Yesterday, during a group hiking trip, there was a Chinese woman who I felt was feeling kind of isolated, so I tried to say a few sentences in Chinese to her. I have been learning Chinese since August, so my communication possibilities are rather limited, I could barely say “I am learning Chinese” or “My name is X”. It was an unmitigated disaster 
, she didn’t understand a single word I said, except maybe 我。 Very humbling experience, specially taken into account yesterday I had studied for an hour at home, and then listened for another hour to my ChPod mp3 recordings during the bus ride to the hiking place. 
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MayHaNN好，
I’m sure she did not learned Chinese in three months either. 
Don’t be sad, take your time and keep enjoy studying Chinese.
Robert
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Thanks a lot, Since71. As a matter of fact, she had been in this country for 10 years and barely spoke the language.
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Sounds like a pretty normal first experience! Don’t let it discourage you.
Quick question: Have you ever tried Pimsleur? Their program is the best I’ve found for getting a total beginner to start talking with confidence. However, it’s quite expensive, and it doesn’t take you very far. If, however, you can get Pimsleur Mandarin 1 for free through a library, it’s worth a try.
Part of the premise behind Pimsleur is that a huge part of language acquisition is muscle memory training - getting your mouth speaking the right sounds, over and over and over until it’s natural. Pimsleur also guides you, through audio only, how to construct your own sentences. This is important preparation for face-to-face conversation, since you can’t exactly set up a Teleprompter in front of the person you’re trying to talk to.
I did Mandarin 1 (lessons 1 through 30) first, then I did ChinesePod Newbie lessons in conjunction with Pimsleur Mandarin 2 (lessons 31 through 60). I’ve actually wondered if ChinesePod might consider a partnership with Pimsleur, since getting brand-new Newbies talking has been a weak point with ChinesePod.
Pimsleur does have more lessons beyond the ones I did (but not many!), but once I had successfully started speaking, I considered focusing on ChinesePod to be the better choice.
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Ewilc, thanks a lot for the tip about Pimsleur, I will look into it.
I completely agree about the muscle memory training. I am a linguist and have a good command of quite a few languages; however, I always feel there is a huge discrepancy between what I can understand (which in the case of at least 5 European languages is 99% or more) and the sounds I am able to produce. Even inside my brain I can be very fluent, and then my mouth refuses to produce the right sounds, which is so annoying. Language learning has definitely a physical part to it.
Only 2 weeks ago I was in Germany and experienced this happening. German is the language I studied for my Degree, and I then lived and studied there for a couple of years as a postgrad. I still understand everything I hear and read, and can make elaborate sentences in my mind; however, since I only speak it every 3 or 4 years, it is like for the first few days my mouth muscles completely refuse to work.
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