For teachers, tutors and language programs
A zhuyin practice app to recommend to your students
Bopomofo Master is a free iOS and Android app for practicing zhuyin outside class. There is nothing to set up on your end — no classroom account, no license, no data shared with you. Just an app you can point students at, and free resources below if you want more.
★ 4.8 from 120 ratings · 9,000+ downloads across the App Store and Google Play
Why teachers send students here
Zhuyin only sticks with repetition, and repetition is the hardest thing to fit into a lesson. Bopomofo Master gives students somewhere to put that repetition in on their own time, so class stays for pronunciation, conversation and correction instead of flashcards. It will not teach a class for you, and it is not trying to — it is somewhere for students to drill between lessons.
The app is free to download and use. An optional upgrade removes daily limits on two of the five games; nothing about recommending it to a class depends on anyone paying for anything.
What students can practice in it
Symbol recognition
Symbol Match drills matching each of the 37 symbols to its sound against a clock — the first thing any beginner needs, and the most tedious thing to run out loud in class.
Listening and reading
Character Master plays a word and asks for the right character, across four difficulty tiers, so it scales from someone in their first week to someone already reading.
Typing zhuyin
Sentence Typer practices the actual Dai Chien keyboard layout Taiwan uses, useful for anyone who will need to type in zhuyin, not just read it.
Fast recall under pressure
Rocket Master is a quicker, gamified drill for students who find flat repetition boring — answer correctly to keep going, miss and it drops.
Practice aimed at their own mistakes
The app tracks accuracy per symbol and per character and draws drills from what a specific student actually gets wrong, not a generic worksheet everyone gets the same.
Real native-speaker audio
Every symbol and over a thousand characters are recorded by native Taiwanese speakers, not synthesized, so students are imitating an actual accent.
Who it is useful for
- Beginners just starting Mandarin, before or alongside characters
- Students learning Traditional Chinese and Taiwanese Mandarin specifically, where zhuyin is what dictionaries, textbooks and keyboards use
- Anyone preparing to study, work or live in Taiwan
- Heritage learners keeping up a language spoken at home — the Bopomofo Playroom is built for younger children specifically
- One tutor with a handful of students, or a university program with hundreds — nothing here scales differently either way
Recommending it takes one link
The app page has both store links on it already, so it is the one thing worth sending: paste it into a syllabus, an email, or a class group chat, or use the share button on your phone.
https://www.bopomofo-master.com/app
Free resources for the classroom itself
Beyond the app, these are free to use in class today. No account needed for any of them.
- The interactive chart →All 37 symbols, each recorded by a native speaker from Taiwan. Large enough to project, and it works without an account or a login for anyone.
- The Chinese to zhuyin converter →Paste any Chinese text and get zhuyin beside each character, using Taiwan’s Ministry of Education readings rather than mainland ones. Useful for making a worksheet out of material you already teach.
- Two quizzes →Ten questions each, one reading and one listening. Nothing is saved and nobody signs up, so they can be handed to a class without a data-protection conversation.
- Printable classroom sheets →A 37-symbol wall chart, the zhuyin keyboard layout, and a practice sheet. They print straight from the browser, and you are free to copy them for a class without asking.
- A level test for placing students →22 questions that climb from recognizing symbols to writing zhuyin, ending with a level and the specific symbols that student should work on.
- The keyboard page →The Dai Chien layout, typable in the browser, plus setup instructions for iOS, Android, Windows and macOS.
Preparing students for Taiwan specifically
If your students are headed to Taiwan to study or live, Before Taiwan is a free 7-day program that gets them reading all 37 symbols before they land, ten to fifteen minutes a day. It is a separate, self-contained resource worth sharing on its own.
See the program →A link that shows what your students actually used
If you want to know whether the people you send here actually used it, ask and a link tagged with your name, school or program can be set up for you. It looks like this:
https://www.bopomofo-master.com/app?ref=your-school
It works on any page — the app link above, Before Taiwan, or anything else here — changes nothing for the student, and collects nothing about them personally. It only lets us tell you how many people opened it, which is useful if you ever have to justify recommending it to anyone.
Teach Mandarin, or run a language program?
Get in touch if you would like to recommend Bopomofo Master to your students, or want a dedicated link for your own tracking. There is no formal partnership to set up — Bopomofo Master is made by one person, so an email reaches the person who actually builds it, and requests for a different format or an extra resource are the kind that actually get built.
bopomofo-app@proton.me