What Is the Easiest Method to Memorize Chinese Characters?

[musicisgood]

Hey guys, check out this new invention of mine. It's so much more efficient than walking around, just look at how many more shoes it has!

Please let me be your first buyer. I go through shoes so quickly. Like in a stroke of a second or is it a third, ow well, you get my drift.

 

[nice gaijin]

Very glad if my information is of some help for you. It is not a problem to decompose any Chinese character into radicals and composnents. You can find a good Chinese character decomposition guidance on the internet and practice the Chinese character decomposition.

Do you realize he wasn't talking to you? Your method is absolute nonsense. 名 is literally just 夕 and 口, any further "decomposition" is pointless. You aren't helping anyone.

Please let me be your first buyer. I go through shoes so quickly. Like in a stroke of a second or is it a third, ow well, you get my drift.

Yeah you need a lot more shoes than you have feet, and you go slower so it takes forever to get anywhere. But uh, I guess that's the price of innovation, if you get my drift

 

[NShinkin]

You are absolutely right. I would even say that the Chinese character 名 míng 'name' is just a character 名 míng 'name' and not radicals 夕 xī 'evening' and 口 kǒu 'mouth'.

At the same time the Chinese character decomposition is applied for the sake of teaching purposes. When a Chinese character is broken down to simple radicals and components it looks more understandable to the Chinese language learner. In these components the learner has a kind of associative links with the Chinese character.

It is a fact, that if we do not clearly understand something, our mind rejects these things for memorization. If we understand the structure of the Chinese character up to the final component it will be a true guarantee that the character properly understood and memorized.

Consequently, the Chinese language learner saves a huge amount of time learning how to write the character.

The Chinese character decomposition has been tested in the classroom with my students within many years of my teaching practice. Solid academic scores among my students was the result of the Chinese character decomposition applied as the main teaching method. It always gave a 100% of the students' study success.

Indeed, what can be simplier and more understandable than decomposition of the Chinese character 名 míng 'name'!

夕 xī evening
ク dāo knife
丶 zhǔ dot
口 kǒu mouth
冂 jiōng down box
一 yī one

夕ク丶口冂 一

Another perfect Chinese character decomposition example - Decomposition of the Chinese character 你 nǐ 'you':

亻 rén man
尔 ěr you
冖 mì cover
小 xiǎo small
亅 jué hook
八 bā eight

亻尔冖小亅八

Using Chinese character decomposition as the teaching tool will always guarantee a sound pedagogical and academic success both for teachers and the Chinese language learners!

 

[nice gaijin]

Humans are capable of recognizing and remembering complex patterns, which is why radicals exist in the first place. Once enough radicals are learned, NOBODY learns new characters by breaking them down to individual strokes. This is convoluted nonsense, and I feel sorry for your students having to do so much unnecessary busywork.

Did you make this "method" up yourself or do you have any actual academic basis to back this up?

 

[NShinkin]

Being a beginning teacher of the Chinese language more than 30 years ago I used to get prepared for my lessons very responsibly and thouroughly. Normally I decomposed all new Chinese characters of the lesson so that my students might understand and memorize them as soon as possible. Below is the part of my everyday lesson plan summary:

Lesson 5 Text
很高兴收到您的来信，我们可以提供您所需要的产品。请将产品标准，规格和需要数量告知我们，以便我们更准确的为您报价。此致 敬礼！ 王永亮

The Chinese Character Decomposition Guidance:

高 gāo，high，亠 tóu lid，丶 zhǔ dot，一 yī one，口 kǒu mouth，冂 jiōng down box，一 yī one，冋 jiǒng bright，冂 jiōng down box，口 kǒu mouth，冂 jiōng down box，一 yī one， 亠丶一口冂 一冋冂口冂 一

收 dào arrive，至 zhì arrive，一 yī one，厶 sī private，土 tǔ earth，十 shí ten，一 yī one，丨 gǔn line，一 yī one，刂 dāo knife，至一厶土十一丨一刂

提 tí， mention，扌 shǒu hand，一 yī one，亅 jué hook，是 shì be，曰 yuē say，冂 jiōng down box，二 èr two，疋 shū foot，乛 yǐ second，⺊ bǔ divination，丨 gǔn line，一 yī one，人 rén man， 扌一亅是曰冂二疋乛⺊ 丨一人

需 xū，need，⻗ yǔ rain，一 yī one，冖 mì cover，丨 gǔn line，⺀ èr two，而 ér but，一 yī one，丿 piě slash，冂 jiōng down box，丨 gǔn line，丨 gǔn line， ⻗ 一冖丨⺀ 而一丿冂 丨丨

标 biāo， sign， 木 mù tree，十 shí ten，一 yī one，丨 gǔn line，八 bā eight，示 shì spirit，二 èr two，小 xiǎo small，亅 jué hook，八 bā eight， 木十一丨八示二 小亅八

格 gé，standard，木 mù tree，十 shí ten，一 yī one，丨 gǔn line，八 bā eight，各 gè every，夂 zhǐ go，丿 piě slash，又 yòu again，口 kǒu mouth，冂 jiōng down box，一 yī one， 木十一丨八各 夂丿又口冂 一

Nowadays, quite a number of my students are the Chinese language teachers themselves and use the same Chinese language decomposition methodology as the core principle of their teaching philosophy.

Their students also demonstrate the same high academic scores in terms of the Chinese characters memorization! I am happy that my teaching principles are alive and I could do something what makes sense for people.

Can you please tell about your Chinese character decomposition experience. What makes the grounds for your judgements? I reckon everyone who follows this discussion thread will happily listen to your story. Thank you in advance.

 

[nice gaijin]

I studied Japanese first for several years, and spent a while living in Beijing going to language school. I've also lived in Korea, and spent time in Taiwan and several other countries where Chinese characters are used in some form, so I have been exposed to several different character sets. When I was in China, I found my knowledge of Japanese kanji immensely useful. Even though they use the simplified character set and I had to re-map traditional radicals to their simplified counterparts, like 話 ＞ 话, it was incredibly easy to pick up. Sometimes, I'd have to learn the new equivalent which may even have lost some radicals, such as 電 ＞ 电. Frankly, I don't like the simplified characters, it feels like they've castrated the written language just to make it "easier."

I am not a language expert but I have studied linguistics and phonology, have a BA in Japanese, and my profession is as an information systems analyst and graphic designer. Kanji/Hanzi fascinate me so I sought to study them in the most efficient ways possible, and I found that radicals are the key to remembering, understanding, and synthesizing the written language.

I'm sorry but if you made your students break every character down to individual strokes then you did them a disservice. Once a student knows 口, why would you EVER force them to tell you what strokes make it up? It's like teachers that force their students to "show their work" on simple math they can do in their heads. I have a viscerally negative response to that style of teaching. I don't consider myself much of a pedant but holy crap you triggered me hardcore.

You still haven't answered whether you actually got this method from a credible source or you just made it up on your own. Did you publish this method anywhere? Is it peer-reviewed by other Chinese teachers, or language experts?

高 gāo，high，亠 tóu lid，丶 zhǔ dot，一 yī one，口 kǒu mouth，冂 jiōng down box，一 yī one，冋 jiǒng bright，冂 jiōng down box，口 kǒu mouth，冂 jiōng down box，一 yī one， 亠丶一口冂 一冋冂口冂 一

Do all those meanings add up to "high?" The character gets the meaning from the radicals, if anywhere, not EVERY. SINGLE. COMPONENT.

亠丶一口冂 一冋冂口冂 一

You already broke the character into its radicals, and then you break those into their constituent strokes? For every character you "analyze!?" You even did it for 口 TWICE for this one character!?

 

[NShinkin]

Sara Rovira Esteva Retweeted your Tweet

17h:

I just published "A Successful Tool for the Chinese Language Teachers and Learners"

 

[NShinkin]

Sara Rovira Esteva liked your Tweet

17h:

I just published "A Successful Tool for the Chinese Language Teachers and Learners"

 

[NShinkin]

Feb 10:

A Friendly Principle to Memorize Chinese Characters

Drew liked your Tweet

 

[NShinkin]

The Chinese character decomposition is accepted by many people in different countries. You can see my previuosly published likes from Twitter. All social networks are positely accept the idea of the Chinese character decomposition.

The Chinese character decomposition is the result of my teaching practice. You can get acquanted with some of my co-author works on Polina Shinkina's Author Spotlight page

 

[nice gaijin]

Are you trolling? I asked for a peer-reviewed publication and you give us tweets, with links to things posted less than a day ago (identical to your posts here). Do you not know what peer-reviewed means?? Blog posts and self-published e-books do not count.

Please show me ONE legitimate review of your method by a respected, published, linguistic academic. Not you, not one of your students, a stranger who has looked at your method and said "yes, this is a logical approach."

 

[Emoni]

Oh my...

Was sent this link to glance at and this "method" certainly raised an eyebrow with me. I work in education as a professor (I'll keep it at that details-wise), so I wanted to give some sort of response. However, I see Nice Gaijin has already raised many of the concerns that I popped into my mind.

Various concerns pop into mind besides the clear issues with validity that have been raised: how have you qualitatively tested this approach?; what learning methods is the based upon?; what PEER REVIEWED applicable journals connected to second-language learning are you published in that have given you feedback on the application of this method (at whichever level you may, or may have not, tested this)?; what of the students for which other learning approaches are more applicable and effective?; how do you justify spending such an immense amount of classroom and study time as opposed to usage of the constructed vocabulary in context?

Honestly, the list goes on. For a linguistics focused class this breakdown I could see as helpful, but even some of your "breakdowns" do not seem correct or accurate in the least, so I am rather concerned. I had a very similar experience to Nice Gaijin (even going to the same language school for a short period of time), and have seen several methods of learning Chinese characters, both for use in Japanese, Chinese, and for a small part, Korean. Sorry if I come across as "aggressively skeptical", but this approach seems highly questionable to put it kindly. All you have thrown up as effectiveness of your method is a bunch of "PDF eBooks" as if this is some attempt for a quick advertisement for your currently unsupported "method", and you do not seem to understand the questions you are being asked either. I'm half-inclined to call this post a poorly-veiled attempt at desperate advertising.

The Chinese character decomposition is accepted by many people in different countries. You can see my previuosly published likes from Twitter. All social networks are positely accept the idea of the Chinese character decomposition.

The Chinese character decomposition is the result of my teaching practice. You can get acquanted with some of my co-author works on Polina Shinkina's Author Spotlight page.

 

[NShinkin]

A Key to the Chinese Language Door

When you unlock the room you should know which key to use. When you study a foreign language you should choose the most successful method to do it.

Different languages demand different approaches.

To study the Chinese language the best method is Chinese character decomposition. It means splitting a Chinese character into components and radicals. Then you see how simple a Chinese character is!

So, the knowledge of the Chinese radicals is the key to the Chinese language door!

You can see it for yourself in this very sample below.

Decomposition of the Chinese character 千 qiān 'thousand':

千 qiān thousand

丿 piě slash

十 shí ten

一 yī one

丨 gǔn line

It is clear as a day, isn't it?

 

[Emoni]

Okay, I am now convinced that this thread is just a poorly-veiled attempt to advertise your unsupported, non-academic, so-called "learning method" of expensive PDF ebooks on this website under the guise of "debate" when there isn't any, or you are attempting to troll/scam posters.

Reported your posts for advertising on this forum. This doesn't belong on here. Will not be posting or wasting time further and will leave this thread to the mods who I hope will lock/deal with it.

A Key to the Chinese Language Door

When you unlock the room you should know which key to use. When you study a foreign language you should choose the most successful method to do it.

Different languages demand different approaches.

To study the Chinese language the best method is Chinese character decomposition. It means splitting a Chinese character into components and radicals. Then you see how simple a Chinese character is!

So, the knowledge of the Chinese radicals is the key to the Chinese language door!

You can see it for yourself in this very sample below.

Decomposition of the Chinese character 千 qiān 'thousand':

千 qiān thousand

丿 piě slash

十 shí ten

一 yī one

丨 gǔn line

It is clear as a day, isn't it?

 

[nice gaijin]

Yeah I'm done with this too. You, sir, are a charlatan, and as much fun as it was to expose you, I'd rather the admins delete this whole thread than give you a platform to shill your e-books. Although I doubt anyone reading this thread would be fooled.