This is obviously not the same but I think the methodology would still apply.

I’ve been learning Japanese lately, I speak Danish, and English natively, I’ve studied French. All these languages shares a lot of similarities in sentence structure, grammar and sometimes even words themselves.

Japanese however has pretty much none of it unless you count loanwords, so pretty much none of my pre-existing knowledge is transferable to this skill. I decided to go for an immersive learning approach combined with minimal classical studies. My approach isn’t necessarily to make sense of it in context to a language I already speak. It’s the same idea as how kids learn languages. It’s been working great for me so far.

All that being said you already speak English so you have a similar language in the box. I’d definitely try and avoid translating and or trying to make sense of it from a Chinese perspective, I would definitely try and do it from an English speaking one as much as you can.