Hello Becky, I don't think there is a rule that you 'should' follow to the amount of characters acquired daily. I personally don't learn them daily. Some times you are ready to learn more than other times,so just when you feel like learning them don't restrict it to a certain number. Use character dictionaries to read both hanzi and pinyin simultaneously and practice by reading texts that include the characters you have learned to memorize them. Online chats with Chinese is another good way to revise the characters you have learned and many Chinese are very kind and willing to help,so have fun :)

you live in china now i see in your presentation. well, my opinion is not how many but how good you keep them in mind. most probably you encounter many in your everyday life and some appear to become more common. if you start with them sure they going to be fixed in your mind faster. anyway if you like amounts, you'll need some 2000 to get on more or less easily. then 2000/365= 5,48 everyday for a year. depends on the speed you want to give to your learning.

LOL .as a rule.chinese ppl spend 6 years(primary school) to learn chinese character,but it doesnt mean we know every single word,only common words.... u can borrow the 12 text books to see how many words do it have .then make a plan.

Actually I am quite agree with Cherry. There's no rule for you to learn how many certain characters a day. Even us Chinese natives don't do that when we are studying at school, either. Try to imagine that if you learnt 20 characters but forgot them all the next day...well it's no use, isn't it? So I think the most important fact you should know that. 1.When you face a new character, first you need to know how to write it correctly (when it comes to traditional Chinese characters it would be vital because there're more strokes). 2.Then know how to read (usually a character has different pronounciations). 3. The final step and the most difficult step, to know the basic meanings and the most used words via dictionary or other medias. You should keep following these steps when you learn new characters. It doesn't matter if you just learn 1 character a day, but it does matter if you can't understand every character you learnt well. Good luck!

It depends on you. Learning the rules.I think writting is more difficult than speaking. ^_^