01 year 31 week into study

Hello everyone,
Another week has gone by with good progress. I even had a good weekend of flashcard study. Most nights, I had studied an hour of speaking and listening. I plan to continue this work. I bought two books to hopefully fill in the gaps that Chinesepod does not seem to cover. I wanted to learn more about writing and grammar, and the two books I bought address these topics. I will discuss the books. The first book, Schaum's Outlines: Chinese Grammar, by Dr. Claudia Ross, will obviously address grammatical issues in the Chinese language. My other new book, Reading & Writing Chinese: Simplified Character Edition, by William McNaughton, will help me learn stroke order for the simplified Chinese Characters.
I started with McNaughton's book today, and I devoted 20 minutes to the study to help ensure that I don't get burned out too quickly. The characters are difficult to write. Over the next week or so, I am going to see how I can fit my new study resources into my study to diversify my work. As noted in previous entries, my strongest area is reading chinese characters. I am improving in speaking and listening, but remain very week in other areas of study. I am determined to continue, and I am about to step out to do an hours or so worth of spoken study.