A few months ago a website called Learn Mandarin Now interviewed dozens of bloggers writing about China and compiled their tips on learning Chinese into a “How to Learn Chinese” infographic.

More recently the same website contacted me with some questions about my personal experience learning Chinese, which I answered and they published here: 10 Tips to Learn Chinese. Although I wouldn’t change too much if I went back and started all over again, this is the kind of advice that I would have been able to benefit greatly from.

If I could distill everything down to a few even more basic suggestions:

  1. Learn Mandarin first
  2. Write everything down
  3. Use everything that you write down

10 Tips to Learn Mandarin