Chinses learning

This post is a general overview on studying Chinese. Many details will be omitted since I'm not writing a book. Any detailed questions can be asked below or searched for.

1. You start going up the roller coaster by learning the basics. You are thinking how hard it is to get the basics down, especially weird pronounciations like ǜ. Hearing the differences in tones is a difficult task, let alone speaking them quickly. You are forced to learn characters through brute memorization. The ascent is very very slow and you can't even make a basic conversation.

These are the basic skills you should MASTER in level one, all are equally important to your foundation.

Pinyin (pronunciation) Memorize all pinyin, and have a native speak correct your pronunciation.
Tones You should speak with tones, know the tone rules, and practice tone recognition.
Radicals After learning some characters, you should learn the first one hundred radicals or so. It will help on character retention and for memorizing new charcters.
Stroke order Even if you decide not to write, stroke order is important for dictionaries. If you decide to write its extremely important

This is a great thread with ideas on how to start. Beginner's guide

2. You get to the top, and start descending rapidly. You are able to understand some conversations, even picking a word out in a movie is inspiring. This is the stage where everything just 'clicks'. You start thinking Chinese is easy. Words come easily because they are used broadly, 开车，开门，开灯，打开电脑, etc. Grammar seems easy, 了 just makes everything past tense right?

You should have mastered basic grammar and start learning some intermediate grammar points
Learning words is equally important as learning characters
Strive for near native pronunciation, if needed spend more time on pronunciation

3. You're at the bottom and start realizing the once simple 了 is one of the hardest grammar points in Chinese. Reading Chinese starts getting harder because characters start looking alike. Chinese people start misunderstanding you because of minor tone mistakes, 通知，同志，统治，同治，童稚，统制，especially when you start using more advanced vocabulary. But all in all, still confident in yourself, especially since Chinese people are complimenting you all the time.

You will most likely become very self conscious about your tones, and realizing you forgot a lot tones to the most basic words (I didn't use Anki at the time). This is when you will start questioning your grammar, if you start becoming unsure about something you write or say, just write it down and ask someone. Classical Chinese is helpful to further understanding written Chinese.

4. Realizing you suck at Chinese. You start going back up the roller coaster, realizing there are countless idioms and sayings to remember. Reading newspapers is a daunting task; everything has its own abbreviation. 浙江大学 is 浙大 for example. While many grammar points are easily learned. You can understand and talk about most topics, but its just not good enough yet.

This stage is probably the hardest to get past. While you have a solid foundation in Chinese, its not enough. To top it all off, you are getting severly diminishing returns