The rules, under a clock
Grammar Gauntlet
我在家学习汉语 or 我学习汉语在家? Fill the gap in a real sentence, or spot the mistake English speakers actually make. 224 questions drawn from 25 grammar points — and every answer tells you the rule.
- Fill the gap — a real sentence appears with one word hidden and its English meaning underneath. Tap the right word out of four. Keys 1–4 work too.
- Spot the mistake — two versions of one sentence, one of them the error English speakers actually write. Pick the correct one. Fewer points, less clock, because it is a two-way choice.
- Beat the bar — a wrong answer or a timeout costs one of your 3 ❤. Every 4 correct in a row raises your multiplier (up to x5), and faster answers earn a speed bonus.
- Read the reveal — the clock stops here — every answer shows the full sentence with its pinyin, the rule that governs it, and a button to hear it. Nothing moves on until you press Next question (or Enter), so take as long as you like.
- Clear rounds — 10 questions per round, and each round takes another 0.6 seconds off the clock.
Chinese has no conjugation, no agreement and no cases, which is why it is often called an easy grammar. What it does have is slots: a small set of particles and constructions that must go in exactly one place, and a word order that puts everything framing the verb in front of it. Those are the two ways a sentence goes wrong, so the game asks about them separately.
Fill the gap — do you know which word?
One word is hidden in a real example sentence and you get the English meaning as the clue. The four options are the words that genuinely compete for that slot — if the answer is 了, the other three are the markers you might reasonably reach for instead, never an unrelated noun. You cannot pass by elimination.
The pinyin is deliberately withheld until you answer: a romanised sentence contains the reading of the word you are being asked for.
Spot the mistake — do you know where it goes?
Two versions of one sentence, and one of them is the error English speakers actually write: place after the verb (我学习汉语在家), 了 stuck on a habit, 很 where the sentence needs 是, 的 where a verb needs 得.
These come from the mistake tables on the grammar pages, so each one arrives with the written explanation of why — which is the half that stops you repeating it.
1 of the library's pairs is deliberately left out: it depends on a scenario written beside only one of the two sentences, and once the pair is shuffled that is a clue rather than a question.
Every question in the game is built from one of these, and every answer links back to it. Levels follow the CEFR bands the grammar library already teaches to, so "Advanced" here means the constructions that arrive around B1 — not harder vocabulary.
A1Beginner — 9 rules
- Word order — Subject + Verb + Object
- 是 sentences and 很 with adjectives
- 的 for possession and description
- 不 vs 没 — the two negations
- 吗 and 呢 questions
- Question words stay in place
- 有 — have and there is
- Where time words go
- 二 vs 两 — two ways to say two
A2Intermediate — 10 rules
- Measure words — the top 25
- 了 — completed action and change of state
- 在 — location and "-ing"
- A-not-A questions
- 比 comparisons
- 会 / 能 / 可以 — three ways to say "can"
- 想 / 要 / 需要 — want and need
- 一点儿 vs 有点儿
- Verb reduplication — 看看, 试试
- 快…了 / 要…了 — about to happen
B1–B2Advanced — 6 rules
- 的 vs 得 vs 地
- 把 sentences
- 被 passive
- Result complements — 完, 好, 到, 见
- Directional complements — 上来, 下去, 出来
- 是…的 — emphasising the details
Speaking gives you no time
You can work out where 了 goes given ten seconds and a table. In a conversation you have none of that, and a rule you can only reconstruct is a rule you do not have yet. The countdown is what converts a rule you know about into one you can use.
Your mistakes are predictable
English-speaking learners get the same handful of things wrong, in the same order, because they are the places Chinese and English disagree. Drilling the specific errors is faster than re-reading the rules, which is why half the questions here are mistakes rather than gaps.
Then build the sentence
Recognising the right form is half the job. Produce it from scratch in Sentence Builder, read it in context in the graded readers, or look up any pattern you meet in the grammar library.