How many times?

Hey mate,

Funny that you should ask that. I've been studying Chinese for over a year now (through a school, self-study, and using Rocket Chinese) yet I still find myself looking through the audio materials every so often even if I'm done with it just to refresh my memory. I think the key with studying Mandarin is that you have to find somebody to talk it with so that your memory of the lessons - and your speaking skills - stay sharp in the process. It's easy to speak English because we (talking about people in general) have been trained to talk with it and interact using the language on a daily basis while we don't get that luxury in speaking Mandarin. Here in my country, that's definitely the case.

Hi, I've been learning Mandarin off and on for fifteen years and in my experience the only way to improve is 1) keep at it in some way every day if possible. 2) Try thinking in Chinese as much as possible eg: when you get up, what day is it? etc. etc. 3) when you learn a few words try and put them into a meaningful sentence. Many years ago while studying communication I learned Morse Code which is really another language. It was taught as a number of sounds, not dots and dashes. Mandarin is the same. I would like to see Rocket Chinese have some lessons with a few sentences in Chinese so we could play them over and over, and the following week give the English translation. That way one does not get to "Journalize" and is a much better for the brain to retain the meaning of the words learned.