1. Do basic research
There is a Chinese saying, “磨刀不误砍柴工”, which means “the more the preparation, the faster work gets done.” To begin with, you need to do some basic research about your target language, Mandarin Chinese. There are thousands of articles and videos that introduce the Chinese language. You should read and view these to know the language’s general history and how it works. During your research, you may find the answers to these questions and decide the right and suitable way to go to learn the language.
2. Lay a solid foundation
I`m often asked if learners can just skip the boring beginning part and learn the “useful” and “practical” conversation part. If you are in a hurry and just want to grab several basic greetings to warm up the meeting with Chinese people, yes, you can just imitate some greetings directly. However, these greetings won`t take you far. If you are a serious learner who wants to have a longer and more meaningful conversation with Chinese people, take some language tests, or live in China, a solid foundation of the Chinese language will make your learning easier and give you fewer obstacles. In other words, you can learn Chinese faster and better. All in all, a good beginning is half the battle.
So, what the is the foundation of Chinese? The first foundation should be the Pinyin system. It is definitely necessary and never too late to make sure your pronunciation is correct, but how? The answer is to start from the basics, such as the tone, the final, the initial, the spelling rules, etc. After this stage, you can spell all pronunciation of Chinese characters out automatically with no hesitation. Good pronunciation will make your communication with Chinese people more smooth without any misunderstandings when speaking.
Besides pronunciation, another foundation is learning Chinese characters. You may wonder why Chinese characters are necessary. Are they worth learning? Yes, you can learn some basic sentences even if you don`t know any Chinese characters. But with that method, you need to make sure you have a very good memory and be immersed in an everyday Chinese speaking environment, so that you will not forget the content you learned through listening and repeating. But without a doubt, you will definitely lose the ability to read and distinguish many Chinese homonyms. Without knowing Chinese characters, you have no way to be an advanced or even an intermediate learner. If you learn simple characters from the beginning, you may find it`s not that difficult to learn especially when you get past the first stage. There are four main Chinese Characters types, and learning the basic characters stroke by stroke will lay a good foundation and benefit your future learning.
3. Learn the sentence order
Whenever we speak of knowledge points, grammar comes to our minds immediately. It seems there are many grammar points to learn during the whole language learning process. However, as I always claim, Chinese grammar is really not as difficult as you think. We don`t even need to change the tense and gender in Chinese, unlike in other languages. Using English speakers as an example, you should know the difference between English and Chinese first, then this can give you a better overview of the target language. And if you have learned some rules on the periods of time, you can summarize most of the grammar points into one sentence structure:
Subject + time preposition + Time + location preposition + Location (from the biggest to the smallest) + how (can be adverb or a phrase containing a preposition.) + Verb + time duration + indirect object + Object
With this structure, you can solve many Chinese grammar problems. The process you learn to summarize those grammar points is the key to link them together and make a whole knowledge net. What you need to do is put the new point in the right position of the grammar net.
4. Make word webs
You can start with a topic that interests you such as shopping or playing sports. Write down this main topic in the middle of a big sheet of paper. Add branches from the main topic and use related phrases or words as the titles. This method also works when learning Chinese characters. It`s a fun and easy way to start building your vocabulary of Chinese characters through a continuous and vivid approach.