My suggestion about learning Chinese in an effective way

Some people may think that Chinese is the difficult language to learn in the world.of course ,it isn't.English words are formed by alphabet,and they are more accurate to express your idea. though the Chinese Pinyin is organized by the same alphabet,but you can't elicit the meaning by only the Pinyin you saw .Pinyin is only a tool for you to read Chinese character correctly. to some extent,it could be a barrier,if you become more and more dependent on pinyin.that's not to say that pinyin is not important,you may know that same pinyin with different tones have totally different meanings,that's not enough.
Chinese and English are based on different language systems,to learn Chinese well ,you'll have to abandon your habitural ways of thinking.

I suggest you always focus on characters,that's to say ,whenever you want to withdraw a word from your brain during your conversation,the picture shown in your mind should be a thing with Chinese character,and then read it naturally .to do this,you need to do a lot of readings and practice,when you encounter a new character ,check it in a dictionary,and move on. so ,accumulation of character seems very important,like English ,the more you expand your vocabulary,the more you can say.always remember that the hardest way is the best way.

The next thing I want to address is about Chinese characters,as I said above,it's a system,all system has rules in it,modern Chinese writing is based on pictograph，although most of them changed a lot though thousands of years,the connection between them inherited  and carried on by generations.the core of Chinese character is radical,for example,  side radical "氵"is water related：江 river，河river，湖lake，海ocean，流flow.another example,  side radical"女"is female related：她she，妈妈mother，奶奶grandma，姨aunt in your mother's side ，姑姑aunt in your father's side，嫂elder brother's wife，妇女women,etc.

Finally,ultimate goal of any language,is to apply them in a real context.that's especially ture for Chinese learning,without a context ,the meaning of Chinese words could be very confusing,conversational online lecture made it possible,thanks verbling,have a good day.