For primary Chinese, the vocabulary list MOE sets is its 生字表: lesson by lesson, the characters a child learns to read and to write. It is in Chinese only, with no pinyin and no English meanings.
Below is every lesson's vocabulary, P1 to P6, Standard and Higher Chinese, with the meanings: tap your child's Level and a lesson, and each word comes up with its pinyin, its English meaning and a Mandarin recording.
To make them stick past Friday's 听写, pick your child's level below: I'll email you lessons 1 to 3 of it as an Anki deck, free, with audio, pinyin and English on every card.
The vocabulary list came home, or you found MOE's PDF, and it's a column of characters: no pinyin, no English. You can't tell what half of them mean, let alone how to say them, so you can't test your child on them either.
I'm Joshua. We speak English at home, and when my daughter started P1 I couldn't even read her word list.
Below, every lesson from P1 to P6 is one tap away, each word with its pinyin, its English meaning and a Mandarin recording. The free sample is lessons 1 to 3 of your child's level, from the deck I built to make them stick.
Try the deck free
Pick your child's level and I'll email you lessons 1 to 3 of it as an Anki deck. The full level is SGD 199, all six levels SGD 599, with a 60-day money-back guarantee. More about the deck
Your sample is ready
Your download should start by itself.
Download the sampleI've also emailed it to you, so you can open it on whichever device has Anki.
New to Anki? Step-by-step help for your device:
For new sample takers only
The full deck for SGD 99
SGD 199 SGD 99
15:00
This price is yours for 15 minutes. After that the deck is back to SGD 199.
60-day money-back guarantee.
What's in the sample
- Lessons 1 to 3 of your child's level, Standard Chinese, as an Anki deck: 2024 syllabus for P1 to P3, old syllabus for P4 to P6.
- Each full level has Standard and Higher Chinese. P1 to P3 come in both the old and the 2024 syllabus.
- Open it in Anki on your phone, tablet or computer. Anki is free on Android, Mac and Windows.
How to use the list
- Tap your child's Level, P1 to P6.
- Find the syllabus. If your child's book says 欢乐伙伴2.0, it's the 2024 syllabus; the old syllabus sits under it, folded.
- Tap the lesson number. The lesson's words come up, each with its pinyin, its English meaning, a recording in Mandarin and a picture. A long lesson is split into two buttons, such as 3a and 3b.
The box under the lessons takes any list: type the words from this week's 听写 list and look them up the same way.
Characters, words and meanings
MOE's list is single characters. P6's first lesson on the old syllabus lists 锻 and 炼 as two characters; in the lesson they're one word, 锻炼 (duànliàn), "to exercise; to train". The same lesson has 懒 and 惰, which make 懒惰 (lǎnduò), "lazy".
So a lesson's vocabulary here is its characters, plus the words they make where a character is read as part of one. Each lesson has two kinds of character:
- 识读字, to read. Your child should recognise these and understand them when reading.
- 识写字, to write. Your child should also be able to write these.
The full plain list, with both kinds side by side, is on MOE's Chinese word list.
How much each Level asks
| Level | Lessons | To read | To write | To write, Higher |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| P1 | 19 | 364 | 167 | 202 |
| P2 | 19 | 382 | 183 | 233 |
| P3 | 17 | 285 | 219 | 269 |
| P4 | 16 | 307 | 161 | 260 |
| P5 | 15 | 267 | 202 | 286 |
| P6 | 10 | 169 | 138 | 179 |
These are characters, from MOE's 生字表. P1 to P3 are the 2024 syllabus, P4 to P6 the old one. In P5 and P6, Higher Chinese has its own book, so its lessons and characters to read differ too: 17 lessons and 346 characters in P5, 12 lessons and 250 characters in P6.
Why a list isn't enough
A list tells you what to learn, not when to review it. Friday's 听写 tests the words once, and without review, words learnt for Friday fade fast.
Spaced repetition fixes the timing: each word comes back right before your child would forget it. In 1885 the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus found that 38 repetitions spread over three days worked as well as 68 crammed into one day.
That's what the deck does with every lesson above, 10-15 minutes a day. Each card asks the question a parent would: can your child read this word and recall its meaning? Anki decides what to review and when; your child taps a button to rate how well they remembered.
Knowing what the words mean is the first step. Every Monday, your child gets a new word list. Every Friday, they pass and forget. More drilling runs the same cycle faster.
What works is timing. Spaced repetition shows each word right before your child would forget it, so every successful recall pushes the next review further out. Ebbinghaus measured it in 1885: 38 repetitions spread over three days worked as well as 68 crammed into one day.
Within 4 months, my daughter could read and recognise every P1 word. 10-15 minutes a day, no tuition, and the algorithm decided what to review and when.
What's in the deck
- Every word from P1 to P6 for Standard and Higher Chinese, including the new 2024 syllabus: 13,453 flashcards, lesson by lesson, the same lessons as the list above. Not random HSK vocabulary from Mainland China.
- Characters your child only needs to read (识读字) get a Recognition card and a Sentence card. Characters they need to write (识写字) also get a Writing card, one character at a time, with stroke order.
- Natural Mandarin audio on every card, 13 voices, including a Singaporean one.
- A picture on every example sentence, and English translations and pinyin on every card, so you always know what the word means, even if you don't read Chinese.
- The free sample is lessons 1 to 3 of your child's level, Standard Chinese (the 2024 syllabus for P1 to P3, the old one for P4 to P6). A full level is SGD 199 (all six levels SGD 599), with a 60-day money-back guarantee.
By Level: P1 · P2 · P3 · P4 · P5 · P6 · Higher Chinese
Sources
- The characters of each lesson and the counts per Level: MOE's 生字表, on its primary syllabus page: the 2024 syllabus for P1 to P3 (Standard Chinese, Higher Chinese) and the old syllabus for P1 to P6 (Standard Chinese, Higher Chinese). This page's lists are based on MOE's published 生字表, and are not an MOE publication.
- The English meanings: CC-CEDICT, under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- 38 repetitions over three days against 68 in one: Ebbinghaus, H. (1885). Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology, chapter 8, section 34 (English translation, 1913).
Not sure yet? Start free
Tap your child's level and I'll email you lessons 1 to 3 of it as an Anki deck, free, right now.