Articles in the ‘Distinctively Chinese’ category Page 14
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Don’t use mnemonics for everything
Mnemonics are really cool, but you shouldn’t overuse them. Chinese characters are very complex and the amount of information you might want to remember about them is large. Creating mnemonics for everything is very time consuming and difficult. Instead of doing this, create mnemonics only for things you actually find hard to remember.
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How to create mnemonics for general or abstract character components
Anyone who has tried mnemonics for learning Chinese characters knows that some components are easier to link together than others. This article discusses in detail how to deal with abstract or general character components and how to handle components with the same or overlapping meaning, an essential skill if you’re serious about character learning.
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Sensible character learning: Progress, reminders and reflections
The sensible character challenge has now been running for two weeks and it’s time to see how things have been going so far. This post is a progress report that contains some reflections on the challenge itself, as well as some practical advice on how to solve common problems. It also invites participants to share their experience and progress so far.
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Towards a more sensible way of learning to write Chinese
This character learning challenge strives to teach students to learn Chinese characters in a way that makes sense in the long term. While the challenge is over, the principles are still applicable!
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You can’t learn Chinese characters by rote
My conclusion after years of learning characters is that rote learning is useless. Spaced repetition software is good, but it’s still not enough. If adult foreigners are going to learn to write Chinese by hand, we really need another method. We need mnemonics, we need active processing, we need to quit rote learning and stop using SRS mechanically.
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Extending mnemonics: Tones and pronunciation
Using mnemonics to memorise concrete objects is fairly easy, but how can we use mnemonics to remember abstract things such as tones and pronunciation? In this article, I expand my previous discussions of mnemonics and show how they can be quite powerful if you’re prepared to invest some extra time.
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Kickstart your Chinese character learning with the 100 most common radicals
This is a list of the 100 most common radicals among the 2000 most common characters, meaning that it’s excellent for beginners who want to boost their understanding of Chinese characters. The list contains simplified, traditional, variants, meaning, pronunciation, examples, helpful comments and colloquial names.
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Review: The Phonology of Standard Chinese
Duanmu San’s “The Phonology of Standard Chinese” is by far the best introduction to Mandarin phonology that I’m aware of. It’s mostly useful for people who like phonology or are already at an advanced level and want to add a theoretical edge. This book contains tons of interesting material, all well-presented and well-argued.
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Learning simplified and traditional Chinese
Learning traditional characters if you know simplified or vice versa is a lot easier than beginners tend to think. Generally, you don’t need to worry, because at an advanced level, learning both is quite easy. This article is about simplified/traditional and how to learn both.
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Learning Chinese is easier than you think
Natives and foreigners alike tend to spread the myth that Chinese is impossible to learn. This isn’t true. If you have the correct attitude and approach, Chinese isn’t all that difficult to learn, at least to a conversant level. This post is meant as encouragement for those of you who think or believe that Chinese is impossible to learn.
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