1) Characters - You NEED to learn Chinese characters. I hear many people say that you can just learn pinyin 拼音and then start speaking. I totally disagree with this. You will get nowhere with only pinyin. Of course, you need to learn how to read pinyin (it's very useful), but nobody actually uses it to communicate. Many people believe that learning Chinese characters is very difficult. I, again, totally disagree. The only thing about Chinese characters is there is a lot of them, but you can learn that right? It just takes time. Spend an hour every day learning characters. I recommend that you make a special effort to rote memorise at least first 1000, because these come up time and time again. At the beginning it will seem like an impossible task, but you'd be amazed at what the brain can get used to and learn with patience and determination. I thought it would take me a week to learn 我 or 謝謝, but the more you learn the easier it gets. STAY WITH IT and it will get easier, I promise, just believe me on that. You can get frequency lists of the first 3000 on the internet, as I said - the first 1000 at least. Learn them by writing them out again and again like kids in China do - it works for the entire Chinese population, so it will work for you. 1B) Focus on trying to learn words through reading and listening especially. Chinese is, for speakers of Western or European language very, very hard to understand. To start with I couldn't even tell where one word started and the next one began. But, with more and more listening, it gets easier. I started with a series of books called 漢語風. There were good because they all came with recordings and no pinyin. I read these over and over and over again, and, more importantly, listened to them over and over and over again. I recommend you do something similar. When you finish easy books, move on to something more difficult. It's a slow but effective process.

2) The tones. Now, the tones are different, but not impossible. I have found two things to be particularly effective in learning the tones. 1) SLOW practice and reading aloud whenever you read anything in Chinese, paying particular attention to the tones. It will be very hard a first, but it gradually gets easier. 2) Listen as much as possible (if you can find an accent or a voice you like, even better. I, for example, very much like Northern Chinese – the Beijing, Dongbei, Heilong Jiang area). The Chinese have a word, 語感, which translates as “a feeling for the language”. It's very difficult to think on the fly “Oh, goodness, what tone is this word”, you need this feel. The more you listen, the easier it gets (but don't forget that slow practice is the foundation for building this feeling). I used to walk about all day at my boring job practice the tones over and over again. It worked, my tones are actually OK now. Of course I regularly make mistakes, but they are getting better. I've also found that being particularly deliberate with my tones helps. Very I say something very obviously wrong, Chinese people are more likely to correct me. 3) People say Chinese grammar is very easy, again I disagree. On a basic level it's not too hard, but once you get into it on a deeper level, it is. Leave the complex grammar until you have enough words (I'm still not there yet), because then it'll be far easier to understand. Also, the more you read the more you'll develop this 語感 for grammar as well. I wish you the best of luck. Chinese is hard, but not impossible, and it will give you so much confidence when you master it. Chinese people are warm, friendly, very welcoming if you speak their language and really fascinating people to talk to. You'll make the best friends if you really give it a go. 加油~ Laurence

如果你有任何关于中文的疑惑，可以给我发信息咨询，我会尽力相助！ If you have any question about mandarin chinese, you can sent me a message ,Ｉwill try my best to help.

I suggest you could make some Chinese friends and try to talk with them in English and Chinese. I think that is the good way to learn their pronoucation and how could they say in Chinese, and then you can learn it from Chinese pingying.

"New Practical Chinese Reader" is a popular textbook. Or maybe watch some videos and learn that way. For example: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOv61Z7cz40z4bwXlFaJJBA