The Absolute Beginner Series is awesome. I had reached a plateau on Elementary lessons and I knew I had to do something different. I had been focusing on just listening and speaking. I decided to start all over and have spent the last 3 weeks going through the 25 Absolute Beginner lessons to fill in large gaps. I listened to the lessons, and did the reviews and practice exercises multiple times for each lesson.
Last night I picked up a children's book in Traditional Chinese and read the first 2 pages out loud to my wife (a native speaker). She was shocked that I could read 90% of the words, and also surprised at how much my pronunciation and accent had improved.
I've ordered bopomo labels for my keyboard so I can read the rest of the book on my own. I plan on typing in the bopomo (the children's books we have all also have bopomo next to the characters) for the words I don't know yet.
I'm planning on doing any other Absolute Beginner lessons that are left as I go through Beginner Season 2, and then Elementary Series 2 while doing any of the lower level lessons that are added.
