@Fire69,

Thanks for the compliment! No I didn't get it from a book, just my own personal expereiences. The one thing I've found to be an god-given truth is that setting to lofty goals for yourself and rampant perfectionism are absolute enemies to language learning. People always have these unreallistic expectations at the beginning and get frustrated when they don't achieve them, like becomming conversationally fluent in six months.

That's why I said to understand the 80/20 concept, that you won't have the ability to access a great deal of what you learn at first, but the important thing is to CONTACT as much information as you can. It WILL be stored away in your memory (like I said, planting seeds) and at some point in the future will spring to life.

People often get too bogged down in trying to focus in and learn every word and concept in a lesson before moving onto the next, which becomes the law of diminishing returns. It's like trying to grow a bountiful harvest without stopping to replenish the field, to nurture it, till and fertilize the soil.

To speed things up, what you need to do throughout the language learning process is to be VERY ORGANIZED in your study. To contact new information, store it away and reactivate it after some time has gone by. Put it into many different contexts as possible, which includes:

1- VISUALIZE: Without this step you will continually spin your wheels. Like the Rosetta Stone concept, we all learn language by associating a word or sound with something in life. With a person, place, thing, activity or concept. VISUALIZE the word in your mind, make it into a picture, a movie, complete with sights, sounds, smells and emotions. Once you do this you'll find memorization to be far easier.

2- SPACED REPETITION: Don't try to drill the word into your consciousness immediately, everything takes time. Repeat the memorization process of new information over several weeks. This is simply just TARGETED REVIEW. This way, you won't have to wait until some random cosmic occurence "activates" the new word or phrase in your mind, you can completely control how often you water and fertilize your garden, as it were.

3- MIMICRY: Mimicry will be your best friend to sounding authentic and having proper pronunciation. I hate to sound Yoda-esque, but you must UNLEARN all that you have learned. DON'T associate the Chinese words with any sound that you are familiar with. Completely erase those things from your mind and start fresh, you'll find it easier this way.

4- TONES ARE WORDS: Remember that in Chinese, a word isn't a word without a tone accompanying it. Tones are vital to the Chinese language.

5- IMMERSION: If you don't find some way to remain in contact with the language, then you are in for a long road indeed. Immersion in the language constantly reinforces things in your mind. Don't let immersion displace your active study, but instead let it enrich it.

6- GRAMMAR IS FASCINATING: So many people get frustrated with grammar, but once you realize that every language is built entirely on a few simple fundamentals, it will make your knowledge of grammar, and the language itself so much easier to handle. You don't have to study grammar through complex, almost scientific formulae, just understanding the basic order of language will move your language learning into light speed!

These are a few things that have helped me. It's by no means the end all be all, just a basic starting point. I welcome others to add to the list.

小虎