There's no doubt learning any foreign language requires effort, time and commitment. This holds true even more, especially when there's a big difference between one's native tongue and learning a new language.

On the other side, knowing the tips and techniques of learning a new language can make all the difference on how effective and successful you can achieve.

Based on personal learning experiences, along with others(either online or offline), here are some of the learning Chinese language tips and techniques on becoming successful in mastering the Chinese language.

By using one, or a combination of these tips and techniques, will maximize your effectiveness, minimize your time, and at the same time, make your learning fun and enjoyable.

Step I - Where to start?

Start from learning the Chinese pronunciation.

Learning Chinese Pinyin should be the first step of learning Chinese language. Pinyin contains all the Chinese phonetic alphabets where they are used in the pronunciation of Chinese characters. To distinguish the different tones, pay close attention to the four types by reading the Pinyin letters, initials, finals, and all possible combinations.

The objective of this phase is for you to be able to read any Chinese character with marked in Pinyin and also write a given pronunciation in Pinyin format. Be warned: learn the correct pronunciation from the start, do not build bad habits!

Step II - Listen, practice and memorize simple Chinese vocabulary and sentences

Tips:

Take a local community Chinese class, do the practice drills with your study partner. The more you speak, the easier it will be for you to learn.

Get a good dictionary and make sure it has the phonetic spellings of the words.

Find a native Chinese speaker to converse with, many Chinese students would like to practice their English as an exchange to teach you Chinese.

Visit a Chinese restaurant or Chinese community center where Chinese is spoken natively.

Read out loud, listen to and repeat after tape or online radio, watch Chinese movies and TV programs. Listen carefully to the new sounds. Repeat them as accurately as possible, try to forget the sounds of your native language.

Sing Chinese songs.

Borrow cassette tapes from the local library, review and listen to the tapes frequently until you're able to speak the words and sentences all by yourself.

Review older vocabulary every so often to refresh your memory. Step III - Write Chinese Understand Chinese writing strokes and rules

Read our Writing Chinese section ( http://www.learn-chinese-language-online.com/writing-chinese.html ) to understand Chinese writing strokes and rules. This will provide a good solid foundation on how Chinese characters are formed.

Tips:

Only way to learn Chinese characters is to memorize them, practice writing a character on paper until you remember it. Start from easy ones, which also include all the strokes, for example, ˆê(one),