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Posts: 122

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Q: How many Chinese characters can you learn per day?

I was doing an intensive mandarin course for a few months and I was not able to remember half of the characters that we were studying, even though I was spending a couple of hour reviewing and writing.

 

Do you think that it is possible to keep learning 30-40 characters per day for a few months or is it better to be more realistic and use a slow but steady approach?

11 years 2 weeks ago in  Teaching & Learning - China

 
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Posts: 2494

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I would be only able to learn several maybe 3 to 5 characters a day if I did what you said you did which is studying for hours and hours. Some characters are easy to remember because they are characters that look like the actual pictures. 

 

For instance, take a look at the character for chicken and you will see that it resembles a chicken. It has the eye the head and the distinctive chicken butt. When I shared that with some chinese friends they said that's the first time they actually saw it that way and agreed with me that it did resemble a chicken.

 

That's how I remember some of the characters. Those are the easy one's to remember they are like sight words in English. Some of the other characters such as man is supposed to be a person walking but if that's the case it's only the legs. That might be hard to see but if you just picture someone's legs walking than you could probably remember that it means person. 

 

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11 years 2 weeks ago

There are cookies, bookies and too many rookies for me to sit here trying to be a hooky! Looky Looky don't call me a wooky. Touchy Touchy Feely Feely Spicy Spicy Nicey Nicey & that's what the doctor Ordered!!

 
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When I studied, which wasn't for long, I learned about 30 per week. Maybe that's too slow but I figured 30 is better than zero, 60 is better than 30 and so on. If you don't know much then in my opinion a little improvement makes a big difference.

It does help to work on similar hanzi like ren, da, and tian for example.

I'm not at all sure I could learn 40 per day. I wonder?

If you know few or none it may be advantageous to start with 30-50 per week and add more later. 

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I haven't studied in a while.  The best I could do, and actually remember 90% of what I had learned, was when I was learning about 10 characters per day: I'd learn 5 in the morning, 5 in the afternoon.  I worked my way through the HSK levels 1 and 2 on Memrise.  I still have a decent grasp on those 600+ characters.  30 or 40 per day seems kinda crazy.  Might be doable if that is all you're doing, and nothing else.  But I've got a job to do Tongue

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11 years 2 weeks ago
 
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Trying to memorize individual characters is a totally inefficient way to learn them. There are certain rules that, if you learn them, will greatly improve the rate of uptake.

 

For instance, many characters have a radical (a stroke or strokes usually at the front of the character but not always that groups characters according to some empirical factor e.g. things to do with water, things to do with fire or heat, things to do with clothes or apparel). If you know several of these radicals, you will almost certainly find it much easier to learn characters quickly.

 

There are several website where characters and the rules can be found.

chenhan:

That's the exact way we were taught to remember characters when we were kids.

11 years 2 weeks ago
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Hugh.G.Rection:

Wonderful Kaiwen, now all I need to do is find somewhere / something that lists these 'radicals'.

11 years 2 weeks ago
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The system I've been using for a long time (so not that efficient) sounds complicated but works well (for most). You need a large amount of cards / bits of paper, blank business cards work well. Write the Hanzi character on one side and the Pinyin and English translation on the other. I usually try to always have 30 or more characters in this daily pile.

 

Every day go through the daily pile, any characters you can read (out loud) you put in the next pile, (the weekly pile). Go through the daily pile as many times as you wish but only test yourself (i.e. pass the ones you remember to the weekly pile) once a day.

 

Once a week go through the weekly pile, any you remember pass on to the monthly pile any you don't remember go back to the daily pile.

 

Once a month go through the monthly pile, any you remember pass on to the 3 monthly pile any you don't remember back to the daily pile.

 

Once every 3 months go through the 3 monthly pile, any you remember should now be fixed in your brain so put aside for revision, any you don't remember back to the daily pile.

 

This works remarkably well, my reading (after two years no) is WAY ahead of my, frankly, abysmal speaking.

cooter:

This is remarkably similar to the Memrise system.  You get tested more often on the words you have trouble with.  The easier words only come around once in a blue moon.

11 years 2 weeks ago
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Hugh.G.Rection:

Cooter, I've just been to Memrise and registered; either i'm missing something or ................. I clicked on Mandarin Simplified and great, got a load of courses, but none of them appear to have pinyin. How the Dickens am I supposed to learn the pronunciation without pinyin?

11 years 2 weeks ago
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cooter:

It's there...sounds like something is glitching.  There's two main focuses on Memrise: the meaning of the character, and the pronunciation of the character (tone inclusive!).  Just start into one of the courses....you just have to get used to "planting, harvesting, and watering" your "seeds and flowers".

11 years 2 weeks ago
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Scandinavian:

Memrise is a good recommendation. Have just had a look, and maybe it what a dumbass foreigner like me need to start on HSK training

Mr Rection. I just went through a section of the HSK 1 course, it has speak (audio) and pinyin.

11 years 2 weeks ago
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Hugh.G.Rection:

Thanks guys, probably my old laptop at work, I'll try again when I get home. Just spent most of the afternoon reading anyway.

11 years 2 weeks ago
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mArtiAn:

  Jesus Hugh, and I thought I had major piles!

11 years 2 weeks ago
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I don't know why but my computer will not allow me to "Add Comment":

 

However, for Hugh.G.Rection, there is a huge resource of literature listing the character radicals. The most straightforward and cheapest way is to search "Chinese Character Radical" on the internet. There are also countless VCD's, text books, flash cards etc. from book stores.

Hugh.G.Rection:

Thanks! 

OK, that's my Chinese learning sorted for the next few months! 

11 years 2 weeks ago
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