Introducing Hanzi Grids - A tool for creating printable worksheets for handwriting practice

[sparrow]

@Ruben von Zwack:

Thanks, I added browser information to my original comment.

 

Sizing:

Yes, the website uses a slider. The slider does not indicate character size in inches or centimeters. I write characters that are about 0.6 square centimeters in size, so that's the size I would like to practice at. It's just a matter of convenience to be able to enter in that number rather than have to guess and check.

 

Character Practice:

I usually study between 20 and 40 words per day. But then I pick a few, max ten or so, that I find hard to write legibly to write five times—like recently：睿 and 藏. Its these kinds of characters that I would like a printed template to write on. Otherwise, I just use character paper.

 

When I first started studying Chinese, I would write a TON of words to memorize them. Then I realized that to remember words, all I really needed was to write the character two or three times, do it again later in the day, then again before bed. Studying new words became very fast after this realization.

 

I also never study characters by themselves for meaning. It doesn't translate into vocabulary, and it doesn't help much when it comes to guessing meanings. For example, I would rather learn 认识，认可，认定，认真 and their meanings, rather than learn 认, which wouldn't necessarily help you guess the meanings of any of those words. Knowing what 认 means by itself might help you remember what those words mean after you learn the actual meaning, which you would have to do anyway.

 

I write characters fairly small. I don't annotate or write notes, meanings or anything. I want to hammer out a bunch in a very short period, then repeat that later in the day after my memory has clouded a little. According to what I've read, this strengthens neural connections, and is the foundation of popular flashcard systems that automatically help you review at specific intervals.

 

I think this is a situation where the Chinese saying, " 量变变质量 " really holds true—"Quantity becomes quality". Rather than learning the words very thoroughly, I learn words less thoroughly, but more quickly and in greater volume, but this affords more time for reading/listening/speaking, which doubles as vocabulary practice through context—which is the best way to make things stick.

 

But this is just how I do things, this is just my opinion, and everyone must find their own way.

 

 

Cheers.

[Ruben von Zwack]

 

When I first started studying Chinese, I would write a TON of words to memorize them. Then I realized that to remember words, all I really needed was to write the character two or three times, do it again later in the day, then again before bed. Studying new words became very fast after this realization.

 

That's interesting, it goes with what I read about the "forgetting curve". It's worth an extra topic, but I would be surprised if such wouldn't already exist somewhere here.

[imron]

@sparrow, that message means that the browser was passing an invalid value to the PDF generation script. Do you mind if I contact you privately to help identify and fix this problem? This will involve turning on some logging on the server and getting you to access the page a few times.

[sparrow]

@imron:

 

Yes, I would be pleased to do this. Thank you.

[Meng Lelan]

What happened to Hanzi Grid? I've been trying to get on it the last 24 hours but it keeps crashing. 

[imron]

It should be working. Am on mobile at the moment. Can you make a more descriptive post about the problem and I'll look at it as soon as I'm back (maybe an hour or so).

[Meng Lelan]

Ok I think it works now. It was refusing to make a PDF after several failed attempts to get onto the Hanzi Grid site. 

[imron]

My hosting provider had a database issue a day or two ago and Hanzi Grids was down for the duration so you might have previously caught the tail end of that.  Glad to hear it's all working again.

[Meng Lelan]

I am too! The Grid being down was downright scary. 

[hedwards]

I'm cheap, has anybody tried laminating these and using a dry erase pen on them? Obviously, you wouldn't want to have specific characters, but it seems like you could get a ton of use out of just one page and a dry erase pen.

[Meng Lelan]

Wow an extremely good idea. Maybe imron can add a laminate option to Hanzi Grids. 

[hedwards]

Yeah, well, I've heard of people doing this sort of thing with checklists, but I was wondering if anybody here had tried it. I've been rather tempted by those magic mats that allow you to paint with water to get a mark that disappears when the mat dries.

[imron]

Those magic mats are great and work especially nice with brushes. You can get ones in china specifically for characters (i.e. with grids and grid lines)

[hedwards]

That was actually my first exposure to them, in fact that was the first time I had any real interest in learning to write characters. I was visiting a Chinese family and the parents had bought one recently. I've seen them for sale online and I've been tempted by them, but so far I haven't been tempted enough to spend the money when I can just visualize myself writing the characters.

 

But, I suspect that Hanzi grids or a proper lined grid would probably be better for practicing penmanship than just visualizing it.

[imron]

Split discussion of developing motor skills here.

[Tatarik]

Thanks imron, very useful tool this Hanzi Grids, just registered ;)

[imron]

Glad to hear you like it.  Be sure to check out my other useful tools too :-)

[Shelley]

I have been using Hanzi Grids since the beginning, I now have an android tablet. As an experiment I went to Hanzi Grids with the browser and generated a pdf which loaded quite quickly to my Adobe app.

 

Once I had it in Adobe I started the freehand option and was able to use Hanzi Grids with my finger drawing over the characters and then writing mine in the blank squares as you would do if you had printed it out. When you leave the freehand mode it clears the page, so you can do it as often as you like unless you save it.

 

This worked so well it prompted me to decide to subscribe, when I went to do this the Grid was down. Anyway its back this morning, so I will be subscribing later today.

 

Just wanted to share this way of using Hanzi Grids if no one else had thought of it.

 

It was a great tool when it first came out and all the improvements have made it even better, thanks for putting in the effort.

 

This will complete the trio of tools from you on my pc (Chinese Text analyser and Pinyinput)

[imron]

It was a great tool when it first came out and all the improvements have made it even better, thanks for putting in the effort.

I actually feel a bit embarrassed that I haven't been putting so much effort in to Hanzi Grids - it's been a long time since the last update and there's still many improvements that I want to make unfortunately there are only so many hours in a day.

 

This will complete the trio of tools from you on my pc (Chinese Text analyser and Pinyinput)

There are more coming in the pipeline :-)

[Shelley]

Oh sounds good, will keep an eye out for new stuff.

 

I mentioned this new way of using Hanzi grids cos one of the earlier posts asked if it was possible to make it so you could trace over the characters and i seem to remember your answer included  "Skritter?"

 

So as this kinda did that i thought I would mention it.

 

Will be paying my subscription later this evening, looking forward to unlocking all the functions