1 – Your speaking skills greatly depend on your listening skills. Focus on listening to improve speaking!
A sure shot way to learn a language is to grasp it in all its aspects: words, speech, accent, pronunciation, speed, intonation, pause between sentences, pitch etc, properly. Listen to authentic resources to build on your hearing, such that you can identify Chinese from amongst many spoken languages.
2 – Memorize words phrases using mnemonics.
Wherever possible I suggest matching a Chinese word or phrase with something humorous that exists in your native language to learn better. This makes learning not so dense to grasp and progress with
3 – Watch Chinese films with English subtitles and, if possible, English films with Chinese subtitles.
This will enable you to grasp the spoken language faster. Try mimicking the dialogues to get a hang of the native language.
4 – Consider using resources such as flashcards to practise.
The most proven resources for learning are flashcards and at the moment Anki and Memrise are deemed to be the best flashcards applications available to learners. You could either practise with their existing decks or create your own.
5 – Utilize the internet to its full potential.
Look to practise and learn more with free apps such as Duolingo, Multibhashi etc.
6 – Using transcripts, practise listening and speaking from authentic audio resources.
Listen to the audio resources. Don’t look through transcripts just yet. Repeat listening a few more times and sort of settle on what you hear. Now look through the transcripts and assess your understanding. Now repeat-hear the same audio with the transcript to engrave the correct understanding.
7 – Learn Chinese grammar and the rules by heart.
Studying grammar would help you bring your own sentences properly using accent marks or diacritics and many other rules that apply to the Chinese language. This is yet another way to learn a language appropriately.
