Optimal Learning Plan and Schedule

Hello. I would like to know what the recommended studying and learning plan is. I've only been spending an hour to an hour and a half everyday just listening to the interactive audio lessons and bonus vocabulary items. I'm very serious in learning Chinese and I really want to improve in the shortest time possible so can you kindly tell me how long each day I should spend on an audio lesson and a grammar and culture lesson? Thank you.

你好 Omar! I would say that an hour to an hour and a half everyday is very good. You don't want to spend hours and hours everyday studying the language because much it just won't sink in. At this pace you should be able to cover a lesson comprehensively every 3 to 4 days. There is no set timetable but a good indicator of whether you should move on to the next lesson is whether you can use all the grammar and sentences structures in that lesson and also whether you have memorized all of the vocabulary. At your current pace I could see you gaining a very good comprehension of Chinese reasonably quickly. 希望这对你会有帮助。I hope this is helpful to you. - Lin Ping

I would reccomend you to not only spend time here at rocketchinese, but also at other places such as QQ (chinese chatting program), and chinese webpages. If you for example like movies or games or something else, maybe you should try to find out if china got anything interesting in those areas. This is a book that I think has improved my chinese. Search on this on google. 9787100059459 When I started learning chinese here I thought that I could learn the language roughly in just a half year or something like that. But now I think that would be unrealistic for me at least. However I have learned chinese for one and a half year and I think I have improved very much. Now I am able to read messages on QQ! I think it will take another one and a half year before I am able to understand it good enough to talk with somebody.

Find some simple conversations on youtube as well, they usually are good about tying everything you learn together. Pimsleur's Mandarin Chinese is also good if you have to be commuting for about a half hour to work every day. They are really well structured lessons and offer a pretty good balance to the Rocket Chinese lessons in my opinion.

Most teachers say that not over 45 minutes at a time is maximum for studying anything. The brain begins to get tired and wander anything over that. That's why most school classes are under an hour. That doesn't mean, however, that you can't go back to it later.

Similar to Danny's suggestion, if you have spare time (commuting, waiting in line) you may as well have Chinese text, music, hanzi etc to keep you busy. Immersion always works. If you have background noise, it may as well be Chinese. CCTV-4 for example off the web.

I'm impressed by how students are learning to write and read Chinese characters. I must be missing something. What is the best way to accomplish learning to write Chinese characters?