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.

How to Start Learning Chinese Characters

1. Start with easy characters that look like their meaning:

人[rén] person 口[kǒu] mouth 木[mù] tree

2. Then you can learn the multiple characters

从[cóng] from 众[zhòng] crowd 品[pǐn] article 森[sēn] wooded 林[lín] wood

3. Then learn combinations of the characters you have learned

人口[rénkǒu] population 森林[sēnlín] forest

4. Learn characters using combinations of the graphic elements you have learned.

杏 [xìng] apricot

5. As you learn new characters play games with them. Practice spotting them in texts and compare new characters with ones you already know. Look at the differences and similarities.

6. At first characters may seem difficult, but don't despair. As you learn more you will find that the graphic elements start to repeat or new characters will be similar to ones you already know. For example we can take the character 人and add a horizontal line through the middle to get 大[dà] meaning big. Imagine a man holding his arms out to demonstrate that something is big, like a fisherman explaining the enormous fish he has just caught.