One thing that would be real nice is if the Beginning Chinese Reader books were available in simplified characters. I used them for a while with the traditional set. Each chapter teaches 10 new characters and a bunch of new words. The readings spaces out use of the characters to reinforce memory. While I liked the approach, though, I'm not very interested in the traditional characters and would prefer to spend my limited time on the simplified form. If the book could be rewritten simplified I would gladly buy it.
I don't expect this to happen, though. John DeFrancis is up in years and is working on an English-Chinese dictionary, which is admittedly more important. The other reason is that DeFrancis hates the character system. While I have some sympathy for his point of view, it is still necessary to learn the characters to be literate in Chinese. The intermediate and advanced versions of his Chinese readers are written in Pinyin. The fact that he would make the effort to publish books in Pinyin, which no one uses for regular reading, confirms that he wants to put into practice the views in his book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. Oh well. I otherwise like the approach in the Beginning Reader, which is a bit like the Pimsleur method, but for reading.
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I think you should come to China, specifically Beijing. There are endless resources here.
You can buy textbooks published by top universities (like 北京大学 or 北京语言大学), or you can go the other route and buy the books that elementary school Chinese kids learn from. At a first grade level, these kids go from pinyin to characters. The second grade level edition does not have any pinyin. The children here learn to read and write characters incredibly fast. Of course, they already know the language at that point.
I think one of the more important things to remember when you're learning a language (especially one as cryptic, for us English speakers, as Chinese)is to read things that seem way above your head. People often become too comfortable with what they have already learned and forget that they must keep challenging themselves. You must keep reading and trying to express yourself in this language and, in turn make all the mistakes you need to make, so that you can correct them and move on.
A few extremely helpful links for Mandarin students:
Clavis Sinica
NCIKU Dictionary
and, you probably know this one, but...
Chinese Pod
also, this is a great show
Sexy Beijing
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