Learning Strategies for Learning Chinese Characters

1. "Train your brain" to recognise:

- Common features.
- Small differences.
- Component elements.

e.g.温=氵+曰+皿

Methodologies:

1.1 Identifying a given graphic element within the overall appearance of characters. ("Graphic element recognition exercises")

1.2 Differentiating similar graphic elements. ("Graphic element differentiation exercises")

1.3 Differentiating similar characters. ("Similar character differentiation exercises")

2. Learn meanings of graphic elements (meaningful ones) e.g.氵=water (-Geographical water features (nouns)) ("Meaning-graphic correlation exercises")

3. Learn to identify phonetic elements of characters e.g. 召[zhào]>chao/shao/zhao etc. ("Graphic-phonetic correlation exercises")

4. Adopt a logical learning sequence, starting with simple characters and accumulating graphical knowledge, but at the same time paying attention to the relative frequency of use of characters.
e.g. Learn 日before 是

5. Learn graphically similar characters together.

e.g. Learn 力 and 九 together.