Articles in the ‘Writing’ category Page 6
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Hone your Chinese writing ability by writing summaries
Writing summaries is an excellent combination of reading and writing practice. It’s one of the most powerful learning activities I know when it comes to improving writing ability. In this article, I discuss how to improve writing ability in general, but with a clear focus on why and how writing summaries should be part of your study routine.
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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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How knowing your best performance in Chinese can help you improve
When learning Chinese, it’s important to know how good your best performance is, because this determines the way you study. If your best performance is good enough, you mostly need high-volume practice, more of the same will get you there. But if your best performance isn’t good enough, you need to change tactics and go for high-quality practice instead.
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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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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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Handwriting Chinese characters: The minimum requirements
This is a guide to handwriting Chinese characters. It’s not about writing beautifully, but writing correctly, including things like stroke placement, length and direction. There are numerous examples of handwritten characters (real examples, not typed characters) along with practical exercises to see if you have grasped the core ideas. The article goes somewhat beyond the bare minimum for beginners, but is certainly a must for anyone who cares about handwriting Chinese characters.
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Why good feedback matters and how to get it
Teachers give feedback in many different ways, some terribly bad, others very good. The bad ones let you struggle for hours just to correct your essay, not necessarily learning much on the way. The good ones not only allow you to correct your essay, you also feel that you’re learning a lot and won’t make the same mistakes again. This article sets down some guidelines for how to give good feedback, useful for both students and teachers.
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Asking the experts: How to learn Chinese grammar
How should we learn Chinese grammar? This article collects the best answers from more than 15 experts and experienced learners.
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Improving your spoken and written Chinese by focusing on the process
Focusing on the process rather than the result has obvious benefits when trying to learn a foreign language. Does it really matter what number your teacher puts on the final version of your essay? No, what matters is what you learnt and what you will be able to improve until next time. Process writing is common enough, but this article extends the concept to speaking as well, which is a much neglected technique in language learning.
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How to improve your Chinese writing ability through focused reading
Everybody knows that if we want to improve our writing ability, we need to read more. But what should we read and how? With enough exposure, we can probably learn anything, but it’s much more efficient if we read with focus. If that focus coincides with the current weaknesses in our writing ability, supplemented with some targeted practice, we can improve our writing more quickly!
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