I have always taught reading, writing and speaking together, even with the younger students.
Of course the younger the student, the more time it takes to learn to write the characters, but I believe there are fun and creative ways to make the writing of Chinese characters do-able.
I really don't have an emphasis on pinyin, but like to introduce Chinese characters as pictures right from the start of their learning and give students ways to associate the character with its' meaning.

I think an integrated approach is the best way for students to feel successful in learning Chinese. Not sure if there is much research out there about this topic, but just from my own experience and the feedback from my students, all skills can be developed at the same time... and sometimes it can even be fun!

I firmly agree that the integrated approach works well and keeps students engaged in learning the language. My Mandarin 1 students take great pride in learning how to read and recognize Chinese characters. I have found that introducing radicals before teaching whole characters accelerates the teaching of reading and writing. I am less confident, however, about placing equal emphasis on writing the first year. I tend to invest my energy in speaking, listening and reading. Students certainly learn to write the essential characters, but I am starting to provide character banks for more complex characters so we can move forward with vocabulary acquisition. This is just based on my own experience teaching Mandarin 1 for the past five years. I welcome thoughts on other approaches.

I agree with both the reduced emphasis on writing in the first year, and the read first, write later idea. Oral development can proceed at a rapid pace if students are not hampered by characters. After all, Chinese children have at least 5 years of speaking experience before they are pressured to write much.

At the college level, many institutions expect all Chinese learners to be Chinese majors and have no other life than reading and writing Chinese. In my program, I like to first, remove the fear caused by the "Chinese is hard" mentality, second, create success with speaking and listening, then show students the radicals that are picture-based. As their aural/oral skills develop, they learn to read more and more and to write a little bit more.

Then at the end of the first semester, I show the students some obscure characters that they do not know how to say or read. My advanced students do not even know these words. But they can "guess" the pronunciation, and then choose from the list of meanings which word means what. They are astounded at what they have learned and can do.

At St. Louis Modern Chinese School, we teach reading and writing at the same time. Same is true for most of the Chinese language programs in St. Louis area. I agree writing is hard for most of the students, but we believe writing is an integral part of the learning process. We could start with simple ones, such as Chinese numbers. The stroke order may be confusing, but we have created a tool, http://www.archchinese.com, to help them and seems to be liked by many Chinese learners.

This is an interesting discussion. Here's my 2 cents. I didn't begin to learn Chinese until I "accidentally" landed in Taiwan in 1986. In the early 2000s we were living in North Carolina with two young children. In 2003 our family moved back to Taiwan, and my youngest son began first grade in the Taiwan public school system. When we arrived in the summer of 2003, he hardly spoke a word of Chinese. In the Fall he was in school with a bunch of local Chinese kids. Obviously, he just absorbed the language. He was speaking Chinese after only a few months. What's interesting to me is that he also began learning to write Chinese characters at the same time, and I never heard him complain. By starting early, I guess he accepted the reading and writing as a normal part of life.

Besides being a computer programmer, I am also an English teacher in Taiwan. My wife and I set up a cram school (http://www.bethany.com.tw) here to teach English to the local kids. When the kids come to learn English with us, my wife takes care of the written and grammar part, while I provide the conversational environment. We've had very good success at getting kids to write simple stories or life experiences within their first six months of learning English. It's the same with my son in learning Chinese. He loved to draw, and in his first year of learning Chinese, he began writing little stories (in Chinese) on his drawings. I was so amazed to see what he could do.

By the way, you may be interested in a program I've developed over the last several years. It's a Chinese reading assistant, a program to help in the reading of online Chinese text. I developed it in response to what I saw were major difficulties for westerners in learning Chinese. I hope you enjoy it. If you try it, I'd love to hear from you. You can find it at http://www.chinesetoolbox.com. I also listed it in the website and software sections of http://themandarincenter.org.

How to Learn English?

Learning English is not that easy. It is not difficult to learn a few useful phrases and words but mastering the language is quite a different story.

Many language schools and online companies try to sell the idea that if you pay enough you will learn to speak English in e.g. 3 months. They might be right in a way. However there is a difference between using English in order to e.g. buy coffee or lunch and actually speaking English and enjoy it. After even a short study you might be able to pass basic information. It is enough to communicate but you should not really rest on your laurels at this stage if you really want to be able to speak English. We have some tips for you here:

1. Listen : Listening is the most important factor. Watch TV and listen to the Radio in English. If this seems to be unavailable, you can find a lot of radio streams and podcast on the internet

2. Speak - take every opportunity to speak English: at work, in a shop, with your neighbours.

3. Write : Everytime you learn a new word or a phrase, write it down. Otherwise you might forget what you learned.

4. Read - try to read English texts every day, for at least 20 minutes. Use your dictionary. This will expand your vacabulary.

5. Match sounds with words. Audio books are great. Someone reads the text for you aloud and you follow it yourself. You can pause the playback anytime you want. If your English is not good enough for regular audio books you can start with kids books that are sometimes sold with CDs

Each language when you start learning it is difficult. For a Russian Zulu might be a nightmare and from a Korean Russian language might seem just like a bolt of lighting that has struck him/her.

With a little efforts and dedication we can achieve it.

Keith,
english language learning

After listening to who i think was best motivational speaker i heard i know speaking is incredibly important over reading and writing.

I feel that a familiarity with characters is necessary, but it isn't necessary to be a proficient reader to learn to speak. Only studying pinyin is a limit when you get to the intermediate stage. The spoken word "shi" (4th tone) can mean "is" or "affairs" (and many more things) so it can get confusing if you don't have an association for various meanings of a spoken word. I explain this issue in more detail in the first unit of my grammar book (which anyone can download for free on my website).