Learning to read and write Chinese characters presents two challenges to both non-native learners as well as Chinese children who first start learning characters:

- the complexity of characters, as an average character consists of about 12 strokes;
- matching characters with their pronunciation, pinyin and the meaning;

This new version of Chinese Characters First Steps tackles these two challenges on one screen to help you learn, recognize and remember the most frequently used 400 plus characters in a systematic, friendly and fun way. Rather than having a textbook, audio device, dictionary and a notebook to write, you get the stroke-by-stroke writing, the native-speaker pronunciation, pinyin, English definition and instructions in one interactive experience.

These 400 plus characters are introduced in the Open University's Beginners' Chinese module
第一步 Dì yī bù (L197) and drawn from the most commonly and frequently used word list published by the Ministry of Education of PRC (China). By combining them, you will learn a further 230+ useful words and phrases. For example, you learn the three single-character words for 'red' (红 hóng), 'green' (绿lǜ) and 'light' (灯dēng), which put together make up the word 'traffic lights', which you will find in one of the word search puzzles.

There are 20 lessons which chronologically build upon each other.

Each lesson has 4 sections:

- Writing Practice
- Listening Test
- Reading Test
- Word Search

The first lesson with 20 characters and related activities is included free to give you a taste of what this app can do. The other 19 lessons are available via in-app purchase by tapping the 'upgrade' button.