Need recommendation for learning mandarin

[Quakebum]

I'm a Chinese, but currently live in the US, moved to the states in 1991, I speak Chinese every day at home, but I can't read nor write Chinese. I was forced to take chinese when I was younger, but being the stupid kid I was, I didn't retain any of it.

I'm looking for a book and/or software that I can use at home for learning to write and read chinese characters. I have Rosetta Stone, but it doesn't really teach you how to write the characters

Idealy, I'm looking for a course that has a workbook and structured like a real chinese class.

reason I've finally decided to learn chinese again is because I plan to stay in Hanain in the winter this year.

thanks!

[Lu]

In another thread I recommended the book 'Oh, China', I used it in uni but the book itself states it was written especially for people like you, who know some Chinese but still want to take a class. You might want to check out that book.

[Quakebum]

excellent, I'll go check it out

[gkung]

The writing language of Chinese is indeed hard to learn. There is an interesting book called "Read Chinese without Knowing Chinese". You might want to check it out at GeorgeKung.com.

[Quakebum]

Ive recently purchased the following book:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/080483816X

because Oh China was a lil more than I want to spend since I already have rosetta stone

[cababunga]

Because you can speak, you can get big improvement by reading text annotated with pinyin. Just go to one of the sites that are able to add inlined pinyin annotations to the Chinese text and start practicing with annotated text on whatever topic is the most interest to you:

http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=annotate (choose "Show Chinese and Mandarin - details in popup") or

http://mandarinspot.com/annotate (make sure "Inline pinyin" is checked).

When you reach a point where you can recognize most of the characters, you can turn off inline annotations and only use pop ups for the ones you don't know.