My Method

Just curious if you are reading the words in pinyin or Hanzi? Also, did you start with reading the pinyin at the very start with Chinese pod, or do you listen to the lesson a few times before you look at the pinyin?

I am finding that if I let myself look at the pinyin too soon it becomes a crutch, and is slowing down my acquisition of Hanzi. My cPod workflow is:

1. Listen the lesson first w/o reading either pinyin or hanzi. At least once.

2. Checkout the dialogue in pinyin to just to confirm I heard the pronunciation right. I can skip this step occassionally when it's obvious to me, but that will typically only happen when I already know the vocab.

3. Look at the hanzi, make a quick determination for each new character if it's something I'm just going to shoot for recognition for now, or a character made of building blocks I already know and should definately learn to produce immediately.

4. Whichever the case, I then aim for being able to read all the lesson materials in hanzi w/o pinyin support. But particularly for characters I assess as "recognition only" I try not to get too bogged down by integrating the new hanzi in my long-term retention workflow (i.e.., SRS). At this point it's about being comfortable with the character in context.

As I'm quite a beginner (and a ginormous nerd who happens to enjoy a methodical approach), for the moment I'm focusing my hanzi acquisition efforts with a text that teaches characters in a planned sequence. That seems to help solidly acquire (and easily recognize in new contexts) high frequency elements and stroke types.

A little tiny bit, not in any disciplined way the way I'd like. I have several work friends (some Chinese born, some first-generations, and one friend in particular who split her childhood between Taiwan and New Jersey) who help me out in drips and drabs. But I hate to impose on them too much -- after all, they are work colleagues. I suspect it takes superhuman patience to talk to someone at my level. I tend to rely on them more for reference. ("Can I say...?" or "What's wrong with ...?").

There's a Chinese restaurant where I'm a regular and I eat there pretty often. The staff there got really excited when they knew I was learning Chinese and wanted to help me out. Everyone there is very kind about saying everything to me in Chinese, and then explaining it in English when I look blank. But still I sense the patience with my slowness and inability to understand anything wears thin pretty fast. Basically now it's a regular joke when I leave that everyone in the restaurant looks up and shouts 再见!