I was in Beijing for two weeks, meeting up with my Chinese girlfriend for the first time. In preparation, I had been trying to learn Chinese on my own for a few months, but rather foolishly did not make the spoken language or vocabulary acquisition my main focus (only about 3 weeks in advance I started with the first of the Pimsleur Mandarin Chinese series, which proved to be the most useful). Hence, in practice my spoken Chinese was just plain horrible. If it was not for Pleco - and my girlfriend's own Chinese-English dictionary in her Nokia handset - she and I would have had a very hard time to communicate.
I ended up with about 400 words that I looked up in Pleco during those two weeks. On the plane back to Dublin I added all of those words as flashcards (in hindsight, it would have been much easier if I had done that immediately, but I did not know about the flashcard functionality). Much to my glee, there was audio pronunciation for all of the words and the ability to tap on the individual characters. However, after SRS testing the first 100 words I only had a success rate of 33%. Now that it has been testing the next 237 words it seems that my score will be a lot less than that. I hardly seem to be able to remember anything at all. Even words that I saw the day before are rarely ever remembered. I find myself trying to analyze the individual characters for clues, but this has worked only for very few words. Most of the characters simply do not make any sense at all. This made me think that perhaps I should get back to learning the individual characters first, using something like Skritter, Heisig's method and/or the etymology of the characters (e.g. zhongwen.com) - or perhaps just my word list for starters. I would expect that writing the words would help me remember them. Another thought was that if an example sentence could be added to a flashcard, the word could be learned in context and might be better remembered.

I will be going back to Beijing on April 6 and it would be great if I could learn these 400 words by then.

What do you find is the best learning strategy for new words? What has worked best for you?

P.S. I bought an iPhone just for Pleco, Google Translate, QQ and the upcoming Skritter app. Any expected release timeframe yet for the Skritter app? ;-)

I've found that if shortly after learning a brand new vocabulary word, I hear that word used on T.V. or read it in a book or article, my chances of remembering it go through the roof.

Conversely, if my only exposure to that word is the original flashcard that I learned it on, it takes me much, much longer to lock it into long-term memory.

Example sentences help, but there's no substitute for encountering the vocabulary in the wild. I think it has something to do with how the brain works.

Well, to start off, a class where you can practice speaking and pronunciation would help a lot, as you need a decent foundation before starting into flashcards, but:

Your Chinese girlfriend who you previously never met and can barely communicate with? Uh?

My Chinese girlfriend who I met during my best friend's wedding in Belgium in May of last year. We had been keeping in touch using QQ ever since.

2 hour daily Skype sessions with a Chinese teacher (New Practical Chinese Reader) have already been scheduled starting next Friday.

SRS should not be giving you the next 237 words if you still are only at 33% success on the first 100... is that really what was happening with Pleco's SRS? I wonder if it needs to be configured better.

You should add your own example sentences to the words, yes.

So romantic, good luck to you!

Pleco's SRS has a setting within it that will limit the number of "unlearned" words to less than X - I find 50 is good number to use which avoids being constantly overwhelmed with hard material. Words which are learned (intervals longer than 6 days) will not count towards this, so you will still see as many reviews of learned words as scheduled. The default setting is 200 unlearned which I find is unreasonably high in cases where most of the characters are foreign (manageable if its just new words using old characters).

If your target is better conversation for April I'd say to worry less about characters and much more about spoken/listening practice. I wouldn't really worry about those 400 words either; at least not more so than the first volume or two of NPCR. Besides your tutoring sessions with NPCR (which is good in my opinion), you should also be spending a lot of time reading those texts aloud on your own as well as viewing the videos/audio (search YouTube) of the lessons to ensure you're able to follow.

Also highly recommended is a daily lesson of Popup Chinese or ChinesePod. This will help hugely with listening comprehension and is easy to squeeze in on your commute or during the gym. Trial periods are available for both and Popup Chinese has a free stream in iTunes.

SRS is only a useful supplement to other learning - memorizing characters will not help you with face to face spoken interaction (until maybe much, much later when you need a literate-level of Chinese to discuss higher topics). You might also do a search at chinese-forums.com as they have a big archive of good discussions, some of which will surely overlap with your current dilemma.

Good luck.

Hi all, thank you for all the good advice. I will try the Pleco settings, as well as Popup Chinese, which seems to be "Made in Beijing" (and not just Beijing, but Chaoyang District, where my girlfriend lives). Am I correct in thinking that this is similar to the Pimsleur Mandarin Chinese series? Should I still bother with the 74 half hour Pimsleur sessions I have left to go or would it be better to dive directly into Popup Chinese?

Popup Chinese is well suited to picking and choosing topics of interest where you know you need work. Pimsleur is probably better suited to a logical progression. Both are probably worth your time. I've only tried the former so I can only say I find Popups dialogues to be authentic and useful.

Is Popup Chinese's download only option ("basic access") enough or do I need full access to their web site ("premium access")?
I will continue with Pimsleur for the time being.

I'm pretty sure Popup Chinese's basic option allows downloads of any lessons (but not extras). I personally never use their website, but get their lessons through iTunes (search for their podcast and then there should be some 600 in the archive - either download all or download selected lessons).

I think focusing on progressing through Pimsleur and complimenting it with additional, related lessons each day from Popup is a good plan.

I think Pimsleur has value for drilling pronounciation and learning some default phrases that can come in handy. But, as others mention, it's best as a complement to other efforts (which you seem to be doing).

I'm using Skype for some lessons too. What school are you using? And how much per hour?

I will not be starting my Skype lessons until Friday. Not using a school, but rather an experienced middle school teacher from Shanxi directly. The cost is $5 per hour. I intend to do 2 hours a day.

If someone at Pimsleur had their heads screwed on right, they'd develop some sort of skritter-like SRS software. The problem with Pimsleur is you waste so much time on stuff you already know. Even though I understand it was one of the pioneers of SRS, their current implementation is a kind of one-size fits all solution from the pre-computer age and it's nowhere near as efficient as it could be. Pimsleur's got to have thousands of audio clips of sentences and phrases in its library, it shouldn't be that insurmountably difficult to turn those clips into flashcards with a simple SRS interface with self-grading and a decent scheduling algorithm.

Of course, as others say, even a skritterized Pimsleur would only be one of many tools and wouldn't replace real-life interaction, but a more efficient way to learn the basic conversation-starting building blocks would be really nice.

$5 is low, at least based on my limited experience trying to shop around. How did you make the connection? If the instruction is good, I would be pretty happy with that arrangement if I were you.

italki.com is your friend.

I started my first (one hour) Skype lesson today. The teacher (mrs. Cheng) is really good. She does not just follow the course material, but also goes more in-depth (e.g. you learn about 妈妈， 爸爸，哥哥 and 弟弟 in chapter 2 of the New Practical Chinese Reader, but she also taught me about all other family members and we had basic conversations).

She explained to me that, in China, Chinese children learn 10 new characters every day, which they have to write 10 times each and pronounce. So after my daily 2 hour lesson with her I would like to do the same thing, in Skritter. Is this at all possible? Or will I have to write the characters on paper when I first learn them and can I only use SRS in Skritter to help memorize them?

"Is this at all possible? Or will I have to write the characters on paper when I first learn them and can I only use SRS in Skritter to help memorize them?"

I think this is exactly what the scratchpad is for - copy and paste the words for the day into the scratchpad function and go through 10 cycles.

Good to hear the lessons are going well, best of luck!

I signed up today.
Where do I find the scratchpad? You say this is a function within Skritter? When I click on Study, I can select a specific list to study and get to write one character after the other. The only way to write one character 10 times seems to be to use the Erase function?

http://www.skritter.com/study link at the bottom of this page.

Adding characters normally should work fine.

What will be too difficult however is adding 10 characters per day from your textbook. While the words may be basic, the characters will often not be, being made out of multiple parts.

Eg, the character for thank you has three parts in it (谢谢). It's going to be very difficult to remember all this.

What would work better is to start off with basic characters, rather than the characters for the words you're learning. Have a look at either the radicals list, or Heisigs list, or both. Once you've got some of the basics down, then start learning characters from the textbook.

Off topic but when i met my Chinese wife to be some 15 years ago I did learn one Chinese very popular love song. it is very fun to go out and do Karaoke 卡拉ＯＫ(kǎlā O K) with Chinese friends/girl fried. Big success with both her and my to be parents in law. Since the lyrics gives context it where surprisingly easy to learn the words. However, the usage of the sentences is on the other hand not really common but the words are. If you like to try an really easy one, try this: 月亮代表我的心 (yuèliang dàibiǎo wǒ de xīn).The moon represents my heart. This version is the one most Chinese remember: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51xS4yXbryc&feature=related An alternative version that is sung by a non Chinese speaking western singer is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eueEqdTz7iU Hayley Westenra in duet with Shin.

The lyrics for this is:

1:
你问我爱你有多深
nǐ wèn wǒ ài nǐ yǒu duō shēn
You ask how deeply I love you,

我爱你有几分
wǒ ài nǐ yǒu jǐ fēn
and just how great my love is.

我的情也真
wǒ de qíng yě zhēn
My affection is real,

我的爱也真
wǒ de ài yě zhēn
and my love is true.

月亮代表我的心
yuèliang dàibiǎo wǒ de xīn
The moon represents my heart.


2:

你问我爱你有多深
nǐ wèn wǒ ài nǐ yǒu duō shēn
You ask how deeply I love you,

我爱你有几分
wǒ ài nǐ yǒu jǐ fēn
and just how great my love is.

我的情不移
wǒ de qíng bùyí
My affection does not waver

我的爱不变
wǒ de ài bùbiàn
and my love doesn’t change.

月亮代表我的心
yuèliang dàibiǎo wǒ de xīn
The moon represents my heart.

3:

轻轻的一个吻
qīngqīng de yīgè wěn
So soft was the kiss

已经打动我的心
yǐjīng dǎdòng wǒ de xīn
that has moved my heart.

深深的一段情
shēnshēn de yīduàn qíng
Such a deep affection

教我思念到如今
jiào wǒ sīniàn dào rújīn
makes me long for you now.

4:

你问我爱你有多深
nǐ wèn wǒ ài nǐ yǒu duō shēn
You ask how deeply I love you,

我爱你有几分
wǒ ài nǐ yǒu jǐ fēn
and just how great my love is.

你去想一想
nǐ qù xiǎng yī xiǎng
Consider this,

你去看一看
nǐ qù kàn yī kàn
and look above.

月亮代表我的心
yuèliang dàibiǎo wǒ de xīn
The moon represents my heart.


Repeat 3

Repeat 4

你去想一想
nǐ qù xiǎng yī xiǎng
Consider this,

你去看一看
nǐ qù kàn yī kàn
and look above.

月亮代表我的心
yuèliang dàibiǎo wǒ de xīn
The moon represents my heart.

sorry for this off topic post but I am still an sucker for romance. Nowadays however i mostly sing this to my children. Works great as well.

@Byzanti: trying to learn characters is one of the first things I tried to do. When I briefly started to learn Japanese again at age 25 (I am now 36), Remembering the Kanji was a great help that helped me memorize hundreds of kanji in just mere months. When I tried to do the same with hanzi 6 months ago I found the Harbaugh deck in Anki to be of great help, as it provides the etymology and explanation of the component parts of each character. My mind does not deal well with crazy stories, but stuff in enough historical facts related to a character and I will remember. With which I just want to say that I realize fully well that it will be hard to do this for 10 characters every day. But I nevertheless would like to try it. The New Practical Chinese reader seems to introduce about 10 new characters per lesson and I want to at least try to keep up.

@Mandarinboy: I tried to sing songs in Chinese mere months after I got to know my Chinese wife to be. She is a fan of 王菲 so I made a PDF of the Red Bean song lyrics, with hanzi, pinyin and English translation (you know, to get the feeling of the song right). However, I sing so horribly out of key that she keeps the song on her phone - to make her laugh (which, I guess, is good in a way). I also cannot for the life of me remember the lyrics, having to refer back to the lyrics sheet whenever I want to listen to the song. She actually likes the song that you quoted (she was humming it while we were taking a walk on campus) and was surprised that I knew it as well. Perhaps I will have another go at singing - and trying to use lyrics to remember vocabulary. May God help us all.

"What will be too difficult however is adding 10 characters per day from your textbook. While the words may be basic, the characters will often not be, being made out of multiple parts. "

I strongly disagree. Most Chinese children learn 10 characters a day through brute repetition; there's no reason that an educated adult using SRS can't keep up with that pace, particularly for the first 1,000-1,500 where it is mostly low hanging fruit. I also think that books like NPCR do mostly provide characters and words in a logical order, despite the occasional tough or useless one that may throw you off.

"With which I just want to say that I realize fully well that it will be hard to do this for 10 characters every day. But I nevertheless would like to try it. The New Practical Chinese reader seems to introduce about 10 new characters per lesson and I want to at least try to keep up."

I think it is feasible, if you can commit to Skritter'ing 10 minutes, three times per day. Try not to add more than 10, and try to have a day or two each week just for reviews (no new words added, or perhaps just the one or two stragglers from the last lesson you were on). As I said above, after the first 1000 characters (not words) your pace on *characters* will naturally slow, but increase with respect to words formed from the characters you've learned.

约翰, with your experience with Japanese, you'll be fine then!

@Byzanti: I would not say that. I stopped learning Japanese at around 400 kanji and basic children's stories in hiragana/katakana. A whole decade later, my memory seems to have more holes than Swiss cheese, so learning hanzi will pose quite a challenge. But I did my first 10 hanzi yesterday and it was a lot of fun. Addictively fun, as I keep wanting to go back and learn more. But I will resist and stick to 10 a day. Steady as she goes...

i need to find out how to set pleco similarly to how i was learning kanji for japanese - go through a set of 5, writing about 7 times them whilst repeating the english and reading(s), then go over them once. do the next set, and test the one you did etc etc (mixing up the order and that kind of thing). this was following chapters of a kanji textbook, so you got them in order.

if you've got the time and can be bothered, you can cover quite a few characters - i graduated from high school and had nothing to do over the summer holidays, i recall smashing out >100 in one day once. just started on the pleco flashcards with mandarin, getting waaaaay too much new material in the sets, so looks like i need to set it up properly

i studied at a university over there for a year (in japanese) and (at least used to) have a pretty decent handle on the ~<2000 characters, which is helping me now that i've started mandarin. obviously the readings are different (though there are some similarities) but being familiar/having a system/remembering characters by their radicals (and in turn remember vocab by their characters) is always good

As far as Popup Chinese being "Made in Beijing", ChinesePod is "Made in Shanghai" but doesn't use Shanghai dialect. Putonhua or Standard Chinese is used which is probably what Popup uses.. The pronunciation of putonghua is based on the pronunciation used in Beijing, but vocabulary differs a bit just as vocabulary differs by region in English.

You can try out ChinesePod without paying, but after that you pay and I'm not entirely sure, but "pay" seems to mean that everything they offer must be paid for. There are a few lessons on iTunes. You may get the .mp3s like Popup Chinese, though, but I can no longer find them on their site. I still get them and I don't have a subscription.

So, you might want to try out Chinesepod at some point when you're further along with your study of Chinese.

More than 100 a day? I am envious. After 7 days of Chinese lessons using the New Practical Chinese Reader textbook from 5:30 AM until 7:30 AM and 4 to 5 hours of study after work, I have learned exactly 106 characters, but am still 65 characters behind. And today lesson 9 was added to the list: a whopping 37 new characters. I would like to slow down, but unfortunately I booked my 2 hour a day classes until March 16. I estimate we will complete the first book within two weeks.
The most time consuming part for me is developing mnemonics. I have resorted to studying the etymology (oracle bones, bronze and seal characters). Which is really interesting and quite fun, because you learn how every character developed throughout history and discover the true meaning of all character components, mangled beyond recognization and/or warped in meaning as they may be sometimes in the simplified version.
At least in the past week, I have found that having an intimate knowledge of the components of each character makes learning new characters a lot easier, which in turn makes learning words a lot easier. I have a big problem with the tones and listening comprehension though. I may very well be tone deaf. Ever since my left ear drum was stung by a wasp at age 8 I have had difficulty understanding/internalizing songs and spoken language (even in my own language). :-/

I have not had time to do any Popup Chinese or Pimsleur since I started my lessons. But the daily 2 hour lessons are like a live podcast. :-)
My daily schedule is: 2 hours of lessons (New Practical Chinese Reader), 1 to 2 hours of vocabulary review (Pleco Chinese flashcards) and 3 to 4 hours of studying characters.

i used the basic/intermediate kanji books from bonjinsha. i had already done the basic ones, so had around 500 characters. the chapters had themes going, and started with basic characters, so i had a bit of a background
i wouldve been studying a few hours a day, rote learning the characters. when i did 100+ i would have spent several hours - i didnt have anything else to do haha
i dont find mnemonics to be of much help/have never really tried them. i'm quite interested in the etymology but haven't had too much of a look into. i found it quite interesting seeing charts of how katakana etc was derived from kanji

at the moment i'm trying to get up to speed with the mandarin readings using pleco, but i need to adapt the flashcard testing towards my method. i think i just need to divide the sections/categories into lots of 20 so it's more manageable/i can target things better - at the moment it's throwing all 100 at me/limit to x new each day is giving me the shits/i selectively only want to review only the a particular set of cards

It's throwing all 321 cards at me when I choose to continue when Pleco says there is nothing else to review. There always is something new to review, because I add a new NPCR lesson to the list every time I finish it. I do not know what would happen if I would only select the past two lessons to review. Would it still remember the results for all of the other cards? Or would those results be lost and would I have to start over again?

I noticed that with the character and pinyin showing, I get a score of 97-99% (easy to tap wrong on an iPhone when you are going through the words at a high speed). However, my character recognition is horrible at times (especially for new characters). So I disabled the pinyin and went back to Pleco's default of only showing the characters. I figure it will force me to read the characters and inevitably improve recognition.

I think the best way to learn any language is no shortcut but: practice makes perfect! Since you have a Chinese girlfriend, it is a great advantage to learn Chinese compared with other Chinese learners, right? So read and speak as much as you can!