Chinese grammar is in many ways similar to English grammar. A simple Chinese sentence structure consists of a subject, a predicate and an object. For example, 'I wash my hands' in Chinese is 我 Wo (I) 洗 xi (wash) 手 shou (hands). Chinese gammar is even simpler in some ways. For instance, the Chinese language does not have different forms based on gender, or singular/plural. There are some differences between Chinese and English, but it is not hard to trace the clue and bridge the gap.
A major difference between the two languages is that there are a lot of measure words in Chinese. The place and use of measure words in Chinese are similar to how the English word ‘piece’ is placed and used in the phrase ‘a piece of paper’. Although most objects ('paper', in this case) have their own measure words, objects of the same kind or with similar characteristics use the same measure words.
Pronunciation is not a problem for English speaker. Over the 60 freshmen I’ve been teaching are beginners. Most of English speaking students have no trouble pronouncing Chinese. What most British students may find difficult are the four tones, which they don’t have in English. But you can solve this problem with practice, and I believe it can be done within the first semester at university.