Journey Chinese opens an online Mandarin school for Australian learners
10 AUGUST 2026
Journey Chinese, a Brisbane-based Mandarin tutoring business, has launched an online Mandarin school at Journeychinese.com.au/online-mandarin-school. The school gives Australians a guided video curriculum, from absolute beginner to advanced, taught by the same tutor the whole way through.
Australians learning Mandarin on their own usually pick between an app and a tutor. Apps are cheap and easy to start, but few learners get past a couple of hundred words. Private tutoring works, though it costs hundreds of dollars a month and dedicated fixed time to lessons. The Journey Chinese school sits between the two. Real full-length lessons from an ATA accredited tutor, available whenever a student has time to watch.
The curriculum runs across three levels, Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced, mapped closely to the HSK framework used internationally to measure Chinese proficiency. Lessons are grouped into themed units and each lesson comes with a teaching video, accompanying workbook and study slides for offline revision.
Every lesson is taught by founder Larita Nicolson, an accredited tutor with more than eight years of experience teaching Mandarin to Australian children and adults. Journey Chinese holds a bronze qualification with the Australian Tutoring Association (ATA), one of only two Mandarin tutoring businesses in the Brisbane region to do so at the time of writing.
Larita Nicolson said the school came out of a problem she kept running into with private students.
"I could only teach so many people a week, and plenty of the people who contacted me couldn't commit to a weekly slot or the price that goes with it. They still wanted to learn. So we filmed the whole beginner curriculum properly, the same way I'd teach it one to one, and built somewhere to put it."
Beyond the video lessons, members get a beginner vocabulary deck of more than 650 flashcards with mastery tracking that resurfaces the words a student keeps getting wrong, quizzes attached to each lesson, and a daily streak counter. Video progress syncs across devices, so a lesson started on a laptop picks up on an iPhone.
Two sections sit outside the main curriculum. The Kids Zone helps children digest the basics through short interactive games rather than lecture videos, so one household membership can cover a parent working through the beginner level and a child playing their way into first words. The Culture Zone holds videos on festivals, food, customs and daily life in China. New lessons are being added each week.
"Grammar drills on their own get boring fast," Nicolson said. "Learning why people say something a certain way, and understanding the culture behind the language, is what keeps people curious enough to keep going. That's the part most language products skip."
Members can also register for a weekly online study groups. This provides a space for students to practice what they’ve learnt with Larita, and connect with other students from around Australia also learning.
"The hardest way to learn a language is on your own," Nicolson said. "Most people when its gets tough because they don’t have anyone to keep them encouraged and accountable. A study small group gives you a set time each week and a few people sitting at the same stage as you.
"What I'd like to build from here is a community of Australians who love this language and the culture behind it, and who talk to each other about it rather than only to me."
The school is available on the web with an accompanying iOS app for learning on-the-go. Students can sign up for a monthly or annual Membership for as little as AUD $1 per day.
About Journey Chinese
Journey Chinese is a Brisbane-based Mandarin tutoring and Chinese cultural experiences business. Founded by Larita Nicolson, it offers private and small group tutoring, an online Mandarin school, in-person cultural experiences including Chinese tea nights and calligraphy sessions, and free China travel guides, city guides and visa information for Australians. Journey Chinese holds a qualification with the Australian Tutoring Association.
Media contact media@journeychinese.com.au
