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Takucharael -

Hey guys, newcomer here with a couple of questions.

1. I am currently taking Elementary Mandarin 1 in college and am required to memorize around 30-40
Chinese characters a week. I was wondering if anyone knew of a time-efficient way to master the
reading and writing of such characters. Right now I am just writing the characters (with the
pinyin next to them) over and over again. To it's credit this method does provide the ability to
read and write, but it takes an obscene amount of time; I'm talking frustratingly long periods of
monotonous writing. Any ideas?

2. This question is related, but slightly different. I still need to remember the characters I
have previously learned, and for obvious reasons if I was to do the "long write them all out
method" for every single character I have ever learned, I would never sleep. Again, any ideas?

Thanks a lot, I appreciate it.



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liuzhou -



Quote:

Right now I am just writing the characters ... over and over again.

which is what Chinese kids do to learn.



Quote:

the "long write them all out method"

The more you learn the easier it becomes. But, you will forget some. Don't worry! Chinese people
do this all the time!










shibole -

Greetings,

I just started learning Chinese. I try to use flashcards, radicals, and character etymology. I was
pretty quickly able to learn 40 characters in just a couple of days maybe 30 minutes to an hour
per day this way. Details:

Flashcards:

I actually bought the "Chinese in a Flash" flashcard set, though I find that it's missing some
characters needed for the C&T Integrated Chinese textbook lessons that I'm using. The CiaF set is
pretty good as it's almost like a (rather incomplete) character dictionary in flashcard form with
stroke order and sample words.

What I'd probably recommend is making flashcards with the character on the front along with all
words from the lesson that use that character (also on the front, not back). The CiaF set has
sample words on the front like this. A sample sentence from the lesson, written in Chinese on the
back, might also help.

The other thing I've started doing is writing the pinyin for a character under each character or
maybe every other character when I practice writing a new character over and over again. That
might help also.

My brother, who's fluent in Chinese and can read just about anything now, discourages me from
trying to memorize lots of characters that I have no context for. Of course if you are stickng to
textbook lessons then that shouldn't be a problem but the point sort of underlines the importance
of context.

Also, free flashcard software you might try:
http://zdt.sourceforge.net/
DimSum from http://www.mandarintools.com/

Radicals:

Another thing that I think is pretty important is that you learn some of the radicals. The T&C IC
textbook gives 40 radicals in the introduction. I made flashcards with all of them with both the
full and abbreviated forms (like 3 dots for 水) on the front and pronounciation and meaning on
the back. I can't say I know them all yet but I know enough of them that it helps a good bit.

It's much easier to remember that hǎo 好 is nǚ 女 + zǐ 子 than it is to try to remember it
as if it were a totally new set of arbitrary strokes. Also, if you know the pronounciation of the
radicals then when you see that in a pictophonetic character like 妈 or 吗 then it tells you or
at least gives you a clue as to the pronounciation.

Etymology:

I usually look up each new character on http://www.zhongwen.com/ using the RADICAL index (not a
pinyin search or using the pinyin input method). This helps me learn the radicals better, but more
importantly zhongwen.com helps you see how parts of a character that otherwise don't look like a
radical or another character are actually abbreviated or mutated forms of other characters. This
helps you see more of the character as consisting of components. It might also be useful to copy
this information to the back of the flashcards, but I'm not doing that myself.

If you can't be online when you want to look stuff up on zhongwen.com, there's an extremely nice
printed version that you can order from Amazon (see link on main page). I have it and it's done
amazingly well. (I thought the conversion of those character trees into book form would be
horrible, but was done very well.)

My brother also tells me that learning with Traditional Chinese vs simplified can help since often
the character components that might give you cues as to meaning or pronunciation have been
simplified into something unhelpful in Simplified Chinese. One example: 兰 vs 蘭. So far I find
that Traditional is harder to write but not really any harder to read.

In your case, your class will determine whether you learn Traditional or Simplified first. You
probably want to stick to one or the other but I'd probably ask your teacher for advice on the
Traditional vs Simplified issue and do whatever he/she recommends.


Another bit of advice on flashcards:

The booklet that came with "Chinese in a Flash" says that frequent review is the key to using
flashcards. It recommends that you take cards for what you're trying to learn with you and review
them any time you have a few minutes that would otherwise be wasted (like standing in line
somewhere, waiting for a class to start, etc.) So you might want to give that a shot too.

Anyway, I hope that helps. Have fun learning Chinese!










Han-tiger -

Below is my reply to a message posted in this website. Hope it will do you some good.

Re: My Progress after 4 Months of Intensive Study - Suggestions, Advice?










kdavid -

Flashcards work well for me.

I also plug these guys every chance I get: Chinesepod.com

They've got some great tools for character memorization. I do 99% of my character work on
Chinesepod.

Lastly, lots of exposure and repetition. Read and write a lot.










Lu -



Quote:

2. This question is related, but slightly different. I still need to remember the characters I
have previously learned, and for obvious reasons if I was to do the "long write them all out
method" for every single character I have ever learned, I would never sleep. Again, any ideas?

This is what I did, see if you find it practical:

Take three (or more) boxes. Flashcards with new characters go in the first box. Learn them, go
over them a few times; then wait a few days, then test yourself. All characters you know go into
the second box, the ones you missed go back into the first. Keep studying, then wait a few days
again and review them all again. The characters from the second box that you know go into the
third box, and you don't need to look at those anymore, as you know them now.

Well, I guess you get the picture. For exams and the like, you can review the characters that have
ended up in the third box once more, to make sure you really still know them, but the rest of the
time, you can focus on the characters from the first and second box, that you don't know so well
yet. The few days' wait between studying them and testing yourself is to make sure the characters
you know are in the long-term memory, not just the short-term.

I hope this helps!










shibole -

Yea, I actually do something like that (with the 3 boxes) too.










flameproof -



Quote:

Radicals:

Another thing that I think is pretty important is that you learn some of the radicals. The T&C IC
textbook gives 40 radicals in the introduction. I made flashcards with all of them with both the
full and abbreviated forms (like 3 dots for 水) on the front and pronounciation and meaning on
the back. I can't say I know them all yet but I know enough of them that it helps a good bit.

It's much easier to remember that hǎo 好 is nǚ 女 + zǐ 子 than it is to try to remember it
as if it were a totally new set of arbitrary strokes. Also, if you know the pronounciation of the
radicals then when you see that in a pictophonetic character like 妈 or 吗 then it tells you or
at least gives you a clue as to the pronounciation.

Radicals as such are not that useful. In a few cases they do make sense, in most cases they don't.
It's a good idea to remember that most languages are not logically constructed, and looking for
logic in characters simply will not work.

Disqualifying characters, it's still VERY useful to look at the different elements characters are
constructed of. I find it more helpful to look at a element that I think is helpful in
remembering, rather then looking up the radical, which can be very abstract.

That hǎo 好 is nǚ 女 + zǐ 子 is very good to know, but which one the radical is is not that
relevant. And it's a good example of elements with no phonetic clue.

Time-Efficient Memorization?
I think the key is lots of reading of context which is (near) comprehensible and context you are
interested in. I would find that more interesting then writing the same characters over and over
again.










shibole -



Quote:

Radicals as such are not that useful. In a few cases they do make sense, in most cases they don't.

The point of learning common radicals that I was getting at is not that identifying the actual
radical in a character gives you some huge amount of information but that the common radicals
occur in lots of characters, whether they occur as the radical or not, and knowing them helps you
remember the characters. So it sounds like we're in violent agreement on this point. It seems like
characters are often composed of other characters and the more characters you know the easier it
is to learn more characters.



Quote:

It's a good idea to remember that most languages are not logically constructed, and looking for
logic in characters simply will not work.

Admittedly I'm new at this, but I don't think that's entirely true. While it's true that there's
no general rule, that I know of, for figuring out the "logical aggregate" characters (like 好）,
supposedly 82% of chinese characters are pictophonetic (http://zhongwen.com/x/faq6.htm).

So if you know that 馬　is pronounced mǎ, and you see 媽 but don't know it, you know that 82%
of characters are pictophonetic and thus chances are that this one is, and that the phonetic
component is usually on the right, so it probably is pronounced something like "ma" rather than
meaning a female horse, or a verb "to ride", or a woman looking for a really well-hung man. Like
you say, the "logical" aggregate characters can't be reasoned out because there are an infinite
number of things that someone could have been thinking of when they came up with the character.

I know that often or usually the phonetic component has a different tone, or different final, or
different but vaguely similar initial, but the fact is that there is some logic here. It isn't
bulletproof logic that leads to a total knowledge of a character based simply on the components,
but knowing that 媽 is composed of 女 + 馬 AND that it sounds like "ma" because of 馬 still
gives you more to go on than something like 好 where there's no pronunciation clue at all. Take a
look at zhongwen.com.










flameproof -



Quote:

Admittedly I'm new at this

Maybe that is part of it. The logical thinker will look for logic. But their ain't much of it and
there will be too many exclusions anyway.

A good suggestion is to find your own way. And if that doesn't work try another one. If writing
down a character 1000 times for one, then use that. If not, use something else.

But whatever method you use, you need to read a lot. Reading is a good way to being reminded and
helps not to forget. Forgetting is the main enemy.












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