Hi Cherry. I live in Taiwan and have learned to read and write ('type' is probably the better word) over the past couple years. Flashcards are an obvious way, but I didn't learn by flashcards; Basically, I'm too lazy to make/buy them. I like to see characters in context, because I learn faster that way. The way I learned was to read email (from colleagues at work) and read articles (e.g., blogs) on the internet. It's painfully slow at first, but reading Chinese on the computer has the advantage of easy cut-paste lookup into the dictionary. There are online dictionaries where you can simply paste a whole Chinese sentence, and it will parse out the two/three character terms for translation. You would be amazed how fast one can learn. Personal blogs mostly contain everyday terms, and are thus easier to read. It helps to practice speaking in parallel, so one can look up terms phonetically too ... but not strictly necessary.

Good day. For me, it is easy to learn characters in sentences, in that way I can remember them more, and all of them. But anyways I have to write them many times. And also, I learn them by keys, like "woman and child is good" and so on, it helps well.

hi, i started to learn the chinese characters about 9 months ago, and right now i am able to read pretty much. http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/chinese-memory.php helped me a lot, its a game, so it makes fun to use it. try the "Top 1000 Chinese Characters" list, as its the characters you will encounter most... and dont be disappointed in the beginning, it took me several days to finish the top 100 within the "beginners" time limit the first time... appart from that i also use plecodict (mentioned above) and i tried to read books as soon as i thought i knew enough character.... all the new words i encountered went into my plecodict flashcards... hope, that i helped you...

can you help me to learn your languge

Hello Cherry, me again, sorry for my rude, I know I am Chinese, sorry to stick my nose in, however may I know why you want to learn Chinese first, as I think it is very important to decide how you can learn it well, I have some foreign friends, although they always come to China and stay several days eveytime, but they can just speak such as thank you, hello and numbers in Chinese till now, otherwise they always ask us how to say something in Chinese and then they repeat to others, I dont think they want to learn Chinese in depth, just have fun. Just want to help you as you did, so I think your heart lead your way, may I know the reason why you want to learn English? Hope you can understand! Many thanks!