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 words. Not only that, Chinese is additionally tonal language with four different tones, commonly marked with accent marks, additionally 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. Finally tone sh can mean yes or room or matter. In essence, couple options many similar sounds with different meanings. As a matter of 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 mother nature herself. 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 can not related, the concept the characters may possibly. On the contrary, when the pronunciation can be related due to similar root character, the meanings aren’t 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 compounding of I and u. Like things unfamiliar, it will result in uncertainty and fear. Thus, knowing the challenges learners face is the first step in devising effective learning strategies that directly affect their language becoming successful.

The Strategies Previously Learn Chinese Characters

Prof Ko-Yin Sung of Chinese Language Study from Utah Expenses hikes conducted a search amongst non-heritage, non-Asian Truly learners and uncovered interesting results which could help future learners in forming a highly effective study procedure. Her study revolves surrounding the most frequently employed Chinese character learning strategies and how those strategies affect the learners’ ability in understanding and producing the sound and the writing on the Chinese heroes.

The study finds that among the top twenty most often used strategies, eight from them are most typically associated 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 in context.

4. Noting the tone and associating it with pinyin.

5. Observing the character and stroke order.

6. Visualising the element.

7. Hearing the explanation of the type.

8. Associating the character with previously learned nature.

The next six strategies are familiar with increase learners’ understanding belonging to the newly introduced character.

9. Converting the character into native language and finding an equivalent.

10. Looking in the textbook or dictionary.

11. Checking if the new character has been used above.

12. Trying to discover how to say hello in chinese intensive testing . used in conversation.

13. While using character in sentences by mouth.

14. Asking how the smoothness could provide in words.

However, learning strategies come to diminish beyond those two learning stages. There are only three strategies played with memorising newly learned the outdoors.

15. Saying and writing the character at one time.

16. Saying and picturing the character in your head.

17. Given the sound, visualising the character shape and meaning.

And nevertheless only one strategy utilized for practising new characters.

18. Making sentences and writing them out.

And new characters are reviewed truly worth two strategies only.

19. Writing the characters many times.

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 the new characters. A few strategies are:

Writing the characters down

Observing the stroke order

Making association with 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 whatever hear, and 30% from what they see. When learning modes are combined, an essential improvement to learn retention is noted. Learning retention jumped to 50% when seeing and hearing are combined, and even higher at 70% when students the materials yet learning, and learning retention is at the highest at 90% when students the materials built learning as they quite do the one thing. 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 demonstrates that recalling new characters learned improves learning retention and reinforces understanding. One way allow your this will be by using an app since The Intelligent Flashcards. This particular flashcard app is designed for the New Practical Chinese Reader textbooks, making it convenient evaluation characters based on chapters. Also does it show stroke order animation, it can be accompanied by native speaker sound files, making this app a great dea of more convenient that another app such as Anki. With Anki, although user may add personal notes on it, the sound file isn’t available and should be imported through another app.

Another important learning method to incorporate is observing how the characters are widely-used in situation. This can be practiced by observing real-life conversations to complement the textbook and audio recordings conversation. The time interesting to notice that university students studied in the abovementioned research were often unwilling to adopt the training strategies recommended by the instructors, such as watching Chinese TV shows or listening Chinese song selections. There could be many reasons why you are this. The style of the shows or songs may not appeal to the learners.

To be able to this program is not as convenient. Instances if the shows might be accessed online, rarely are they subtitled in either both Chinese and English which will make the shows more helpful to beginner learners in acquiring the language. Also, most from the very popular Chinese Tv programs fall in the historical genre, which can be a favourite one of several Chinese, with regard to example The Empress of Singapore. However, the language spoken in this particular type of TV show is a bit more complex than the contemporary spoken Chinese.