English has well over 1,000,000 words. Over 600,000 thousand are included in the Oxford English Dictionary, and this isn't including words like skyping, supersyphilAIDS, and kuai. I find Mandarin's strict adherence to its tones and characters to be limiting in my ability to express my thoughts. As groundbreaking as they are

It is far more likely to be a person's limited linguistic ability in L2 that limits their ability to express themselves, than it is to be a problem with the mechanics of the language.
Even a very good knowledge of a second language will be limited when compared to the mother tongue. A lot of what we say has nothing to do with the words or grammar.
English e.g. "Can you close the window" = I am feeling cold.
And then there is all the idiomatic language and similes. etc.
'the door has a knob', 'the man has a knob', 'the man is a knob', etc.
Chinese is just a rich as, but this kind of thing is not taught, because there is just so much of it, you just need to be brought up with it (i.e. native speaker).

I have heard people complain that there is only a limited vocab in the Chinese language. I even had one person try to tell me that the Chinese only have one word for 'dog'. I think not. His dictionary only had one direct translation for dog.

Is there such a thing as a Chinese Thesaurus on the market? But even if there is, you need to be careful of using the wrong synonym for the context you are trying to work in.

On-topic:

Yes you should learn how to write Hanzi as it is an extra mnemonic aid to remembering characters. If you write them often, you will not only have a visual memory but also a kinetic memory of the character. The more different copies your brain has of the same object, the easier it will be to remember. The first 100 or so may be hard to remember but then it becomes easier as you start understanding the components. Also, I believe that HSK 5 and up require you to write, so why not start now. It's fun, interesting and relaxing to scribble characters.

Off-topic:

I would not overestimate the problem of homonymy in Chinese. People seem to be perfectly able to communicate orally without needing to spell out characters all the time. The times that people do write characters on their hands, it is often to communicate with people that do not speak their local or ethnic dialect. This happens in any language.

I read on the interwebs that English has a possible maximum number of syllables of around 11000. Yet when searching through the dictionary, only 2500-ish are actually used. Compare that to Chinese (413 syllables x 5 tones = 2050 - yet only using about 4/5ths of that), and we're not that far off really. You could even argue that Chinese uses its resources more efficiently but that would put the egg where the chicken should be.

Yet English combines far more syllables than Chinese does, which greatly increases the number of words you can possibly make. However, if there are a possible 1500 syllables in a disyllabic language like Chinese, the number of possible words is 1500^2 = 2,250,000, really many more than a person can even understand. The most comprehensive Chinese dictionary lists 370,000 words. They could, in theory, all sound completely different. The 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary lists 170,000 words.

Homonymy is always a problem in any language and will for obvious reasons occur much more frequently in monosyllabic words than in disyllabic ones. English has a fair amount of homonyms too, think about all the pairs (research-(to) research, request-(to) request these are even homographic). In American English, which does not shift the stress of the verbs to the second syllable, they're essentially homophones.

I'm a linguist, but only a beginner at Chinese. So I'm not sure if the above is all true. But in theory, there is no reason why Chinese couldn't be romanised and why characters could not become redundant.

I had a discussion with my one-time Advanced English students. I asked them whether they thought Chinese could overtake English as the world's lingua franca and I raised the issue of romanisation. Most of them thought romanisation is a condition for Chinese taking that prominent position but it could not happen.

I am not convinced because of the above figure-juggling. I think that, with indication of the right tones, Mandarin Chinese (putonghua) could be romanised. Yes, it could mean that the writing loses meaning for speakers of for instance Cantonese. But aren't they all using Pinyin to enter text, whether or not it overlaps with their own pronounciation? It means that, in their minds, they have already mapped their pronounciation with the putonghua pinyin.

some essential terminology for this discussion:

phoneme = the smallest unit of speech that creates a minimal pair. I.e. it is the smallest unit that will can change meaning of an utterance. For instance, in English, /n/ and /r/ are different phonemes because the words 'pain' and 'pair' have different meanings, even though only one phoneme has changed. They do not necessarily coincide with written letters. For instance, in English, an initial /pʰ/ in 'pot' is not the same sound as a final /p/ in 'sap'. The former is aspirated, the latter is not. In many Asian languages /l/ and /r/ are the same phoneme because it doesn't change the meaning of the word for them. That's why, to the Thai ear, 'light' and 'right' sound the same.

word = the smallest stand-alone linguistic unit that carries meaning. For instance, in the above sentence, 'smallest' is a word. '-est' in 'smallest', however, is a morpheme and does not stand on its own, and is therefore not a word.

syllable = grouping of sounds. In most languages containing at least a vowel, often the nucleus. Optionally they also contain initials and finals, often consonants.

Putting on my non-academic hat.
It may be more useful to just consider for both languages:
- how many words are in everyday use
- how many words are used everyday by people who finished their education in middle/high school.
- what is considered the 'normal' level of literacy for the 'average' citizen.
- reading comprehension and communicative ability are not the same.
- people are capable of comprehending language of a higher level than they would normally use themselves.

In the 1970s in the UK the tabloid newspapers were considered to have a reading age of 6 years. The broadsheets (quality papers) were considered to have a reading age of 12 years. The latter was a surprise to me, I thought it would have been higher.

I have been learning Chinese for long time, I didn't pay more attention to the Chinese writing 汉字,but I do regret now, if i am have paid more attention to it at the early point I would do better now.

about 汉字,I think it is more important to learn how to recogonize than how to write in your lecel(elementary I guess). if you do not pay attention to the reading, you will far behind others when you go to the Intermediate level. Reading is very important for Intermediate students. you know writting you can do yourself, so you just practice after class. I suggest you study the basic knowledge of Hanzi with one teacher like strokes\orders\structures, and practice read them yourself. actually, it will be happier to practice writting when you reach intermediate 2, as you will find more interesting things from Hanzi. Good Luck with your study:)