Best way to practice with classroom materials?

[Rrina]

Hi all-

My 3-month Mandarin class is over. We got a lot of material, more than I could memorize in three months. Basically we have a low-tech manual with basic daily life sentences for various situations, and quite a bit of vocabulary.

The book has no pictures, but every single thing is in traditional characters, English, pinyin and bopomofo. Plus recordings of the same stuff.

I usually read the stuff while listening to the recordings, but I wonder if there are better ways to study. Besides making flash cards with the words I can't think of any original way to use the materials.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

[Koneko]

Create series of short stories using your flashcards.

Each character on the card is the main character, place, object etc.

Now link each character to form your interesting story.

Associate your character with the main character.

Eg.

Keywords: Big 大 (Da), Small 小 (Xiao), Man 人 (Ren), Flower 花(Hua)

Suggested storyline: A small (xiao) man (ren) likes to eat big (da) flower (hua).

Association: Imagine 人 as your main character with 小 as his face (the two eyes can be his eyes); he is eating a huge flower 大花

The sky's your limit! The more bizarre you can make, the more likely you can remember!!

K.