1. There is no substitute for spending the hours learning Chinese. Dedicate 4 hours per day to studies.
2. If you're using cpod, listen to about two lessons per day. Shadow those lessons. Do not bother with looking at pinyin until you have shadowed 100 lessons. Set a goal of listening to 2 lessons a day, 5 days a week, and reviewing one day, and making up 10 sentences per lesson. By inference, you may end up learning about 20-50 new words per week. this should end up getting you to 1000 -2500 new words per year. 2500 words is a healthy working vocabulary. You will not be fluent, but you'll be doing ok.
3. listen to Chinese radio stations online. You will start hearing real world accents, slang, and listening at normal speed. You'll comprehend about 5-20% at first. This is frustrating, but normal.
4. If you're not in China, go immediately. If you're in China, practice speaking with locals. Take a class or 3 at one of the many Chinese schools set up to teach foreigners Chinese.
5. Repeat with new lessons until you've achieved the desired fluency.
pretzellogic
May 24, 2010, 12:14 AM1. There is no substitute for spending the hours learning Chinese. Dedicate 4 hours per day to studies.
2. If you're using cpod, listen to about two lessons per day. Shadow those lessons. Do not bother with looking at pinyin until you have shadowed 100 lessons. Set a goal of listening to 2 lessons a day, 5 days a week, and reviewing one day, and making up 10 sentences per lesson. By inference, you may end up learning about 20-50 new words per week. this should end up getting you to 1000 -2500 new words per year. 2500 words is a healthy working vocabulary. You will not be fluent, but you'll be doing ok.
3. listen to Chinese radio stations online. You will start hearing real world accents, slang, and listening at normal speed. You'll comprehend about 5-20% at first. This is frustrating, but normal.
4. If you're not in China, go immediately. If you're in China, practice speaking with locals. Take a class or 3 at one of the many Chinese schools set up to teach foreigners Chinese.
5. Repeat with new lessons until you've achieved the desired fluency.