Are any of you willing to start a chinese tutorial? Please? PLEASE? I really want to learn, but the online tutorials I've found don't explain things well enough. Please?

Eeek. I don't really know enough chinese to start a tutorial. It really depends on what you're trying to learn. If you're trying to speak, you need to start out by learning the tones, and practicing them over and freaking over again. The tones are essential and can completely alter the meaning of the word. If you're trying to learn to read, I reccommend learning the base characters first, I think there's about 40 or so of them.

A good resource is yellowbridge.com, if there's a university near you, I suggest picking up the integrated chinese text books, as these are basically the chinese textbook used most often around the world.

Ummm... what else? Learning pinyin is much easier than learning characters, but I heartily reccommend using the characters, as no one really uses pinyin in China, from what I know.

If I think of anything else, I'll add it.

Yes, I live practically inside the Univ of Iowa, but I'm a little afraid to pick up a textbook; my Japanese one cost me $80!
But thanks for the link, and the advice.

Well, if you're in desperate need, I could probably scan my old textbooks (as long as you don't mind massive doodling that sometimes obscures the text).