Longer sentence lists and Mandarin in Malaysia

Continuing the discussion from Newly Published Chinese Vocab Lists:

@wimvanvliet I personally would just work on the single character and single word lists to begin with, if you get through most of those then add some chengyu lists perhaps. In my opinion Skritter is not ideal for studying longer words and sentences as it is now. You will end up spending a lot of time handwriting characters you know because you got one stroke wrong… e.g. I have 柴油米醋酱盐茶 in my list, and if I confuse 荼 with 茶 then I’ll be writing the other six characters out again soon…

I wouldn’t worry too much about local practice, unless you’re at a pretty good level already it’s difficult to entertain people enough to keep them talking to you in your second language, so better to do some classes. I’m sure you’ll be able to find good tutors in Malaysia even if people are ordering their fruit at the market in Hokkien it’ll just mean you won’t learn how to say rambutan in Mandarin…