just teach the language, he drops in bits of Chinese culture and daily life along the way. He’ll often explain something in Mandarin first, then repeat in English. After a while you stop waiting for the English part. That’s good training for the ears, and there are also plenty of HSK listening exercises throughout.
The vocabulary section has a word list with audio for tones, plus a test at the end. The grammar section covers things clearly with quizzes built in after each topic, not as an afterthought but right there in the flow.
A few extras worth mentioning: there’s a New HSK Vocabulary section organised by band level up to level 7-9 and the lists are downloadable. I went through the ones for my level and found it really convenient. The grammar section actually goes up to HSK level 5-6, so there’s more there than just what the video courses cover. And there are writing exercise sheets in PDF format, meant to be printed out for practice. I downloaded mine and used them on my iPad. Simple but useful.
What could be better
I’d love to see graded reader texts, short articles or dialogues with comprehension questions to go alongside the lessons. And for subscribers, some kind of progress tracker would be a nice perk. Right now there’s no way to see how much you’ve done or what’s left. You can track it manually, but some sort of indicator showing that a video has been watched would go a long way.
Free access is limited. You get the first video segment per lesson and a partial look at the grammar section. Enough to get a feel for it, but you’ll need a subscription for the full thing.
Is it worth it?
I’ll be honest, it’s not meant to replace a tutor entirely, especially for speaking. But for self-learners who are already doing one lesson a week on Preply or iTalki or any platform for that matter, and studying the rest on their own? This is exactly the kind of resource that fills that gap. Not everyone can afford more tutor hours. Not everyone has the time. This lets you go at your own pace and actually understand the material, then use your tutor time for what it’s really for: speaking, not sitting through grammar explanations.
Pricing: one year is $69, about $5.75 a month. Lifetime access is $119. At $5.75 a month, easy yes. For lifetime, it makes most sense if you’re starting from HSK 1 or 2. If they keep building out the higher levels, it’ll be worth it at any starting point.
My final take? If I were starting over, I’d use HSKcourse.com to build my foundation: grammar, vocabulary, structure, and keep my tutor for speaking. That combination would have served me really well. I’m genuinely looking forward to the rest of HSK 3 and hopefully all the way up to HSK 6.