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Poll: Amount of time to learn a Chinese character
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View Poll Results: # of times, on average, you need to write out a character before you can
reproduce it
I am superhuman; I just need to look at them 6 13.33%
1-5 10 22.22%
6-10 9 20.00%
11-15 2 4.44%
16-20 5 11.11%
21-25 3 6.67%
26-30 3 6.67%
31-40 0 0%
41-50 2 4.44%
51 + 5 11.11%
Voters: 45. You may not vote on this poll



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Shadowdh -

I voted 6-10 if you mean do I know it short term memory type of thing, but as most say its
repetitive use that commits it to long term... some are easier than others too...



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fulgentius -

To me, this question is unanswerable. I've noticed the single most important factor in how readily
I memorize a character is...wait, make that the TWO biggest factors are:

1) Whether I like the character or not, on an aesthetic level. Seriously, some characters are neat
and I remember them very quickly, whereas other characters look so misshapen or otherwise
unpleasing to me that I may not have them reliably memorized even after a week of doing
flashcards, etc.

For instance, I love 語, it has a nice proportion to it, and it's fun to write. 書 is another
favorite. On the other hand, I think 學 is ugly and a big pain to write, so it took me a while to
get down. I still feel slightly indignant every time I have to write it.

2) Whether some kind of association occurs to me or not. This means that the more complicated
characters (and I'm learning traditional right now) are often easier to learn than simple ones.

So, 雞, to me, was much easier to learn than 七. The first is full of components that you can
link together somehow; it's rich and not hard to come up with some association, even if you don't
know the components from other characters. Whereas in the second case there is little to latch on
to; it's so simple that it's hard to think of it as much more than a few lines.

Blah blah blah.










fulgentius -

Oh, and incidentally, for better or worse I do very little writing/copying of characters. Because
I hate it. So I:

1) Do flashcards till I recognize the set I'm learning.
2) Write each one about ten times to make sure I know how to write them and solidify my recall.
3) Continue doing flashcards in perpetuity.

Seems to work okay.

I just finished my first year, and I find at this point that I can usually figure out how to write
a character without having to consult a book or actually write it out.

The big pedagogical breakthrough I made the other day is making flashcards for sentence patterns
and common constructions. This is making my life oh so much easier, grammar-wise. I wish someone
had told me to do this from the beginning.










roddy -

For the record I haven't voted, as I have absolutely no idea what my answer would be. Over the
years I must have 'started' learning characters at least 4 times, but I've never followed through
and I'm still very much recognition only. For the record I can tell you that repeated viewing of a
character does not result in the ability to write though - otherwise I'd be scribbling off
complete news articles with no problem.

A question to those who use flashcards for learning characters - what's your precise methodology.
Are you looking at 跟 and saying to yourself 'right,thats 很 but with 足 as a radical', or are
you making yourself write it, or trace out the strokes in the air, or what?










gato -



Quote:

A question to those who use flashcards for learning characters - what's your precise methodology.
Are you looking at 跟 and saying to yourself 'right,thats 很 but with 足 as a radical', or are
you making yourself write it, or trace out the strokes in the air, or what?

My situation is similar to yours, Roddy. Although I can read complete books without using the
dictionary too much, I have difficulty remembering how to write even the most basic characters.

Right now I'm using PlecoDict's flashcard system almost exclusively to help me with my write. I'm
going through the list of most frequently used characters, from number 200 to 1000. I'm using the
test settings below, under which PlecoDict prompts me with the pinyin and English definition, and
I have to write the character. I try to test myself on 50 to 100 characters each session. The rank
setting is set so that I have to get a character twice in a row before I can skip the character in
the next session.

The method works well for me, though obviously it's very time-consuming. That's Chinese for you.

http://www.plecoforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=614
To be tested on Chinese writing, you can change the setting so you are prompted with the
definition and pinyin, and you have to supply the characters.
Open Plecodict
Start new flashcard session
Test Settings
Change the Test and Show settings so that under Test only Defn + Pinyin is ticked










roddy -

Similar to what I've been doing, but I've been taking a more word-orientated approach. I've been
going through a basic level 'learn to write characters' book, then feeding the characters I 'know'
into this and then testing myself on writing words rather than characters, on the basis that
a) I'll remember them better as part of a word than as an isolated character (see above)
b) It's more interesting that way - even some very simple, common characters can combine into
higher level vocab. This way I don't restrict myself to the elementary level vocab the book
suggests.
c) It's helping to consolidate a lot of vocab - stuff I know when I read it, but if I was asked
'hey, what's the difference between A and B' I couldn't answer.
d) I forget what the next reason was. Perhaps I need flashcards for this too.

Problem with this method is that it becomes even more time consuming - the first 400 characters I
fed in converted to a little over 1000 items to test.

Something else I'm considering doing is using listening courses as dictation material - again
it'll be contextual use of characters, and will probably be very good for my currently comical
ability to hold spoken Chinese information in memory.










laowai1980 -

I can't vote for some reason, probably not enough posts on this forum. Anyway, I'm in the initial
stages of learning Chinese (3 months only and less than 200 hanzi learned), I've been using
approach of taking 2 characters per day and writing them down 50-100 times. Now I switched to
taking a set of 20 characters or so and writing them down each day about 20 times each character
over 10 days. The second approach is more fun to me, since I don't get stuck with only 2 hanzi
when it gets boring to write down the same two hanzi over a sheet of paper all the time. With 20
chars it's more interesting and you extend the learning period so I feel my mind absorbs them
better.

As been said, you have to practise characters you had learned over a longer time and then from
time to time, because I feel like some of the earlier hanzi are being lost from my mind. I can
still recognize and read them in text, but I forget the stroke order for example, or generally how
to write them. And it's only been less than 200 hanzi learned. Sounds discouraging but I am not
discouraged actually, I know that 熟能生巧 so just keep going. My initial goal is 300 chars
which should be reached over the next 3 months, the next goal is 1000-1100 chars over 2 years
which covers 80% of the texts (I realize I still may not understand 80% of the text with those).
Then we'll see. t least with 1k chars I won't have to look up every other char in the dictionary,
so it gets more fun from there. Anyway, that's my idea, maybe faulty somewhere but as long as it
works who cares right?










赫杰 -

laowai1980, I think your goals are very sensible and realistic, I just wanted to say (without
knowing how much free time you got) I think learning to write 1000 characters in one year is also
very feasible, so just be careful not to set your goals too low. A little pressure can be a good
thing (again I don’t know how much free time you have to study Chinese)

Roddy,


Quote:

Something else I'm considering doing is using listening courses as dictation material - again
it'll be contextual use of characters, and will probably be very good for my currently comical
ability to hold spoken Chinese information in memory.

Yup, that is what I was going to recommend. When I am reading and listening to Chinese, I
sometimes reserve one part of the brain to kind of run a check on the tones and how to write the
character.

佳节愉快 to everyone out there in Chinese-forums land!

HJ










shivan -

I think it depends a lot on the character. Some characters just stick in your mind. I studied for
4 months now and there are still some chacacters from the first weeks that keep slipping my mind.
Those are the evil evil characters.... as I call them










Gulao -

As far as having them locked in for an exam, 1 - 5 times. Having them memorized forever requires
constant use.












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