What your biggest challenge learning Chinese?

[imron]

I found great benefit from 6. It *is* boring, but it worked really well for me (despite initially being highly sceptical that it wasn't a 'smart' way to learn).

[艾墨本]

Regarding rote memorization: I found Olle Linge on Hacking Chinese illuminated this quite brilliantly. He write about what is and isn't rote memorization here and here2. It's great that you are coming to terms that some parts of studying might just simply not be fun. Hopefully you'll find alternatives to it that will be fun and still reach the same end goal. For me, the most important part is what words I study and making sure they are meaningful. Learning how to say anus while reading about someone having diarrhea is a lot more fun. If you're at a lower level, that doesn't mean the dialogues using those simple words need be boring. I think that's something that www.popupchinese.com does very well; creating short dialogues that are actually interesting.  Another change that has helped me recently is slowing down. Reducing the amount of new words I'm adding and focusing on enjoying the new words. I still go back and forth in cycles of "but so many words to learn! I need to study more words" and "meh." I guess I have more problems with the emotional states surrounding learning new words than I do with the actual process of learning new words.