After 300 hours (6 months) of self-studying Mandarin using apps, I just reached A2 level (HSK4)

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I posted this to r/chineselanguage already, but wanted to share my story here from a broader language learning perspective.

Basically, on September 1st 2025 I decided to start learning Chinese purely for hobby reasons, from a starting point of zero (didn't know a single word). I studied by myself through apps and online resources. I know apps often get a bad name, but they're really just a tool and it really boils down to how you choose to use them.

You can read more about my detailed study schedule and progress milestones in this reddit thread.

After 6 months of consistent daily study of 2 hours/day, today I took the HSK4 test (equivalent to A2) and achieved a barely-passing grade of 70% (minimum is 60%).

I did this with no human instruction. The app (HelloChinese) makes up the backbone of my study, with additional resources from YouTube. I don't think I could have done the same with Duolingo.

Some thoughts from a language learning perspective:

  • Chinese is undoubtedly a difficult language, and 2 hours daily is probably very close to the ceiling of my brain capacity. If I try to study for any longer, I'll just end up with brain fog and unable to concentrate. I have no idea how some people manage to study for 5-6 hours a day.
  • Currently I have 2,141 flashcards in Pleco (a Chinese dictionary app with flashcard add-on). My usual recall rate during review sessions is 60-70%. I believe my functional passive vocabulary should be between 1,500 - 2,000 words.
  • If my sole goal was just to obtain a test certificate, I believe I could have crammed the HSK (official Chinese test) textbooks and achieved this even earlier. However, just passing a test really does not say much about functional abilities. For many questions I could only understood 50%, but I picked up just enough keywords to guess the correct answer. I totally understand how some people can pass even HSK6 (B2) and still barely able to actually use the language.
  • In terms of my actual current abilities: I can read graded stories like these ones fairly comfortably. I can understand 80% of street interview videos like this without looking at the subtitles (though do note that they speak quite clearly in this video; I still struggle to understand actual everyday native speech). As for writing, I can write short essays on familiar topics.
  • To this point, I still have not spoken Chinese to anyone. I've been studying by myself all along, so I have no idea where I'm at in terms of my actual speaking abilities. I know I can answer rapid-fire small-talk questions like this video with some effort.
  • 300 hours is about right for achieving A2 in Chinese. I won't consider myself functional in the language until at least the 1,000-hour mark. So if I keep this pace up, that's another year to go.
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