I never thought I would say that learning to speak Chinese is easy. Here are three reasons why I now say it is…
First off, there is little grammar. There are no conjugations, no tenses, no articles and no cases. If you have already delved into other foreign languages, you can appreciate how the lack of those barriers can simplify learning a language.
Watch your tone! For native English speakers, learning how to deal with the five tones in Chinese will take a little getting used to. But only a little. A course like The Michel Thomas Method 
Needless to say, method matters. I spent a year diligently listening to Pimsleur on the way to work with very little to show for it.
After a month of the Michel Thomas Method, I can confidently put small but meaningful sentences together. Dr. Harold Goodman, who created the content for the Chinese edition of the Michel Thomas Series did a good job of remaining true to some basic and very successful techniques for language learning which Thomas was famous for.
1) Tell a visually graphic story that blends meaning with sound – So for example, Goodman tells his students that the word for “to speak” in Mandarin (shuo3) sounds like the famous playwright “George Bernard Shaw.”
2) Get your body involved – Goodman has you jab with your finger or thumb or to use a fist to help you remember how to pronounce a word with the correct tone. You’d be surprised how greatly such a small gesture can help you pick up a language.
3) Break the language down into small building blocks. It appears at first that Pimsleur uses this approach, but Pimsleur doesn’t explain how the building blocks can be used together which leaves you with a few fixed phrases that you can’t very well build on to suit your needs.
When I first started Mandarin, I thought I would leave the characters for later. Then I stumbled across a new website called Memrise, which showcases a new way of learning Chinese characters. (They are adding a multitude of other languages, currently in beta, as well.)
Memrise uses the best of the best techniques to get you to remember new words, phrases and characters.
It seems to make use of a technique which is gaining in popularity called the Spaced Repetition System (SRS). The cool thing about SRS is that it tends to get you to focus on terms that you are already somewhat familiar with just at the moment when you are about to forget that particular term.
In reality, you may have already forgotten it, but Memrise seems to be very effective in repeating material in such a way that it strengthens your retention with each pass.
Memrise is also referred to as an “online farming game,” since you get points by watering your “plants” so that they don’t wilt and are constantly “growing your garden.”
If you take the attitude that different is interesting and see the novelty in the difference in languages and you use the methods I ‘ve mentioned above, I think you will enjoy learning to speak Chinese.
