Freshman taking Mandarin Chinese

I'm starting school on August 26 and going into Chinese. I know its a very hard language to learn and I don't want to fail. Does anyone know a helpful program, iPhone app, book for studying the language (50$ or less)? I'm super dedicated into learning this language and would love the help! And if you could, give me a list of useful resorces.

You can go on your iphone and look up chinesse or chinese language. Go on google and look up "how to speak mandarin chinese". You will find helpful websites. Also, look up books like chinese mandarin learning book. You will find a lot of stuff. You can go to Barnes and Noble or buy a book from Amazon. Hope I helped.

If you can afford and serious about passing spend the money and buy the excellent Rosetta Stone program to learn Mandarin It is very good and will give you the edge over other students in your class

http://www.rosettastone.com/

Note it will be around $350 to $400

You need need need to download the app Pleco for iphone or android: http://www.pleco.com/
It's dirt cheap and the handwriting recognition is invaluable- shell out for it.
I don't know how I studied Chinese before this app, I bought an Itouch just so I could use this program.

Learning it from a program or a book won't be of much help. The pronunciations are the real difficult of learning Chinese. Even programs like Rosetta Stone, don't help much in that department, but you'll be better off than gone in empty.

I went to China for a study abroad trip and kept going back for vacation. I just kept asking people how to say things until I picked up enough to start forming sentences. There's nothing like immersion when it comes to learning a language. Remember to use the words you learn as often as possible and insist on them telling you if you're getting it right. Often they'll be too polite to correct you.