I couldn't read more than 20 Chinese characters a year ago. Now I can read and write 500.

I have a unique background where I could listen and speak pretty fluently in Mandarin, but I have zero reading and writing skills. I left China at a young age and didn't have the right environment to establish those fundamentals.

In the beginning, I wanted to leverage my listening abilities and try an alternative way to learn new Chinese words - I would memorize new words in pinyin form by their sound and the context in which they were used. However, I quickly realized that a single pinyin character could map to multiple Chinese characters and meanings. This approach was not going to scale..

I realized that I needed to go back to fundamentals - reading and writing characters from scratch.

It was really tedious in the beginning because I already knew what the basic words meant - words like big, small, tree, mountain. However, once I got past the first 100 characters, I started to find gaps in my knowledge such as grammar and sentence structure.

After a couple months, I knew enough characters to type basic sentences to friends without having to use Google Translate!

Looking back, this was absolutely the right approach. It was a slow and tedious start, but now the foundations are set to learn more complex words at a faster pace.

The tools I've used are:

• Anki flashcards for memorization

• "HSK Standard Course Workbook" as a structured way to practice reading characters

• HelloChinese app when I'm bored

Learning new words through:

• Songs (周杰倫 all day)

• ChinesePod podcast

• Speaking with friends and family

Let me know if you're learning Chinese too and what tools you're using!