Articles in the ‘Vocabulary’ category Page 11
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A minimum-effort approach to writing Chinese characters by hand
Learning characters in the first place takes time, but you also need to maintain that knowledge. This article presents an efficient way to remember how to write Chinese characters in the long term.
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What you intend to write is more important than the character you actually write
Why is focusing on intent important when learning to write Chinese characters? What you intend to write is more important than what you actually write.
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Why you should think of characters in terms of functional components
Learning about the structure of Chinese characters can help enormously when learning the language. This article is an in-depth look at functional components, i.e. parts of characters that give the whole character either its meaning or its sound. It’s also a discussion about why we really shouldn’t talk so much about radicals when learning Chinese.
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Learning to write Chinese characters through communication
How much of your character learning is done through communication? It should be a significant part, but I think this is very rare, both inside and outside classrooms. This article is about using communication to make character writing more fun, meaningful and effective.
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Focusing on communication to learn Chinese
Communicating is the essence of languages and the goal of language learning. In this article, I discuss bot the merits of focusing on communication, but I also explain why focusing too much on communication isn’t the best way of learning.
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About cheating, spaced repetition and learning Chinese
Have you even found yourself grading your answer slightly more positively than you should? Even though we all know that we shouldn’t, I think this is quite common. We shouldn’t do this! We’re only cheating ourselves and impeding our progress. In this article, I talk a little about cheating, spaced repetition software and some related consequences and theories.
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7 ways of learning to write Chinese characters
There are many ways of practising writing Chinese characters and they all have their pros and cons. In this article, I discuss seven different ways of practising and what advantages and disadvantages they have for you as a learner. Which do you use?
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Focusing on radicals, character components and building blocks
How much should you focus on learning building blocks? If you don’t focus enough, you will remain in the tourist phrase book. If you focus too much on building blocks, you will end up living in brick yard rather than a house.
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Sensible character learning challenge 2014: The Big Finish
This article marks the end of the 2014 sensible character learning challenge. Post your progress report to win prizes and read about my own reflections on learning characters! There’s also some information about future challenges on Hacking Chinese and an offer to beta test a new challenge engine.
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Sensible character learning challenge 2014: Milestone #3
The second milestone in the 2014 sensible character learning challenge has now been reached! This is also the last opportunity to join the challenge if you haven’t already. If you have, it’s time to report you progress in May. This article also contains information about prizes (character posters, free extensions and Chinese learning products) for the third milestone, as well as my own reflections of my character learning.
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