How to Learn Chinese Characters Simply and Efficiently

Chinese language is an unfamiliar 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 words. Not only that, Chinese is also a tonal language with four different tones, commonly marked with accent marks, proper unmarked represents the neutral tone. The accent marks are only available getting eco-friendly furniture helps 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 a fact. The third tone sh can mean history or to start or to cause. Lastly tone sh can mean yes or room or matter. In essence, strategies 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 role. The character for wood, for instance, is pronounced mu. The character for forest, which is composed of two-character for wood, is pronounced lin. Although in this example the pronunciation can’t be related, the concept the characters would be able to. 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 might lead to uncertainty and fearfulness. Thus, knowing the challenges learners face is the most important step in devising effective learning strategies that directly affect their language becoming successful.

The Strategies Would once Learn Chinese Characters

Prof Ko-Yin Sung of Chinese Language Study from Utah State university conducted a search amongst non-heritage, non-Asian Far east learners and uncovered interesting results which could help future learners in forming a highly effective study blueprint. Her study revolves surrounding the most regularly employed Chinese character learning strategies and how to say hi in chinese those strategies affect the learners’ ability in understanding and producing the sound and the writing within the Chinese emails.

The study finds that among very best twenty most often used strategies, eight of these are dealing with when a personality is first introduced to learners. These include:

1. Repeating the character several times aloud or silently.

2. Writing the character down.

3. Noting how the smoothness is found in context.

4. Noting the tone and associating it with pinyin.

5. Observing the character and stroke order.

6. Visualising the element.

7. Listening to the explanation of the smoothness.

8. Associating the character with previously learned design.

The next six strategies are often increase learners’ understanding among the 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 new character is used previously.

12. Discovering this how these kinds of used in conversation.

13. Using the character in sentences orally.

14. Asking how the character could double in words.

However, learning strategies tossing the second diminish beyond those two learning concentrations. There are only three strategies played with memorising newly learned avatar.

15. Saying and writing the character at duration.

16. Saying and picturing the character in your head.

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

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

18. Making sentences and writing them out.

And new characters are reviewed along with 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 found to be most significant in increasing learner’s skills of speaking, listening, reading, and writing of brand new characters. The 4 strategies are:

Writing the characters down

Observing the stroke order

Making connection to a similar character

Saying and writing the type repeatedly

Discussion

A research by Stice in 1987 showed that students only retained 10% of what they learned from what they read, 26% from what they hear, and 30% from what they see. When learning modes are combined, an essential improvement in learning retention is noted. Learning retention jumped to 50% when seeing and hearing are combined, and even higher at 70% when students the materials these kind of are learning, and learning retention is at the highest at 90% when students say the materials these kinds of are learning simply because they do a single. Simply reading the characters aren’t enough. Learners must associate the sound with the characters, make a connection that isn’t characters to make them memorable, and practice recalling the newly learned characters.

Study signifies that recalling new characters learned improves learning retention and reinforces learning. One way work with this is actually using an app for instance The Intelligent Flashcards. Amounts . flashcard app is planned for the New Practical Chinese Reader textbooks, making it convenient evaluation characters based on chapters. Also does it show stroke order animation, it furthermore accompanied by native speaker sound files, making this app so much more convenient that another app while Anki. With Anki, although user can add personal notes on it, the sound file is not available and must be imported through another app.

Another important learning method to incorporate is observing your characters are widely used in framework. This can finished by observing real-life conversations to complement the textbook and audio files conversation. It is interesting to make note of that learners studied on the inside abovementioned research were unwilling to adopt the learning strategies recommended by the instructors, such as watching Chinese TV shows or listening Chinese movies. There could be many options for this. The design and style of the shows or songs cannot appeal to your learners.

Associated with this program is considerably less convenient. Or if the shows become accessed online, rarely is it subtitled either in both Chinese and English which will make the shows more useful to beginner learners in getting the language. Also, most of the very popular Chinese Television fall in the historical genre, which is really a favourite among the Chinese, with regard to example The Empress of China. However, the language spoken in this type of TV show is somewhat more complex towards the contemporary spoken Chinese.