As you know, over the last two years, I’ve learned a bit of Chinese.  I’ve taken classes, but a lot of what I’ve learned has come through self-study outside of class as well.  Here’s a list of resources that should help you along:

1.  ChinesePod – This site hosts a daily podcast with a 20-minute or so Chinese lesson.  They also have lots of resources for studying characters, etc.  I don’t actually spend a lot of time on the site, but I subscribed to the podcast and listen to them on the way to work in the morning; they’re not only good practice, but fun as well.  The whole cast sounds like they’re having fun at work, which makes the lessons quite inviting.  Unfortunately, this month, they changed the format so that the free iTunes feed only contains newbie lessons (they have Newbie, Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced-Intermediate, and Advanced).  I will probably start paying for the advanced content, because it is such a good way to practice.

2.  Pimsleur Language CDs – I’ve actually done Pimsleur for two languages now (German for 8 CDs and Chinese for 90) and can’t recommend it highly enough.  The Pimsleur method is entirely audio-based, so you won’t learn how to read, but you will learn how to speak and understand some simple sentences very quickly.  These are a bit more interactive than ChinesePod and work best when you actually respond outloud, so you probably shouldn’t do them on the subway.  Also, they are timed so that you optimally do one half-hour lesson a day and the next day get reminded about the material from the day before; this helps it move to your long-term memory.  I set up my computer to play one lesson a day as my alarm clock and did them in the morning before getting out of bed.  Altogether, there are three months of lessons available.

3.  Set up your computer to allow you to type in Chinese.  This is extremely simple on a Mac, since Chinese support is installed by default, but on a PC you’ll have to install the East-Asia Language Pack, which is a little bit of a hassle (you need the CD).  Before you do this, however, you should make sure you really know pinyin and can write the pinyin for a word after hearing it.  Typing in Chinese is a bit different than you may be used to – if you use the pinyin input method, you type a few syllables at a time, press space, then are presented with options for each of the characters.  Since so many characters in Chinese use the same pinyin (especially when it’s toneless), you have to be able to decide which is the right character, which can help with character recognition skills as well.

4.  Install Firefox and use the Chinese Pera-kun extension.  I used to recommend WordChamp, but this extension is like that except that it works so much more smoothly.  With this extension turned on, when you go to a page with Chinese text, all you have to do is hold your mouse over the characters that you don’t know.  A small popup will appear with the pronunciation and the definition, and it will try to find whole multi-character words in the text as well.  This is great, because as you learn to read more, you use it less.  Plus, it provides a one-to-one mapping between Chinese characters and meaning.  Translation tools like Google Translate will usually translate the whole page at a time, losing the information about the characters, how they sound, which character relates to which English meaning, etc.

5.  Online Chinese-English dictionaries.  There are a lot of them; I usually use www.mandarintools.com, but that’s just because it’s easy to remember; the design is actually not that good (you can’t directly link to the dictionary, for example).

6.  Finally, don’t forget that you have to use a language to really learn it.  Make friends with Chinese people and surprise them with some Mandarin phrases.  It can be a bit nerve-racking at first, but once you’ve reached the level where they can understand you, it will help a lot.  It will also make you realize how little you really know and give you inspiration to learn more.

Of course, all these tips aside, classes really help a lot.  A good price for Chinese classes is about $35/hour.  Even $50/hour is ok if you have an engaging native-speaker for a teacher (who also knows enough English to answer questions easily) and a good class.

Hope this helps.  Have fun studying Chinese; I know I do!

好好学习天天向上！