The “Simplified Chinese: Core 500” series features the 500 most frequently used words in Chinese. When you finish this series, you’ll be ready for the Chinese Core 1000 series.

If you’re new to studying Chinese, we recommend you first read our Guide to Chinese. This will explain the basics of inputting Chinese.

Please note that direct Chinese character input is not accepted for Chinese courses, so you don’t need to have Chinese IME installed. Just type as you normally would on an English keyboard.

To indicate the tone, first type the word in pinyin followed by 1, 2, 3, or 4. These numbers represent the first, second, third, and fourth tones. (For neutral tones, you don’t need to input a tone number.)

Note: all characters in this series are in simplified Chinese.