How to make progress in learning chinese?

Allison, those questions are evergreens ;) The bottom line is: Keep up the learning. It's all about staying-power. In my experience, the actual method you prefer is not having that big of an impact as long as you keep moving on. Choose the one most comfortable for you right now and of course you can switch learning approaches over time. It should always have some fun factor, otherwise you burn out (be aware, however, that some learners have masochistic tendencies and a fun method might be different for them than for you). You need to enjoy the ride - including the occational challenges. CPod is actually a good place for the "have fun" approach. You will run into those frustrating "I still do not get it" situations regularly on your journey. Success comes slowly and unnoticed with this language. Sometimes you need to look back instead of forward to notice the actual progress you made. Regarding retention: It becomes easier over time. The more you know, you easier new content sticks. A sticky spiderweb of knowledge. Actually after a while - and you find some discussions here on that, too - you might even become addicted to learning Chinese... See you around here! Henning

你好 try learning the characters you like first or that mean something to you ie your name favorite colour words you like and try to fit them in to your learning. hope that helps it worked for me. 好运

I agree with the previous comments; find things you enjoy and mix them up with your standard learning. Find an easy pop song or two and slowly slog through it, or find a Chinese children's storybook and try and make sense of it, or make weird little dialogues with what you know, maybe even make a list of the harshest insults you can find-- whatever floats your boat. Just make sure there's some element of enjoyment in there somewhere.

Don't worry too much about it. It may seem like you're getting nowhere but every time you sit down to study you learn a little bit more and eventually you'll get there. One thing I find helpful is to keep a 'logbook' to keep track of my studies. I just use 5-10 minutes a day to write down what I've been studying and how I did it. I also consider what I've learned and write down what I'm able to do. For example Saturday I talked with a Chinese girl via Skype and while we spoke English most of the time, I discovered I was able to understand the simple phrases she spoke in Chinese and I hadn't expected that at all. When I write something like this down I remind myself that I've actually learned a lot and if I'm feeling frustrated I just have to look at my notes to see that in fact it's not impossible to move forward even though it seems like it sometimes.

"A sticky spiderweb of knowledge." I'm going to have to remember that one. I wish I could be so concise when I try to explain things. ;-)

I sometimes feel I haven't progressed at all, I have but but it was that slow I didn't notice it. It's like mould growing in your sink. ;)

Try to stick to your level, not to many new words. That can easily be frustrating.