Just hoping to tap into the collective experience here.

I'm currently studying characters with the Heisig books, just hit character 1234 yesterday. I'm also working my way through a level 2 Chinese Breeze book. I stopped learning HSK Vocab Levels 1-4, because I've found that the vocab tends to stick better when it's in the context of something 'real' that I'm reading (vs. words from a list).

I'm debating whether to go next. Options (all these include Skritter for vocab retention):

- Go through more Chinese Breeze books
- Go through a textbook series (I have 'Chinese for Today' 1 and 2)
- Go through the Learn Chinese Online Podcasts
- Go through Chinesepod podcasts

Any suggestions in regards to the above or other resources, and/or experiences with methods that worked well for you?

Thanks,
lechuan

I will suggest stick with those graded readers and if possible rush through NPCR 1,2. With the number of characters you know that shouldn't take more than a few weeks. Then you can move on to NPCR 3 and 4(or something similar).

Along with that you keep going through your graded readers. Even I feel learning through context is really important for the words to stick.

Don't exclusively use Chinese pod as i read posts from Jungle girl and she said even after 5000 words she was missing many HSK 5,6 words.

i would strongly recommend chinese pod lessons. listen to the dialogues and then import the vocab into your skritter.

you re right - context is extremely important. makes it easier to stick.

after just reading what sandeep wrote i would agree. dont exclusively use chinesepod. additional material is always good!

I'd suggest ChinesePod and a textbook that you can follow up to a HSK4/5 level. At that point I'd say to just start reading more and more and more while perhaps looking into more advanced textbooks.

I've recently joined the camp of only studying characters on Skritter - not words. I was previously up to around 2500 characters and 4500 words and things were quickly getting unmanageable, especially since upper level textbooks have around 50-70 new words per chapter, not to mention the flood from reading native material. I realized a better approach (for me) is to exclusively study characters on Skritter, and then use another program like Pleco or Anki to study words from whatever I'm reading at the moment. That frees up a lot of time for more reading and review of textbook material, which ultimately is more worthwhile from a overall Chinese perspective (I think).

Thanks for the advice everyone.

I'll start going through my textbook, and supplementing with Chinese Breeze.

After the textbooks are done I'll start hammering away at Chinesepod.

Interesting thought about studying only characters (and not words), I'll definitely consider that if I start getting overwhelmed once I have more words under my belt.

I find it really hard to decide where to take my words and characters from, and I agree that the HSK lists are very dry (in theory I could flesh out the words from other sources).
Chinesepod/Popupchinese are good only as part of the whole, because they're full of great everyday spoken vocabulary - of course, that may be what many people want, they just want to be able to talk.
My weekly class, which is a drop in the ocean, uses Conversational Chinese 301, which I hate. It is supposed to be communicative, so you learn what to say when picking up people from the airport, or saying Sorry I broke your vase, Pease don't smoke etc. I think we use it because it's been translated into German (not very well). So it is also only providing spoken vocab.

I have added all the Chinese provinces etc. and capitals, so I can follow the news. I use the Lonely Planet guide to make sure I know something about them. It has tones! not all guidebooks do. I want to add more stuff about the government and Chinese history, dynasties and so on. I'm not sure how common these words are or if they're part of HSK, but they seem vital to me.

The UK books I like aren't listed here. I have added the vocab from Basic Chinese by Yip and Rimmington - a grammar book with exercises and a key. I might do Yufa, which is a US book. There are also some books by Elizabeth Scurfield - originally Teach Yourself Chinese - which have useful collections of vocabulary.

At the same time I have been using Reading and Writing Chinese, because it looks at the characters from their structure. So a two-pronged approach - learning the characters I come across for meaning, and learning the characters that are related to each other. It's difficult to fit that into the rest though.

I do use Chinese Breeze, but I never take many words out of one story. I concentrate on the reading practice.

Sandeep is right. Chinesepod is great, but because it's so topical you do end up with some low frequency vocab when there are probably more useful things you should be learning instead (e.g. did I really need to know how to say "first baseman" or "Eiffel Tower" at the intermediate level?). Chinesepod in combination with a textbook is probably the best approach. I am now using Chinese Word Extractor http://www.zhtoolkit.com/apps/Chinese%20Word%20Extractor/ to identify the HSK words in articles I read. That way I can have some context rather than just learning them from a list, which I agree is ineffective.