Recurring mistakes when writing hanzi

[valikor]

I've noticed that when I make errors in writing characters, I often make the same error on a regular basis. That is, some parts of the characters are easy to remember, while other things get mixed up. I'd guess this is common.

Has anyone tried the strategy of keeping track of his or her common mistakes, and then studying them, as a way to study characters?

I just mis-wrote 安静 for the millionth time, putting a heart-radical on the left part of 静。 (No idea why I do this... something is getting mixed up in my head I guess..)

Sometimes when I study characters (production, using anki), I circle the characters that I got wrong. I can look back, and even without looking at the incorrect character, I can remember exactly what the mistake was.. in fact, even a few days later, I can often still remember what the last mistake was, and the reason why it's been re-scheduled so soon on Anki.

Thus, I wonder if it might be helpful to do something like I suggested above. I'm probably going to try it anyways, but I'm wondering if anyone has used a strategy like this, what exactly you did, and if it was helpful or not.

thanks!

david

[skylee]

What is the suggestion? A study?

Not sure about what the younger generations did/do, but when I was young I learnt Chinese characters by writing them repeatedly. When I learnt a new word, I had to write it ten times as homework. Then there were dictations/tests/examinations. When I made a mistake, I would be required to write it ten more times. And if I still could not remember it, more practice. This was how I learnt to write Chinese. Same with learning how to spell in English.

I don't understand why it is useful to study recurring mistakes. I think pratice is the key.

[roddy]

I just mis-wrote 安静 for the millionth time, putting a heart-radical on the left part of 静。 (No idea why I do this... something is getting mixed up in my head I guess..)

Not sure if this is right, but there's a lot of common characters - 请， 情，清，晴 - which you come across at a relatively early stage that have 青 on the right. I suspect the pattern-noticing parts of the brain spots that and think of it as a rule, and so the exception of it being on the left in 静 causes confusion.

I can get 欠,攵and夂 mixed up all day long, but I work on the basis that if I ever have to write anything, my handwriting is so bad nobody is likely to notice.

[Gharial]

Maybe you could try thinking along basic lines such as: 'The radical for 静 is 靑 (the heart radical meanwhile, that I mistakenly keep on writing, is thus pushed out of and no longer in the common left-side radical position), whilst the phonetic according to Harbaugh is apparently (or rather, "has to, can only be" therefore, by this process of elimination I'm engaged in) 争 (zhēng). So 静 = left radical 靑 + right phonetic ("phonetic") 争 .'

[Hofmann]

Hmmm...I think when I was little, I wrote the third stroke of 隹 as a 丶 instead of 丿. I have also written 日 as 曰 and 曰 as 日 (Top left corner should be closed in 日, open in 曰). I also wrote 寺 with 士 instead of 土 on top. All because of some stupid standard character set. I might still write many things wrong because of it.

[xifbk]

To fix the problem more permanently I suggest you start learning/memorising all of the chinese radicals. It will help with this problem and with learning new characters.

There is a good reason kids are taught them when they are learning to read and write!

[Shi Tong]

Personally, the reason I think you might be making the mistake is that 靜 means calm, and your brain might be assuming that you need a heart to be calm-- I thought that character has a heart next to it, just because it's the kind of thing that would have.

Does that make sense?

[chrix]

Since you asked: No, my money is on roddy's hypothesis, makes much more sense to me.

[animal world]

Since Valikor mentioned that he didn't write this word correctly for the "millionth" time, it's obvious that he has practiced it plenty of times, although probably not a million times (yet).

Valikor, i have wondered about this interesting phenomenon as well. For instance, i might learn 100 new words. Most of them i remember in the expected fashion. But there might be a few words that for some odd reason i keep forgetting or messing up. Again and again, i give them low scores so that they will come back very often in my SRS but still they stubbornly defy perfect memorization. The odd thing is that there is nothing special about these words. They are not particularly difficult or loaded with psychological baggage to which my unconsciousness might object. I haven't been able to figure out what causes this memorization problem. Maybe they are just too "plain vanilla" and don't readily stick out in my mind. I suspect that the negativity and irritation the reluctant buggers generate when i just goofed on them for the umpteenth time also prolong the memorization process. I don't know. In that same badge of words there might be very difficult words or expressions that i remember without any problem.

I used Anki for a while but am not too familiar with all its bells and whistles. If it allows separate categories, i suggest you create a separate little category in which you put the "i-always-mess-this-one-up" words and characters. Perhaps it might be helpful for this category to go from English to Chinese instead of the usual Chinese to English. Play with it and see whether you should put in this category just these pesky buggers or also the characters/words with which you habitually confuse them.

I add comments to my answers for characters that i frequently confuse with something else. Added to my answer for 灭 is the following: Note: 灾 - disaster. Added to the answer for 灾 is: Note: 灭 - to extinguish.This tactic has proven helpful to me. Many of these notes i could delete by now but i keep them as positive reinforcement. Each time i come across such a note during my drill i grin and think, "Yeah, i outsmarted that one!"

These problems aren't limited to Chinese. For many years, French was a much more important language to me than English. Even after i had already lived in the US for a few years, I still habitually had to verify in a dictionary whether the English spelling for "address" had one or two d's because i kept confusing it with the French "adresse."

[Shi Tong]

My point being that if he's practiced this lots of times, he might make a mistake like this.

It's the kind of thing I would do. Probably not anyone else.

[chrix]

Yeah, animal world, I was very confused by 灭 as well (though I have to say that I started out studying traditional script).