Great worksheet! I’m also learning Chinese, I will share some of my tips.
To learn a language, most experts will agree that you must practice one hour a day. I find it hard to stop one hour per day to improve my Chinese, so here are two things I do to save time :
Pimsleur/Audiobooks : I listen to Pimsleur whenever I have a chance. I need to walk 20 minutes to go to my office everyday. I use those 20 minutes to listen to Pimsleur, or a Chinese audiobook.
I also let Pimsleur play when I’m cooking. While I’m not 100% focused, it still helps to hear Chinese non-stop during my day...
Music : I don’t mind listening to Pimsleur/Audiobook while walking or cooking, but I find it quite boring while going to gym or jogging. It’s easy to find and download free MP3s on the internet. Oh, and if you bring a girl over and have a playlist in her language, you gain extra points! I find my songs on youtube, and convert them to MP3s using those two websites :
http://www.listentoyoutube.com/
http://anything2mp3.com/
Learning a language can be quite boring... Here are two ways to make it more interesting
Language partner : I like to always have two language partner. A nice girl that I will flirt with and try to bang. But that’s not the most efficient way because my focus won’t be on learning the language... I will also find a guy to practice with, so I will have better results with him.
Some websites to find a language partner :
-mylanguageexchange.com
-conversationexchange.com
-languageforexchange.com
I live in an international city (Montreal), where it’s easy to find a language partner. If you live in an area with no immigrants, I know there are some websites for practicing a language by webcam. Not sure which ones are good because I never had to try them.
Movies...I found plenty of Chinese movies. I will watch them first with English subtitles, and a second time with Chinese subtitles.
-to find movies, I use torrents (I won’t go into details about it, but you can easily find some informations on Google, or even this forum).
-for subtitles :
http://www.opensubtitles.org/en/search
But learning a language is not only about fun... Hard work has to be done.
The traditional way :
-Start with a language class. Don’t go straight to Rosetta Stone/ Pimsleur without having a good foundation. Taking at least a beginner class is a must. Or hire a private teacher if you can’t go to a class.
-Studying grammar / characters : that’s the boring part, but it has to be done. I make some flaschards to learn the characters. I try to read about Chinese grammar once a week (Chinese grammar is easy, but someone learning another language will have to spend more time on the grammar).