Your biggest question is whether you should take online courses or take in-person Chinese lessons with a live class. It depends on your personal preferences and your budget, but in general you can learn the language with an appropriate level of personal commitment to the task and with plenty of opportunities to practice. Whether taking a class in person or online, you’ll probably want to find a tandem exchange partner to practice your Chinese with in between lessons. If you don’t use what you know, you will lose it.
What type of Chinese you want to learn is also an important factor in your decisions. Chinese has several dialects. Manadrin is the most popular dialect, but there are 10 other dialects in the Chinese language. Also know that writing Chinese and speaking Chinese are two entirely separate skills. In this respect it is different than learning Spanish or some other Latin-based language similar to English. With Chinese, you need specific education in writing to be able to correctly form the characters. Decide whether you want to learn to speak Chinese, write it, or both. Then you can choose accordingly from the course options available to you.
With China becoming such a key player in the world, how to learn Chinese is becoming a very hot topic. Read about the key points you need to consider when choosing a Chinese course.
Senior writer for HowtoSpeakChinese.org