Learning Chinese

Going to China the experienced traveller intends to pick up a couple of words before embarking. 
Here are some hints to make learning Chinese a little easier. 
 
Depending on the length of your stay, you might want to skip learning some of the 3000  chartacters that supposedly cover 95 % of all writing. If you stay only for a couple of weeks, your time might be better spent trying to utter "Thank you", "Where is" and similar basic sentences instead of trying to recognize a character every now and then. 
 
When you learn Chinese, all good teachers will tell you about the 4 tones and make you repeat "ma ma ma ma" using all four tones. Forget about the tones. Chinese will laugh and misunderstand you  anyway, regardless of the years of study of "ma". Tones are important, however, before you go into tones, start simply using Chinese words in the hope, that some of them will be nderstood. Once you have a basic vocabulary of say 500 words then go back and improve pronounciation. 
The reason I suggest to skip the tones is that Chinese make a science out of it, and this science holds you back when your intention is to use some basic words.  Even for students who intend to become sinologists, I suggest the same approach, since using a small sample of words will give you ease and confidence. With that you can go back and  improve before continuing. 
 
Finally, if you are serious about Chinese, you have to learn the characters. Chinese believe that repeating  a character 1000 times will finally engrave it in your mind.  This approach however does not work for me. I can mindlessly copy characters and forget them as easily as I write them. For me Heisig's approach (James W. Heisig, Timothy W. Richardson; "Remembering Simplified Hanzi,  How not to forget the Meaning and Writing of Chinese characters"University of Hawai press, Honolulu, 2009)
makes a lot of sense, in fact for me it is the only feasible approach. 
 
Heisig works with imaginative memory, that is he developed a couple of basic characters which you are going to remember mostly according to their visual appearance. (Most people remember Da as the man standing
with outstretched arms). Heisig's genius is that he then takes apart more complex symbols into the basic components. Sun and tree makes east and Heisig asks you to remember how the sun rises in the East behind a tree. 
 
That absolutely works for me and I hope it does for you too.  
If you want to learn more about my experience in China, check out my site 
Teacher in China