Any suggestions? I am finding it easier to remember the meaning of the written characters (haven't tried writing them yet), than remember the sound of the words. Even using pinyin, the pronounciation is sufficiently different than regular English - the words as spoken are just not sticking.
It is like the English --> Pinyin --> audio ---> character is skipping the middle and just going straight from English ---> Character.
However from what I have researched so far, it seems more people are having difficulty with the characters than the sounds. My friends have told me the few words I can speak, are pronounced relatively well (after a couple of tries).
I'm lost here. Perhaps I'm just impatient?
This is pretty normal and also the reason why we, as second language learners, get the tones frequently wrong. I think it comes down to a relative lack of immersive experience and then practice with speaking. After that, we need the practice in actual usage with some feedback.
For my own experience, it is really say correctly solitary words or word pairs on their own. If combined into a sequence, it becomes easier.
As a Chinese student who need to take national college entrance exams, I would like to say it is more difficult to remember the pronunciation of the words, because in Chinese one character have different pronunciations. However, for non native speakers I think it more difficult to remember the writing because they seldom write them and are not quite familiar with the characters.
Hope it may help:)
