This is more of a personal practice summarizing for me. You might know (or not), in August 2025 I had to have brain surgery. It went well, I've been recovering since. I've been having trouble summarizing though. And I wanted to make a post like this again anyway - hopefully a shorter less messy one than the last time I tried. I'll be linking resources below that I used, or similar resources that exist if the ones I used no longer do.
Summary of How I Studied Chinese in the First Year
I studied 1-2 hours a day on average. (So if you try to replicate this, plan for at least that much study time).
My goal for year 1 was to learn to read as quickly as possible. Short term goal: be able to intensively read Graded Readers. Medium term goal: to intensively read webnovels and show subtitles. Long term goal: to extensively read something in Chinese and understand the main ideas. I reached all 3 goals.
Intensive reading means reading while looking up unknown words and grammar, looking up at least enough things to understand the main idea of what you are reading. Extensive reading means reading without looking words up, ideally things you can understand without looking anything up, and guessing unknown words from context.
What I did:
First ~3 months:
I read a few explanations on how the Chinese language works. I read all 6 HackingChinese Hanzi articles, went through dong-chinese.com's entire Pinyin Pronunciation Guide, watched these videos on how tones work (more videos can be found under my tones tag), and used these Tone Resources to practice listening to tones.
I continued to re-visit the Pinyin Pronunciation Guide and the Tone Resources every few months for a week, both to review what I had learned and notice more nuance in pronunciation than I had been able to hear earlier on in learning.
I cram studied the most common 1000 words using Ben Whatley's Memrise Courses (I suggest Spoonfed Chinese anki deck as an alternative), cram studied 800 hanzi using Tuttle Learning Chinese Characters book, read through all grammar articles on hskcourse.com (back then it was called chinese-grammar.com).
By cram studied, what I mean is that I went through only new material to learn for 1-4 weeks until I'd gone through all new materials, then I would spend 1-2 weeks doing only reviews, then I would move on from the resource entirely. My initial cram studying goal was to get a vague familiarity with all these new words and grammar concepts, NOT to memorize or master them. I just wanted a vague familiarity, as quickly as possible. (What this looks like in reality is me reading all the articles on hskcourse.com in a few weeks, focusing on reading new stuff and only reviewing bits of it later when I'm reading if I want to look up a specific grammar point again. Or me going through 1000 new words in anki, and only once all of the 1000 words have been gone through then I do reviews for a week, then I stop doing anki).
After around 3 months, I had studied 1000 common words, 800 hanzi in my book, and read through the online grammar guide. I did not have any of the stuff memorized or fully learned. But I had a vague familiarity with a lot of information that was going to be fully learned for the remainder of the year.
~3-6 months:
I started reading! Reading in Pleco app, with the Graded Readers for sale through it. Reading webnovels in Pleco with the eReader tool it has, reading webnovels in Readibu app, reading webnovels in my web browser with a click-hold translation tool (Google Translate usually). Readibu and Pleco hands down have better translations than Google Translate. I read show subtitles too, on youtube I paused shows and read the hard Mandarin subs and compared it to the English captions I could turn on. I looked up words using pinyin or handwriting hanzi into Google Translate app on my phone to look up key words and phrases in shows. I spent a ton of time intensively reading, looking up enough key unknown words to follow the main idea of things! I looked up about 1 word every 3-5 minutes when watching shows, and 10-20 words per chapter of stories. If I needed to look up a grammar point I used All Set Learning Chinese Grammar Guide.
I started with Mandarin Companion graded readers. I would intensively read them, looking up every unknown word (or at least what looked like the key unknown words to follow the main idea). I would extensively read the graded readers a few weeks/months later, to review what I'd learned and get some practice reading with no translations to help me. (Check out Heavenly Path Comprehensive Reading Guide for more tools for intensively reading, and recommendations for graded reading materials).
I continued to intensively read things, looking up words/grammar where I would remember what I looked up after 2-20 times usually. Most of the words/grammar which I had cram studied in the first 3 months so these lookups were 'review.' And I continued to extensively read things I had intensively read before, to further 'review' words by reading them again, and to practice reading with no translations to help me.
~6-9 months:
I cram studied the next 1000 common most words, so 2 weeks only studying new words, then 2 weeks review, then moved on. So at that point I knew the most 1000 common words well from reading, and then another 1000 common words I became vaguely familiar with.
I cram studied ~500 more hanzi in this mnemonics hanzi anki deck, then gave up and went back to just picking up hanzi as I learned new words in reading. (If you want to be more diligent than me, you might study all the hanzi and not give up).
I watched dramas, without English subtitles, and would look up the key unknown words to follow the main idea. So usually about 1 word/phrase lookup every ~5 minutes. (The first show I managed to get through whole episodes of was Granting You A Dreamlike Life).
I tried to start reading webnovels in Pleco (to click-translate words), as I was getting sick of graded readers. I read 28 chapters of 天涯客 by priest, I read 20 chapters of 镇魂 by priest, I read 50,000+ words of some 瓶邪 fanfics (Readibu app would have also been fine, I just was more used to Pleco). I also read some more graded readers, the Sinolingua Graded Readers for 500, 1000, and 1500 words. (Personally I did not like them much, but for HSK word coverage it was good I read them as after around ~1000 common words, the overlap between HSK and the most common words in webnovels varies).
I was also reading some manhua at this point.
When I started reading 天涯客, a chapter took 2 hours to get through. Then after a month it took 1 hour to get through, and by the end of the year, 天涯客 chapters took me 30 minutes to get through.
~9-12 months:
Word of Honor drama came out, the adaptation of priest's 天涯客. I wanted to watch it. The English subs were releasing slower than the show, so I watched a lot of the episodes in Mandarin-only first. I looked up words about every 3-5 minutes. After I did that, I was way less scared to watch whatever show I wanted in only Mandarin.
I continued intensively reading webnovels in Pleco. I would sometimes extensively read things I had read before - it's an easy way to review what I'd learned.
I continued watching shows, looking up key unknown words to follow the main plot going on (1 word/phrase every ~5 minutes).
I occassionally extensively read manhua chapters, like 他人的故事, and 盗墓笔记·重启（日常向）(which are both very cute!)
By the time I'd read probably 150+ chapters of webnovels (around ~500,000 words read), I was finding I rarely looked up grammar points anymore. If I looked up grammar it was out of curiosity, but I no longer needed to do it in order to understand the main ideas of what I was reading.
Around 12 months:
I wanted to read something brand new, extensively in Chinese, to prove to myself I'd learned a degree of reading skill.
I had a print copy of 小王子 (because I had a trilingual French-English-Chinese copy). So I started reading that. No word lookups. It was a slog, it was hard. It took me an hour to read a few pages at first, and by the time I was done with the book it took me 20 minutes to finish a chapter. I finished reading the book after 3 weeks. I successfully read my first book without any translation to help me!
I accomplished all my goals in the first year! I intensively read a graded reader, I intensively read some webnovel chapters, and I extensively read a whole print book (a short one for children but it still counts)!
I suggest: setting specific goals for yourself. So you know what you're working towards, and so you can check if you're making progress or if what you've been doing is not helping you move closer to your goals.
Bonus: after 12 months, in year 2:
In year 2, I did a more even mix of intensive and extensive reading.
For most shows, I switched to just extensively watching because I could follow the main idea without looking any words up. But sometimes I still looked up an unknown word I was curious about. I watched the Humans cdrama adaptation with Ma Tianyu in it.
For webnovels, I switched to just extensively reading the novels I could understand without looking words up, and intensively reading new novels for the first few chapters to rapidly get 'vaguely familiar' with all the new words an author uses that I might not have known. So for example, I intensively read 盗墓笔记1 to get used to the new words, then only looked up ~5-10 unknown words per chapter in 盗墓笔记2, and then when I read 盗墓笔记3 I rarely looked up new words.
I focused on improving my base reading level in year 2.
So I read a lot of 'easier' Newcomer and Intermediate rated books on Heavenly Path's rec list of webnovels. I intensively read them, to get vaguely familiar with ALL unknown words, then extensively read them a second time to review all those words. I highly recommend 秃秃大王 as the FIRST novel you read after graded readers. It was so much easier than danmei webnovels I started with, and so much easier than 小王子. I highly recommend 大林和小林 as a second novel. And the 笑猫日记 series as a really good childrens novel series to drill in any common words you might have missed, to both intensively read to pick up those words, and extensively read to review those words. (In retrospect, these novels were all better suited to improving my reading skills compared to the HARD stuff I started with after I moved on from graded readers).
I recommend everything on Heavenly Path's Intermediate and Upper Intermediate rec list, before jumping into the priest novels, if you want to have an easier time than I did. I realize I jumped right into rather hard stuff, and that made my own reading journey feel like a slog more than it could have. In particular, 撒野 is both an easier read than priest novels and a great long webnovel with a ton of common words, which is tons of great review to solidify your basic reading skills.
At the end of year 2, I had improved my reading skills significantly. I could read many more things extensively. I could extensively read my print copy 镇魂 (which to be fair I've intensively read the online chapters multiple times), I could extensively read 撒野, I could extensively read a lot of fanfic I found on weibo and ao3. I could extensively read weibo posts, and bilibili.com titles enough to navigate. I could extensively read Mandarin subs on shows and audio dramas enough to enjoy the stories. I could extensively read 盗墓笔记4 and continue the series.
From year 2 onward I've been mostly extensively reading, with occasional intensive reading for the first few chapters of a new author or genre (like I tried an aviation danmei and had to look up a bunch of plane-related terms in the first few paragraphs), or looking up 1-10 unknown key words a chapter if I want to know their translation instead of guessing.
I've read over 1.2 million characters. I stopped counting at the beginning of 2025, and that count does not include all the Mandarin subtitles on shows and audio dramas I've read.
