1. too many unknown words

First stop to think, whether you’re familiar with the Chinese keywords or termilogies for the topic you’re reading? If no, find something simpler in the same area instead. Read your way up prgressively.

Second, if you’re familiar with the Chinese keywords or terminologies in the topic you’re reading, then it might be the surrounding words that are either too literal or too acedemic. I’d say try some simple version article first, then read your way up.

Third, your vocabulary is simply poor at this stage. Then how about read something that is not so complicated, something that speaks the truth of Chinese’s life, interesting and easy to understand … elementary school kid’s essay! You can find them here: http://www.eduxiao.com/zuowen1. There are lots of essaies from grade 1 to grade 6. Just change the last number from 1 to 6 for “zuowen#” in the url, you’ll see the list of essaies …

2. Unfamiliar grammatical patterns

I admit that Chinese language does have lots of sentence patterns that might confuse Chinese learners from time to time. However, to grasp them all (at least most) in a short period is absolutely realistic, not like memorizing all 3500 characters I’d say. Most Chinese sentence patterns do have equivalent conterparts in English, and it only requires memorizing a few characters for a given pattern.

Once you get a hang of sentence patterns, the Chinese content you’re reading will be reshaped into pattern containers instead of scattered words in your mind. As long as you understand the keywords in the sentence, more or less you can make out the whole meaning by skip reading.

One of the goals on my blog is to teach people how to use all Chinese sentence patterns (follow the lessons you’ll see), which can be learned on a fast track.

3. Insufficient reading methods

I’m still new on this topic. However, I’ve tried out MDBG on my computer, it’s really handy and FREE! You just need to highlight the Chinese word on your screen with your mouse, it’ll pop up it’s meaning, real cool. I also installed the MDBG plugin on my site so people can click any word or sentence to access it’s explanation in MDBG’s dictionary.

From my experience, to repetitively listen to materials that you really understand and like will improve your listening skills fast. After all, in most cases, you can only understand the expression that you do know when you hear it. If you repetitively listened to the expression in a material that is easy for you to recall, it’ll sound familiar to you next time you hear it. The more expressions you reinforced, the better you understand what you hear.

I find your post good beceause it focuses not on your average week and not on your best week, but on your worst. This is also where most changes can be done (I mean, if you already stufy at full speed, you can’t improve that much, but anything that helps you avoid weeks of passivity is great).

I look forward to your post.

It’s the minimum amount you do that will determine how much you learn.

Is this true? I dont’ know. But I do know that my minimum amount of studying is considerable, even though I don’t live in China and take no courses. I listen a few hours each day, I do around 200 flashcards. I chat with people in Chinese all the time. I read some.

Anybody can do twice that much or more, actually without trying too hard. The problem, I think, is that many people aren’t able to sustain that for years. That’s why I think your advice is so good. I’ll think about this and perhaps I’ll get back to you with a post in reply later! Great article anyway.

You mentioned getting rid of English apps on your iPad. I managed to find some great Chinese apps for my mobile yesterday. One is to teach basic Cantonese, it has simple words and sentences with audio. Then I found a app that gots a lot of Chengyu with English translation and short background story in Chinese. Also one app has 1000 short stories that seem to be great to my level. On top of that I finally found a dictionary to my phone as well.