Ways to Learn Chinese Characters Simply and Efficiently

Chinese language is a new territory for many whose first language use an alphabetic system such as English. Instead of combining letters to form words, Chinese language uses strokes to form characters. The commonly used Chinese characters alone contain 3000 keywords and phrases. Not only that, Chinese is one more tonal language with four different tones, commonly marked with accent marks, proper unmarked represents the neutral tone. The accent marks are only available possess PinYin to represent the pronunciation. The word sh for instance, can have different meanings depending on its tone. The first tone sh can mean poetry or wet or teacher. The second tone sh can mean ten or time or true. The third tone sh can mean history or to start or to cause. Last tone sh can mean yes or room or matter. In essence, couple of different methods many similar sounds with various meanings. As a few fact, a Chinese linguist in the 20th century Zhao Yuanren composed a 10-line classical Chinese poem using only the sound shi.

Next, it isn’t always possible to guess the pronunciation of a design. The character for wood, for instance, is pronounced mu. The character for forest, could be composed of two-character for wood, is pronounced lin. Although in this example the pronunciation isn’t related, the concept the characters can. On the contrary, when the pronunciation can be related due to similar root character, the meanings are not necessarily related.

PinYin itself, although alphabetized, is not pronounced the unique way as the alphabetic sounds. There are unfamiliar sounds such as u with an umlaut () that sounds like a program of I and u. Like everything unfamiliar, it can cause uncertainty and are worried. Thus, knowing the challenges learners face is the first step in devising effective learning strategies that directly affect their language success.

The Strategies Would once Learn Chinese Characters

Prof Ko-Yin Sung of Chinese Language Study from Utah State university conducted a hunt amongst non-heritage, non-Asian Offshore learners and uncovered interesting results which could help future learners in forming a helpful study procedure. Her study revolves all through most used Chinese character learning strategies and how those strategies affect the learners’ ability in understanding and producing the sound and the writing within the Chinese characters.

The study finds that among finest twenty most important used strategies, eight of these are springing out of when a character is first introduced to learners. These include:

1. Repeating the character several times aloud or silently.

2. Writing the character down.

3. Noting how to say hi in chinese the smoothness is implemented in context.

4. Noting the tone and associating it with pinyin.

5. Observing the character and stroke order.

6. Visualising the letter.

7. Hearing the explanation of the character.

8. Associating the character with previously learned nature.

The next six strategies are which is used to increase learners’ understanding for this newly introduced character.

9. Converting the character into native language and finding a similar.

10. Looking in the textbook or dictionary.

11. Checking if the character recently been used previously.

12. Trying to find out how very good used in conversation.

13. While using character in sentences orally.

14. Asking how the could be used in content.

However, learning strategies start to diminish beyond those two learning concentrations. There are only three strategies for the memorising newly learned avatar.

15. Saying and writing the character at once.

16. Saying and picturing the character in mind.

17. Due to sound, visualising the character shape and meaning.

And tend to be : only one strategy utilized for practising new characters.

18. Making sentences and writing them out.

And new characters are reviewed brand-new types of two strategies only.

19. Writing the characters many years.

20. Reading over notes, example sentences and the textbook.

Of the twenty strategies mentioned above, four are simply to be most significant in increasing learner’s skills of speaking, listening, reading, and writing of the new characters. A few strategies are:

Writing the characters down

Observing the stroke order

Making connection to a similar character

Saying and writing the character repeatedly

Discussion

A research by Stice in 1987 showed that students only retained 10% of back as they learned from what they read, 26% from the things they hear, and 30% from what they see. While studying modes are combined, a considerable improvement in mastering retention is noted. Learning retention jumped to 50% when seeing and hearing are combined, and even higher at 70% when students repeat the materials are generally learning, and learning retention is at the highest at 90% when students the materials these kinds of are learning simply because they do anything. Simply reading the characters aren’t enough. Learners must associate the sound with the characters, develop a connection is not characters to create them memorable, and practice recalling the newly learned characters.

Study signifies that recalling new characters learned improves learning retention and reinforces understanding the concepts of. One way to practice this will be using an app such as The Intelligent Flashcards. Distinct flashcard app is planned for the New Practical Chinese Reader textbooks, making it convenient to review characters based on chapters. Not only does it show stroke order animation, it is also accompanied by native speaker sound files, making this app so significantly more convenient that another app while Anki. With Anki, although user may add personal notes on it, the sound file isn’t available and must be imported through another app.

Another important learning answer to incorporate is observing how the characters are widely-used in situation. This can be practiced by observing real-life conversations to grow the textbook and audio tracks conversation. Usually interesting to note that individuals studied on the inside abovementioned research were not wanting to adopt the educational strategies recommended by the instructors, for instance watching Chinese TV shows or listening Chinese song selections. There could be many reasons for this. The style of the shows or songs can not appeal into the learners.

Associated with this program is not only convenient. And even if the shows might accessed online, rarely is it subtitled in both Chinese and English which will make the shows more useful to beginner learners in having the language. Also, most on the very popular Chinese Television programs fall in the historical genre, which can be a favourite on the list of Chinese, such as The Empress of China. However, the language spoken in this particular type of TV show is somewhat more complex than the contemporary spoken Chinese.