I have been teaching Chinese for over 12 years. And I have seen my Chinese language-learning students every Chinese language mistake in the book! But I have noticed over the years that there are some mistakes almost everyone makes. Chances are you are making them, too, and can easily avoid these pitfalls if you just pay a little attention and change a few of your habits.
Mistake #1
You Use a Literal Word-by-Word Translation When You Speak in Chinese
This is very common for beginning Mandarin Chinese language students. Or any person learning a new language. Instead of converting the sentence into Chinese, you simply translate each individual word. This puts the sentence into an English order. But what you need to do it is put it into a Chinese word order!
Example 1:
English: I'll work on Saturday。
I'll = 我将 (wǒ jiāng); 
work = 工作 (gōngzuò);
on Saturday = 在周六 (zài zhōu liù).
English Word Order:
我将工作在周六 (Wǒ jiāng gōngzuò zài zhōu liù)。 ×
Chinese Word Order:
我将在周六工作 (Wǒ jiāng zài zhōu liù gōngzuò)。 √
Mistake #2
You Think Learning Characters Isn't That Important.
Many learners feel Chinese characters are very difficult to learn and to write. Often my students quit learning writing and just focus on their pronunciation or pinyin. They feel learning to speak Chinese/ Chinese conversation is hard enough. Usually their main focus is being able to communicate with Chinese people. And this is of course important--but eventually these students get suck.
In China, almost all visible information is shown with Chinese characters, not Pinyin. If you are in China, even you can't recognize a sign without knowing characters.
There's no doubt that learning Chinese characters takes...
Read More 
