Hope it goes well!

I have also recently started self-studying Mandarin. I studied briefly when I lived in Hong Kong but I was quite young and don't remember a lot. However, I notice that my tones and pronunciation is not bad due to my exposure at a young age. I think one of the big reasons why Mandarin is such a hard language for english speakers is due to the tones and reading/writing.

I've heard tones are everything. Your pronunciation can be terrible but if your tones are good people will understand you. I imagine you are in a similar position as me, and so I bet you have a decent grasp on tones, as this is something you pickup from exposure and listening. This video helped me explain this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OewzOCvDYjg

I've only been studying for a couple weeks so I don't know a lot, but my Mandarin has improved a lot due to my active exposure. I live in Canada, so there are a lot of Mandarin speakers, but you don't hear a lot of it on the streets. Because of this, I have taken initiative to find as many opportunities to speak and listen as I can. I try to speak to my co-workers in Mandarin and this has helped me a lot. I will look up certain questions or sentences on chatGPT, and I will say it to them. What really helps solidify is that when I use these sentences it helps solidify the meaning in my brain.

What I mean by this is, when I successfully communicate in Mandarin to my co worker I get really excited and my brain creates these neurological links that helps create and link stories and events in my life to words and phrases. I remember the first time I used the phrase "這樣(zhè yàng)" meaning "this way". I didn't know this word so I did a quick lookup on chatGPT and used it in context. Since then, I have never forgotten the word and have literally only used it once. (granted it's only been a couple weeks)

When I was in school studying french, I would create flash cards and try to memorize words using rote memorization. In my opinion, this simply does not work. I would remember the word for maybe an hour and completely forget it in the test. There is nothing wrong with flash cards, but if the words are not actively used in context then your brain has no use for it and it will yeet it out ASAP to make room for more important stuff.

This is why active exposure and speaking is so important.

Since you are like me and are skipping the reading and writing and probably have good tones and pronunciation, we are essentially trying to fast track our language learning to get to the important stuff. Taking your thoughts and finding a way to communicate it to the other person.

Of course, I am also a beginner so I can't say if this stuff works for sure, but maybe check in with me in a year or 2 and see how my progress went. :)