and my question is how can chinese remember so many caracters 'over 4000'!!!! my answer would be to practice and the most effective way is to chat with freinds on msn or skype , and when you are speaking with him/her you will ask him that you hadn't understood that word or the meaning so he/she will explain to you the meaning. and the most wonderful in learning is to speak to someone who wants to learn your language. so both of you will be interested in the other to teach him/her so that he/she will teach you his/her mother language. i try it and believe me it's totaly effective even if you don't learn too much but with time you will accure lot of words and grammar too. i advice you when you learn some words try to work your writting and pronounciation too, just try to make sentences with these words. you should write these words on a copybook to review them when you forgot the meaning. a_a good luck

Hi Fio, Italki has good resources , just click onto Knowledge at the top then Learn English, using Mandarin as your base language. In order to remember English words you can follow two methods. First is the repetition-based method, where you learn words by writing them several times or saying them repeatedly until you remember them all. If you patiently follow the process, you will see your vocabulary extended very well. Secondly, you also need have to have a notebook with your own note-taking rules. Each time you log onto Italki, note down any new words in this Answers section. The only problem is whether you want a rich vocabulary or not. Any good plan should answer the four following questions. Firstly, how many words will you learn a week: five, ten, fifteen or more? Secondly, when will you learn them? At a fixed time every other morning or anytime you feel like learning? Thirdly, how often will you review what you have learnt: once a week, once a month or before a test ? Finally, what areas of English will you focus on: sports, music, games or sciences? The answers may vary a great deal from one person to another depending on memory, schedules and interest. Otherwise, your study results won't be as you expected. You can gain a big vocabulary simply by determining what field of words to learn, making a plan of learning, choosing a learning method and regularly practising your plan and method. Although it is up to you, daily vocab learning is better than weekly and weekly is better than monthly.Good luck.