What constitutes a good speaking-centric learning programme? Right now, I am doing the following:

(1) Writing (memorizing and writing characters and words using Skritter)
(2) Reading (reading the characters and words I learned from the short stories of the same textbook)
(3) Listening (listening to the short stories while reading the text using the audio included with the textbook, writing down the short stories when doing a dictation)
(4) Speaking (reading the same short stories out loud to a tutor who corrects my pronunciation, trying to have small conversations that are either related or totally unrelated to the text)

When I first started to learn Chinese, it was suggested somewhere that much more progress could be made by just learning heaps and heaps of words (the pinyin, that is), building and learning sentences with those words and using those to build conversations.
However, I feel that the points above need to be done all at once to be able to learn the language properly. I tried to get away with learning just the pinyin, but would just keep on forgetting it time and time again. The characters serve as memory hooks for the pinyin (and vice versa), as do the reading and listening in context. I intend to add multiple sources of input so that they can all reinforce each other. It is a very time consuming approach (some 100 words and 200 characters a month), but how else can you properly build the vocabulary you need in order to have a half decent conversation? If there are better approaches to this, I would very much like to know.
I have on average 5 hours a day I can dedicate to learning Chinese. The main goal is to be able to converse fluently in a wide range of topics and have a listening comprehension that is more or less at the same level, but at the same time I do not want to walk around in Beijing and not be able to use the bus on my own or find a store or restaurant because I cannot read the characters. At my current rate, it might take 2 years or more to get there. In terms of the required vocabulary, that is. My pronunciation remains horrible. I fear I may be tone deaf, but listening to and parroting the natives for long enough will hopefully remedy that.

What is your take on this?

I would say forget learning heaps of words outside of context... unless you already have a very strong grasp of the large majority of characters used in word creation. I often find that the English definitions of many Chinese words are way to far removed from the actual meaning for one to simple study a word and use it correctly.

Your current approach sounds good, since every step is reenforcing the former, with step four most likely giving you the largest advance in your speaking and listening abilities. A good tutor should be able to help you use the Chinese you already know (plus new vocab) to share information about the stories you have just learned. If you have the time, I would recommend doing something similar with small audio conversations as well, since it helps to focus your listen skills on picking up important vocabular and sentence patterns, rather than understanding every single word.

As for fixing your pronunciation, I'm curious what methods are you using. Parroting will only take you so far, since there is a disconnect between what our brain hears and the sounds that our mouth is producing. The best bet would be to find a teacher who has a specialed background in pronunciation and a good ear for tone mistakes. Of course, increased exposure will help your ear to differentiate sounds as well, but that can take a lot more time, and it usually doesn't fix many of your own speaking mistakes (based on how I hear foreigners who have been living in Taiwan for years without actual mistake corrections).

When I started learning Chinese I tended to spend a lot of time focusing on mouth and tongue position for making difficult sounds, practicing them over and over again, sometimes in front of a mirror. I was trying to mimic not only the pronunciation (the sound) of native speakers, but how they were shaping their mouth, and placing their tongue with every word. I don't know if that makes a lot of sense, but it worked well for me, to the point that I pronunciation has been certified as standard by the Taiwanese Department of Education.

One other thing. You might try writing tone marks above characters as you you are reading to help solidify the tones, and also have a native speaker read the text so that you get used to where pauses, tone shifts, and inflection occurs inside of individual sentences.

I've said it elsewhere, but my impression is that your approach to learning characters is very academic. That's fine if you gets you going, but those that take this approach should realize it *does* come at the loss of time to study in other areas. I've also made it clear I think that knowledge is esoteric and not of much use to those whose primary goal is interacting with native Chinese. Now of course opinions differ here and some think digging into characters closely really helps long term, but when you see others who go with a strictly memorization approach and learn a new character reasonably well in three minutes (see link below) its hard to see the value in studying a single character for so long. I'd argue that learning characters/words quickly and then getting to a literate level is a great way to learn characters sufficiently in context from reading actual texts (which I think is your goal with digging deep into individual characters).

Besides that I think you're right to balance between the 4 points you mentioned. I think that your timing should be such that character/vocabulary acquisition is not taking more than a quarter to third of the time you spend learning Chinese (in the first year, say, when vocab acquisition is key), although beyond that share that you'll of course balance as you see fit for your needs (between reading *texts*, listening and production). Character learning should only be seen as a minor step to getting to these actually harder challenges. (But of course it is a huge minor step for those in the beginner-intermediate area.)

Regarding what you can do to improve your balance of studies, I can't add a lot here that wasn't already discussed in better detail in a post I'll link below. The theme of that topic is moving from intermediate to advanced level Chinese, but the breakdown of study techniques and priorities are applicable to all levels I think (so long as you adjust the content used!).
http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/34107-what-level-of-chinese-can-you-achieve-outside-of-china/page__st__60__p__255527#entry255527

Your original question is: "What constitutes a good speaking-centric learning programme?"

I learned Spanish in the classroom for 4 years. When I arrived in Spain, I had to find an apartment, and had to use the phone to respond to ads. It was absolutely impossible. However, after a year of living in Spain, I could converse with ease.

That has pretty much been the way of learning languages for me. Learning in the classroom can hone certain skills; in my experience conversation isn't one of them. Just as I would not recommend you go to social events to learn characters, I do not recommend designing a study curriculum for improving speaking skills.

I'm not sure where you live, but I would invest some time looking for a Chinese community center. Also, a Chinese Christian church in your area, with services in Mandarin. Lots of recent Chinese immigrants who go to Chinese Christian churches aren't even Christian, but use the services for a sense of community.

I would also go to Chinese restaurants to study on the off hours, maybe 2 PM when it's not busy. Keep trying different ones, until a waiter or owner takes notice of you and you can strike a conversation.

Columbia Law School has center for studying Chinese law. The professor who runs it, Benjamin Liebman, once got a part time job delivering food for a Chinese restaurant. Not because he needed the money, but because he wanted to practice his spoken Chinese.

I want to bottomline what I just said. Designing a study curriculum to get better at unstructured conversation sounds like designing a weight training program to prepare for a marathon.

I suppose you will marginally improve with your training. But the best, most effective way to train is to just get out there and run.

@icebear: I can only dream of spending a mere couple of minutes to memorize a character. They have to make sense to me in one way or another or otherwise they do not stick. Even when they do finally make sense to me it takes many iterations before they finally do stick. It is almost as if I am doing rote memorization through SRS.
When I finally started to learn words after not having Skrittered during a two week holiday, I found I had already forgotten a lot of them so I had to start all over. They stick a lot easier the second time around though (in part due to the fact that I am learning them in related pairs and in part because I already laid the groundwork before I went on the holiday).
I have a feeling that things will become much easier once I will know the bulk of the various separate components. And I should review every day, even when on a holiday, or else I will continue to suffer one month delays to get back up to speed again.

@atdlouis: I agreed with my wife that I will listen to her reciting her English lessons and she will do the same for me, correcting each other whenever necessary. I got a $7.49 a month Skype subscription towards that purpose. Hopefully the frustration that will inevitably be involved will not lead to a divorce. :-/
Regarding your "Designing a study curriculum to get better at unstructured conversation sounds like designing a weight training program to prepare for a marathon." statement: I got into an accident while preparing for a marathon some 9 years ago so weight training was my only option to stay in shape after that. Learning Chinese bears a lot of resemblance to that: you need a steady flow of input, a lot of heavy lifting to convert that input, always reach for the skies and stick to it every day if you want to achieve something.

@skritterjake: Right now I am only parroting. When I learned French, our teacher put a heavy emphasis on correct pronunciation and mouth and tongue positions in the beginning. I obtained a Yale University textbook and audio companion about this specific subject. I also got some software. More information after the break.

@icebear: I am reading through the posts provided in the link that you gave me and saw the following in http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/29300-memorizing-vocabulary-at-the-advanced-level/page__p__231961#entry231961:

"90 mins every day does seem a big committment, but it equals 1000 words a month and it is only for a fairly limited time. I think I'll be halving it early in 2011.
I imagine there are plenty of people who would laugh at all this heavy review of vocab, and advise more and more reading instead but I'm fairly happy with recent progress and, as I say, I am reading lots too. Though I do have my own doubts occasionally...."

What I take away from this is that:

- there are people with an incredible memory (it took me two months to learn 400 characters with a lot more time and effort, never mind words);
- everybody is different and therefore there is no single "optimal" way to learn a language. Everybody should find what works for them and stick to it.

@skritterjake: I will create a new topic for the resources I have at my disposal to (hopefully) get a better handle on tones.

I would simply suggest making friends with Chinese people and hanging out with them, especially those who don't speak good English yet. That's a lot better for conversation than academic study and more fun too.

Hi Flute, it is hard to find Chinese people (never mind Chinese people who do not speak good English yet) in the Irish countryside. :-)

Ah, I haven't read the forums so much, so didn't realize your predicament. Have you tried language exchange via Skype via Worldfriends.tv or mylanguageexchange.com? I still think it's better to try to have a natural conversation with somebody, although it will be harder if there are no Chinese people around!

Hi Flute, I do have a Chinese wife but we are both not big talkers - or fans of the telephone for that matter (to put it mildly). I speak when spoken to at work (colleagues at Microsoft who need help, customers, etc.) but never longer than necessary. Outside of work, I only go to the gym (where I push iron in silence), cook and study Chinese. I do not socialize, but enjoy watching people as they go about their daily lives on the few occasions I do leave the house (a quiet walk along the canal or a round trip to the supermarket).
I only have 419 characters and 194 words under my belt (according to Skritter; 468 words according to Pleco) right now. It seems better to build up some vocabulary and work on my listening comprehension and speaking skills first, as my wife seems to be the only one who understands me. I understand very little of what her family says and vice versa. If I ever want to live and work in Beijing, I will have to build a vocabulary of about 4000 characters and 10000 words (average mainland Joe or Jane vocab), so it makes sense to work towards that level as quickly as possible (now only at 10% and 4% for characters and words, respectively), investing as much time as possible into it every day, and introduce any new vocabulary I pick up along the way into conversations with my wife, tutor, etc.

@范博涵 The following advice is close to what was suggested by others on Chinese-forums.com at some point; I think its tedious for some but in your particular circumstances may be one of your best bets at getting to a conversational level (or at least comprehending others!) independently.

Find a lower level Chinese TV series - there are many good suggestions at http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/24097-tv-series-recommendations-and-index-thread/
Commit to watching 1 episode a week in the following fashion:
1) Aim to watch and learn from 10 minutes a day of the chosen show. By this I mean watch and pause essentially at every line to read the subtitles and then take down any words you don't recognize. When you are done doing this (which can be incredibly time consuming initially) rewatch that 10 minutes at the end without pausing
2) Add those new words to Skritter or some other form of review which you at least look at a few times each day during the week of that episode (you could always add to Skritter lists without actually studying them, if the volume is too large to study 'formally').
3) Rewatch the episode in full, without pausing, at the end of the week (weekend).
4) Move onto the next episode the following week
5) A few months later go back and rewatch the first episode on a spare day - you should find it much easier to follow than before!

I've employed this method at varying levels of strictness and feel it does help listening comprehension significantly. The nice thing about a TV show is that its mostly conversational and mostly using modern language (no historical dramas please!). Vocabulary in a series tends to become repetitive at some point so as you progress in a series you don't have to look up quite so much each episode. 10 minutes (of show time) per day may take an hour to gloss for new words, but I feel its more productive and authentic than trying to crush through a chapter of NPRC each day or through news papers, etc. After a month or two doing this you should notice improvement in your listening comprehension - at the very least of the stock conversation in the show, even if some specific nouns or verbs are lost to you. That's progress and after doing it long enough I think you'd be in a good position to follow the conversations around you.

As I said I've done this at varying levels of strictness - it can be fairly tedious at times. Still, it does feel incredibly beneficial, and I've also grown interested in the show I'm following (奋斗 - search on YouTube, where there is endless Chinese TV content if you just know what to search for), which makes it better. Plus once you have the names and bantar figured out you can even just cruise through episodes to reinforce that banter without diving into the business or relationship specific key words (if those don't interest you). That can also serve as a decent confidence builder ("Hey, at least I'm understanding half of everything being said in a for-native-speakers show!").

As far as improving production - I think the above method at least helps by getting you comfortable with common conversations which will then come to mind when you need them. Even better would be to review the new words with a tutor, who maybe can suggest which are to be prioritized and practiced in speaking lessons.

icebear, that seems like a very good idea that was also reflected in the English learning video I found when I watched the video weirdesky posted in the "Master the tones" thread: listening and transcribing leads to better understanding, which in turn should lead to better conversational abilities.
I will attempt to incorporate this into my study regime. I just hope there will be enough time to do anything else besides studying characters and new words. If I could complete my reviews in 30 minutes every day and then learn 10 new words in another 30 minutes (like you) I would have plenty of time to do this for an hour, read for another hour, etc.
I managed to complete my reviews in exactly 30 minutes yesterday, but that is only because I previously learned the material.

@atdlouis I took the opposite approach with Spanish - I learned via conversation with one-on-one tutors, supplemented with Pimsleur and flash cards, and got to fluency in a couple of years. I'm a big believer in the power of social context to make the language that you're learning actually MEAN something emotionally.

@范博涵 You need to set limits on certain aspects of your studies, otherwise they'll dominate and you'll never study other important aspects of the language. No matter what don't study strictly characters/vocab (lists, SRS, components, whatever) for more than a hour a day (out of your four). I think most students take a lot of comfort in doing SRS because its so well structured and the results are easily quantifiable (if not verifiable); this is a big mistake though.

Devote another hour to the TV show transcription routine - not with the aim of memorizing every word in that list, but merely the exercise of looking up characters more quickly using handwriting in Pleco as well as to get a better ear for the spoken language.

That still leaves 2 hours unused in your daily routine (I think you said you do about 4 hours a day?). Find some other productive Chinese activities - reviewing old dialogues in a textbook, listening to podcasts (even the lowest level ones), a italki tutor, and so on. During these activities you can glance at definitions in Pleco as needed, but make it only a tool for quick verification of a definition, not a 40 minute tangent on one character. Don't let studying characters, vocab lists and handwriting dominate to the detriment of other important skills.

Decide what you think is a reasonable amount of time to spend on strictly vocab studying each day (I suggest an hour out of four) and do not allow yourself to exceed it; if your reviews pile up simply stop 'adding' words for a week while you clear the old ones, but still continue the other above activities - yes, you can *look up* (not add!) definitions as you do those other activities. That ends up serving as a natural SRS which has the added benefit of learning it all in context (and with grammar patterns!).

icebear, on weekdays I have an hour and a half of free time at my disposal during work (7:00 AM until 16:00 PM), of which 15 minutes are used to prepare food. I am back at home at 16:08. After that, I can (in theory) study until 22:30, minus about 52 minutes for feeding time. So at least in theory I have a total of 6 hours and 45 minutes at my disposal. This is on my off days. If I go to the gym I spend a total of an hour and a half in the gym and walking back home. So, given maximum efficiency I could spend 6 hours a day on studying Chinese. In theory. In practice, many things happen in life and in reality it is probably more like 5.
I spend an hour a day just going through my reviews and need another hour to learn new vocabulary. It used to be many, many hours more, but thanks to a certain someone I learned it is possible to manually add words and limit oneself to a certain quota per day. So from now on, I will just manually add 10 NPCR words at the beginning of a day and review until the counter hits 0. That leaves 3 hours for other activities. I guess that will soon be one hour of transcribing a TV series, one hour of reading (textbook, graded readers) while shadowing the audio and one hour of ChinesePod. All of which will add a ton of new vocabulary to Skritter lists every day. How is one supposed to keep up with that neverending flow of vocabulary? 8 hour vocabulary cram sessions during the weekend?

@范博涵 "How is one supposed to keep up with that neverending flow of vocabulary?"

You don't necessarily have to study new words everyday. I study 10 new per day on the days I add, but I sometimes will just clear reviews and review old material or just casually watch Chinese TV (no pressure to understand it all, just satisfaction with understanding some) on 1-3 off days per week. Having some days each week for reviewing and catching up on your SRS backlog can do a lot to alleviate the time commitment to SRS on other, normal days.

I just want to emphasize that you shouldn't be adding every word you lookup into your Skritter queue. A list somewhere, sure, but don't force yourself to actually "add" all the words you looked up in a day into your Skritter studies on that same day. I prioritize my main lists as follows:
1) ChinesePod
2) Bookmarklet (Tutoring and News Articles)
3a) NPCR
3b) TV

I add 10 per day, but not equally across these lists - first I add only from ChinesePod. If any are remaining of that 10 quota, I next add from my Tutoring list, and so on.

This means I can always keep up with the ChinesePod material I'm studying, which I prioritize as I'm paying for it. On a average day I study maybe 5-7 new words from this list, leaving a few spaces to trickle down to the rest...

The bookmarklet list is less important because the goal of tutoring is to *review* all the words I've added into Skritter in the last week - new words from these sessions are nice and I try to get to them, but in their own time. Most of the new words here are those added from newspaper articles I read once per day, which I don't have much spoken exposure to.

NPCR I'm following more casually/slowly these days as I take more away from my time with ChinesePod, tutoring and TV - I'm averaging a chapter every 3 weeks at the moment, and in no particular rush to change that. I don't really add much from it deliberately, but as I check it occasionally I notice that I'm clearing chapters anyway - due to studied words from the first two lists. I study the chapters in the book once I've cleared the vocab in Skritter, with no rush to clear each chapter in a certain amount of time.

My TV list is maintained with new words from my transcription sessions, but as these can be up to 100 per episode I don't add from this list at all; anyway, I already take away a lot from the process of transcribing while watching. Maybe one day I'll clear it, but I maintain this list more so that I can glance through the list before reviewing old episodes again. Once I have a wider selection of episodes I'll probably open these up to the public.

Of course this isn't the definitive method - I'm just highlighting that in a given day I may look up dozens to hundreds of words throughout my various study activities, but in Skritter I only study 10 new words per day. This keeps the SRS'ing sustainable.