Having somebody on the same ambition level as yourself can be an incredible boost to your learning speed. To start with, allying yourself with a fellow student is a good idea, but this isn’t specific for studying Chinese. Finally, you should start using Chinese to communicate immediately. Buying an extra textbook might also be a good idea, but remember that you shouldn’t read that one to learn everything, just to see things from another angle. I suggest checking out a beginner-friendly podcast immediately (I used ChinesePod).

If possible, find native speakers, but there are also loads of computer software, radio shows, film clips on YouTube and so on, to help you get started.

Your textbook might be the best on the market and your teacher the coolest guy around, but you should start looking for secondary language sources from the very start. Start looking for learning outside the classroom It’s more efficient to perfect something once your level is considerably higher than it is now. You should instead spend this time learning other things and expanding your horizons. The reason why perfectionism isn’t good for you is that you will end up spending huge amounts of time gaining those few last percentage points. Avoid aiming for 100%, 90% is usually enough (except for pronunciation), the important thing is that you’re moving with a purpose and a goal. You’ve just set out on a journey of a thousand miles, so the important thing isn’t to make every step perfect, but to keep moving. If you are taking a course in Chinese, it sometimes isn’t required of you to remember what you did two months ago, but this is vital if you have any serious plans of learning the language! Schools and teachers seldom test everything you need to know. I suggest Anki (free) for this in general, but if you want a program specifically geared towards learning to write characters, I suggest Skritter.

It might seem like a daunting task, but in order to learn Chinese, you not only have to learn new things all the time, you also have to remember what you have already studied. The best way of doing this is using what’s called spaced repetition software, which can be installed both on your computer and your phone. One thing you should do as early as possible is to develop a system to keep track of what you learn. After that follows a list of all beginner articles on Hacking Chinese. Below, I have selected seven particularly important things that beginners should pay attention to.

School mate 2 charcter archive