My study strategy

Great! The fact that you have set specific a goal is more than I can say, honestly. My goal is to become fluent but that is a very unspecific goal. There are so many different levels of fluency. I think it is awesome that you are so dedicated in your approach! I take a bit more of a relaxed approach and that works well for me. Surely the academic approach works better for some than others. Myself, I am just not the sit-down-do-drills kind of learner. I need to pick things up more naturally. I think it is safe to say that when one takes your approach, he/she will learn more in a smaller timeframe than I learn in that same timeframe with my relaxed approach but my approach does have its pros as well. They both have ups and downs but either way, you have to do what works best for you. I appreciate your posting! Thanks

Jordan

I totaly agree, each and everyone shold choose the approach that suits them best. I have actualy studied some Chinese in Bejing a decade ago ( just for fun). What i remember where that every one of my co-students had their own study habits. My room mate choosed the casanova aproach,  go to bars each night and hit on girls and talk drunken Chinese with them;-) The Japanese only used dictionaries since they did know almost all the characters etc. In the end, I where the only student at my classes. That where times:-). At that time it where hard to study since my teachers did not speak any English. Now there are so many good resources with on line classes, pods, books, cd, softwar etc. There is realy no excuse not to learn Chinese. As long as we make it fun to study and make it in our own pace it is totaly doable to be fluent in Chinese. I like to spend a lot of time with the characters so it will take me longer to be fluent in Chinese. I have many friend that only goes for learning to speak and understand spoken Chinese. That is ok too even thought it is to limited  for me.

How to use your children to teach you Chinese.

I am ashamed to admit but my 3 year old daughter is actually better than me in Chinese. Maybe not reading and writing but at least in talking and listeningJ

Anyway, what we do at nights when we are playing is that I place my flashcards in piles on the floor. She is picking cards from the piles and shows me the back of the cards and I try to write the character or the correct pinyin. Since she can’t read I have to tell her if I am correct or wrong. If I am wrong she can go and have a grape. Yes, she loves when dad is wrong;-) Silly but works very god. Since her Chinese is actually relatively god but on a Childs level it suits me good to practice Chinese with her. When this is done we usually watch some Chinese cartoons on DVD before it is time to read a Chinese night story for her. This way I get the spoken Chinese listening, writing and reading. At the same time I do spend time with my family. Not bad at all I must say. She is still picking up Chinese many times faster than me but I can live with that.

When I create my flash cards I usually make two versions, one with the character on one side and pinyin on the other and one with the character on one side and the translation on the other. This way I can test me in both the correct tones and on writing the correct character from the translation. I do have all the cards in electronic format as well but I still enjoy using the paper versions from time to time to repeat.

I too have an old mind. Most of my time studying Chinese has been on my own. I too wrote my own flashcard program to run on my cellphone. Then I took a book of characters and typed it in. It drags me through in the order recommended in the book and it includes a few words that use each character. The great thing is that I always have my phone with me so any time I am standing in line or otherwise idle, I am flipping through characters. I have stayed at it pretty steady for about a year and a half. Every now and then I tinker with the evaluation and promotion rules and start over. Each time I find that there are many characters that I have forgotten. But each time through it goes faster. What I would like to do is to find books that are at my reading level. That seems like it would be a good addition. It is interesting having learned hundreds of characters but not know how to use them. It is also interesting to be able to read more of the text at the bottom of the screen on CCTV4 than I can hear much less understand. But for some strang reason. I'm hooked. Luckily I think I am making progress...

Since you like flashcards you might also want to try out a Leitner system. I have found it to be very helpful. I am writing on an longer post about how to use flashcards in an more effective approcah. Since I am traveling a lot right now i might now be able to finish it until I am back from my Asian tour. Basicaly i use the flashcard as an base for reading, learning to write and to use the words in sentences. This is speading up my usage of the words a lot. I love flashcards but that is very personal, many hates them. If you like to learn to write Chinese i still think it is a very good idea to use them. When using an Leitner system you put your cards in different piles depending on how well you know them. Easy and heavily repeated words such as I, she, to be etc. usualy needs very little repetetion while other complex and rarely used ones need much more. I am using an electronic version of the cards that let med easely change them between the piles and also keeps track on how many words and characters i realy know. I love figures so for me it is a goal in it self to be able tos ay, now I hav learned 100 new characters this month e.g. I am currenlty learning to program for the Iphone so i think that I will try to do a program pf the phone so I can use that instead of my laptop.