sorry, meant sound and a tone

Hey Joyce is here!　Hey Joyce! She LOVES Ted talks!

I think all these methods are good. The way i personally learned 汉子 by associating random meaning to the words whenever I encounter a word I don't know. 

Think of it like this: if you don't know it, how can you remember it? And if you can't remember it, how can you learn it? Oh! A paradox!

So, to get around the issue of selective retention, one has to associate a meaning to the word. It doesn't have to be correct, it just has to be logical in your mind. So next time you see a word, just give it a sound and a character, something you can remember. It really doesn't matter if it's correct. What will happen is you'll actually remember it, and sooner or later you'll find out it's actual meaning, or the worst thing that will happen is someone will correct you. But since the word is already in your memory, it just means modifying the memory, rather than retaining a new word. 

Trust me, it works! :)

hey Hatty, 你想要帮什么忙？ 你的意思是你要给学汉语的人免费汉语课吗？ 还是人可以在这儿发给你信息问你问题?

I think the key point when progressing at Chinese is controlling your expectations.

As an exampes, I had studied Italian, which took me 3 months to get to conversational level,  French, which took me 2 months to be able to have reasonable conversations, Chinese: took my 3 years before I was confident enough to have actual, non-classroom conversations with people, and I still sounded like a moron!

I'm not saying here that's it's going to take you three years to get anywhere, but Chinese simply isn't a language you're going to just pick up quickly. It's a little bit like muscle building: you just have to put in the hours, and focus on short-term goals. All Chinese learners are in the same boat, there's nothing wrong with you, I promise!