Self-learning Mandarin Chinese tools/programs/tips?

Pre-College Issues High School Life
1

<p>Yeah, so I'm an asian who can't speak mandarin. Or when I do, people laugh lol. Parents never sent me to chinese school, bla bla, I spoke chinese better when I was a kid but I forgot 90% of it. </p>

<p>Anyways, I want to be close to fluent by the end of college. I'm a high school senior now. I don't know how realistic learning a language is in college while pursuing majors in science/business, but I want to at least try and become semi-competent in chinese lol. And I want a head start so I don't have to start in Chinese 1 in college. </p>

<p>Any tips? Programs? Advice? Tools? Classes? I know lots of you on CC are asian and can speak mandarin. Bang zhi wo xue zhon wen (maybe that can testify to how bad my chinese isl lol :D). I guess I'm also willing to pay for a summer course to learn. </p>

<p>Oh and I'd sign up for chinese school, but I don't feel like being in a class with 7 yr olds lol :D</p>

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<p>Hi,
I recently took up Chinese, too. I’m not a native speaker, but my school offered Mandarin Chinese so I jumped in in the second semester. A really useful site for vocab is Memrise (with pronunciation, too) , and [nciku</a> - Online English Chinese Dictionary, Learn Chinese Mandarin Online](<a href=“LINE Dictionary : English-Thai, Chinese-English, English-Chinese Dictionary”>http://www.nciku.com/) for dictionary. I’ve been using them, and last weekend I could catch up with more or less 100 words and used them to help on Chinese quizzes, which are held every week.</p>