The unexpected difficulties of learning Chinese

I have spent the last 1 year and 8 months diligently learning Chinese, for about 2-3 hours day. The script – reading and writing – I find relatively easy. And I can speak bad Chinese all day if you ask me. In fact, I try to do so each day, thinking of everything in Chinese from dawn to dusk. However, it is the listening and understanding (tingdong) that is the most difficult for me. Others seem to have a knack of hearing, remembering and understanding. But they have a devilishly difficult tim...