Reading and Writing - How do we define literacy?

[roddy]

But doesn't typing them demonstrate the same thing, just without the motor memory?

 

I don't think learning to write has to be an ordeal - I used to love using Skritter. The 'ordeal', if there is one, is keeping up the skill. Unless you're in a situation where you need to write on a daily basis, it's going to atrophy and I'm not entirely sure you'll be able to call it up when you suddenly get handed a pen and paper form. Do you want to commit yourself to 365 days of practice, for the odd occasion when you need to use the skill?

 

Something else I think is worth looking at - how well does the motor memory acquired when learning with tools like Skritter, where you are writing with your finger or a stylus on a screen or graphics tablet, translate into the different ergonomics of pen and paper? It seems to me there's a chance of putting in hundreds of hours and still having a four-year-old's handwriting. I'd love to hear what people think about this. 

[li3wei1]

how well does the motor memory acquired when learning with tools like Skritter, where you are writing with your finger or a stylus on a screen or graphics tablet, translate into the different ergonomics of pen and paper?

 

it's worth pointing out that one of the most common situations where you need to 'write' a character is when you're using the finger of one hand on the palm of the other to clarify which 'fang' you mean.

[戴 睿]

But doesn't typing them demonstrate the same thing, just without the motor memory?

I think the difference is this:

If you ask a native with full handwritten capacity to describe which character 趣 is, than they could do so very easily by describing its component pieces. What's on the left side, what's on the right side, etc.

Some (not all) foreign learners, if asked the same question，would be limited to describing the character as a part of words they commonly read (兴趣 的 趣）. These learners often recognize the character based off of context and what words it appears in, and don't have such a detailed understanding of its components

Both descriptions get the job done. But the first description demonstrates a much deeper understanding of the characters, and it is this deeper understanding that I was referring to when I used the word "pinnacle."

Granted, maybe that deeper understanding isn't needed. For many, as long as you can read you're set.

But think reliably being able to write out a character by hand demonstrates a far greater understanding of the character than being able to type it's pinyin. (I make this observation from my personal experience - there's many characters I can read, but if I was asked to describe its component parts I'd be at a bit of a loss)

[Guest realmayo]

reliably being able to write out a character by hand demonstrates a far greater understanding of the character than being able to type it's pinyin

I think this is overstating the case. In English you could perhaps say that knowing the Latin/etc root of a given word gives a greater understanding of how that word could be and has been used. But for most Chinese characters the components have no bearing on the mearning or usage. It's a bit (okay only a bit) like saying that automatically knowing how many letters there are in the word "sophisticated" gives you greater understanding of the word. So I'm not sure it aids understanding.

 

I have restarted testing myself (via Anki flashcards) on writing characters, because I'm not in China, not seeing much Chinese every day, and go through certain periods when I read very little at all in the language -- so without lots of daily exposure I find my recall of certain characters (especially similar ones) fading, and testing myself on writing the things seems to be a good way to remember how to recall them. If I was using Chinese every day I don't think I'd bother.

[戴 睿]

I think components are a lot more important than you make them sound realmayo.

I don't mean to imply that the component parts are directly indicative of the meaning assigned to the character. I mean you understand how the character is formed much clearer.

Are there, for example, any characters that you recognize in a word context, but don't know on their own?

For a long time, 紧 on its own was a character I would have had a hard time distinguishing. When I saw it, it felt vaguely familiar, but only when I read the word 紧张 would I immediately recognize it's meaning.

However if I had studied how to write 紧, my ability to recognize it individually obviously would have been far greater.

I'll say again, this isn't the case 100% of the time, or even 30% of the time, but before I began learning how to write, there were definitely characters that I would only recognize in a specific context.

Alternatively, to use your comparison of English and Latin roots - how many words are their that sound exactly like one another, and differ only in spelling? A few. (Their, there, they're. Etc.)

And in Chinese?

寺 四 似 肆 饲 伺 (si4)

要 药 耀 (yao4)

You could do that for tons of syllables, and those are only examples of exact same pronunciation and tone, let alone if you were to start mixing up the tone. In those situations, the component parts of the character are precisely what separates it from some other character with the same sound but different meaning.

The majority of the time I ask a native which character something is, he describes it to me by it's components.

[Christoph Schubert]

 

 

Something else I think is worth looking at - how well does the motor memory acquired when learning with tools like Skritter, where you are writing with your finger or a stylus on a screen or graphics tablet, translate into the different ergonomics of pen and paper? It seems to me there's a chance of putting in hundreds of hours and still having a four-year-old's handwriting. I'd love to hear what people think about this. 

 

I started to use skritter shortly after their iOS app came out and used it exclusively on an iPad for 15 months. Then I switched to using a writing tablet because I felt that I could improve my handwriting in this way. Skritter has help me enormously in remembering and recognizing characters and I think this is in part because of the motor memory.

 

I didn't have any problems moving from using my finger to a stylus and the motor memory acquired is still helpful when writing by hand. But when writing with pen and paper I face two difficulties:

 

1) in default mode skritter automatically corrects your strokes slightly and puts them at the right position. When in doubt how to write a character in skritter I often find myself making some chicken marks on the screen and as soon as the first stroke is in the right place I normally remember how the write the rest of the character. When writing with pen and paper, I often not sure how to start to write a character.

 

2) On my writing tablet the area in which to write a character in is about 4 times 4 cm. It seems to me that writing in this size requires different "micro motor skills" then writing in the size I normally write my characters. So my handwriting is often compared to that of a primary school student.

 

Moreover, when using skritter I often want to get my reviews done, so I'm lacking the patience to write nicely. 

 

I would say that in order to develop a nice handwriting you have practice just that and skritter might not be the right tool for this. But I feel that without the motor memory I got from skrittering I would not be able to recognize characters as well as I do now.

[Guest realmayo]

I certainly agree with you that components are important. I disagree that you need to be able to write 3000 characters from memory if you want to understand how components work.

Maybe there's some disagreement because when you asked "how important is it to be capable of writing characters" I assumed you meant to be able to write them from memory. But if you just meant understand their component parts, I'd say it's very important.

 

if I had studied how to write 紧, my ability to recognize it individually obviously would have been far greater

 

Yes, because you would have had to spend more time studying the character and breaking it down. But you should have done that extra studying and breaking-down-into-components first time around, regardless of whether you were going to write the character or not, if you wanted to recognise it better.

 

As a study tool, writing characters has advantages -- it forces you to work at the character, rather than just leaving it to you as an option. The disadvantages of course are the time and effort required and the extremely limited opportunities for actually writing characters in real life. 

[戴 睿]

I disagree that you need to be able to write 3000 characters from memory if you want to understand how components work.

I don't think I ever took my discussion on character components that far. Nor did I even say that writing characters was the "only" way to understand all character components (sort of implied in statement above).

What I said was that if you can write characters, this demonstrates a solid understand of characters and their component parts, and I implied that this was a good understanding to have.

There are otherways to achieve that same level of character knowledge I suppose, but at the same time, if you genuinely know each component part of a character from effective study, what exactly is keeping you from being able to write the character anyway?

And besides, my point was never about "understanding how components work." I was only saying that being able to write a character (from memory, as you say) is indicative of a thorough and complete understanding of that character.

[imron]

Maybe this stems from a sort of greater respect that natives hold for foreigners that can write characters.

Unfortunately it's about the same amount of greater respect you get for being able to use chopsticks rather than just a knife and fork.  You'll get a line or two of praise and then the conversation will move on to something else.

 

If you ask a native with full handwritten capacity to describe which character 趣 is, than they could do so very easily by describing its component pieces. What's on the left side, what's on the right side, etc.

Some (not all) foreign learners, if asked the same question，would be limited to describing the character as a part of words they commonly read (兴趣 的 趣）.

More often than not, a native Chinese will also just say 兴趣 的 趣 too.  Sure it's useful to be able to split it out, but no-one is going to care to much if you use words rather than character components.

 

But think reliably being able to write out a character by hand demonstrates a far greater understanding of the character than being able to type it's pinyin.

I think this is true, but there are other ways to get this understanding without necessarily being able to write it out by hand - for example, there are shape/component based input methods such as Wubi and Cangjie that also allow you to do this.  Honestly speaking, in terms of kudos, people are more impressed that I can type in Wubi than with the fact that I can write characters by hand.

 

Anyway, I think the main point you are getting at is that active recall (e.g. being able to recall how the character is made up without seeing it) is a very useful skill to have when learning Chinese, as opposed to just passive recall (being able to recognise a character when you see it), and I don't think many people are going to disagree with that fact.

 

Handwriting is one skill that allows you to practise active recall, but handwriting also has a 'fine motor skills' component to it that determines whether or not your handwriting looks like a child or like an adult.

 

When talking about not being necessary to learn handwriting, I think most of the advanced learners in this thread are are arguing against the need to develop the 'fine motor skills', rather than the need to practice active recall.  You seem mostly to be talking about the importance developing active recall as a skill - which I don't think any advanced learner would disagree with.

 

Learning the 'fine motor skill' aspect of handwriting is definitely worthwhile for long-term learners (and in fact I even created a website that helps you practice this), however whether it is the best use of time in the earlier stages of learning is debatable.  You'll get much more bang for your buck focusing on other aspects and you can always come back to handwriting at a later time without it having any impact on your learning (unlike say if you ignore some other aspect such as tones, learning to read, listening practise etc).

[Elizabeth_rb]

The word for illiterate in Chinese is 不认字.

Not 不能写字.

 

To this add 文盲。

 

I've only just skimmed the thread, so forgive me if I repeat anyone.

 

Re: writing by hand being the pinnacle of Chinese learning and prioritisation:  I've seen someone sitting writing out characters to learn them and, to someone who hadn't heard this person's execrable spoken Chinese, that might have seemed impressive, but to me, it was profoundly misdirected study time!!

 

I also remember my second study year in Taiwan (2009/10), during which one of my teachers told us that, owing to the increasingly computer based learning in TW schools, (all homework seems to be done on and submitted by computer in some schools), scary numbers of TW young people were no longer able to write correctly at all.  In fact, it seemed that we foreign learners had higher levels of writing literacy (for want of a better expression) than these native speaking kids did.  Sad, no?

[Meng Lelan]

 scary numbers of TW young people were no longer able to write correctly at all.

 

 

Guess that might be summed up as 提筆忘字。

[Shelley]

I have always felt that leaning to read and write characters was an integral part of learning Chinese for me.

 

I believe in the old fashion method of repetition and practice. When I first started studying 20+ years ago pen and paper was pretty much all there was for actually writing characters. then came along IME 's of various descriptions. I used a few different versions but still practiced writing by hand with pen and paper.

 

Then I got my first pen tablet and was able practice wring with that but it produced a perfect character in a word processor prog.

 

Then I used it with an art program to get a better idea of what my hand writing looked like. New software later allowed your hand writing to be captured and used in documents, but still practiced with pen and paper.

 

Along came tablets and all kinds of apps for practicing and inputting characters, but still I practice with pen and paper

 

I feel I have tried all the electronic methods for writing and while I really like most of them and they all have their place ( its easier to fill in 15 minutes waiting for an appointment or 30 minutes on a commute with a phone and pleco than text books and paper) I still believe paper and pen is best for actually learning the characters. Helps to build in that "auto hand writing" mentioned earlier. The "feel" is better with pen and paper.

 

I think defining literacy is a difficult thing because in English if you can read and write well enough to read books and newspapers and are able to write letters, fill out forms, do crosswords etc. one would be considered literate, but not knowing the entire oxford dictionary does not make you any less literate.

 

In any language there is far to much for any one person to know it all nor can we really expect to know it all.

 

It also depends on what your personal needs and goals are as to how literate you will become.

 

Some people might never really hand write a character in their life, using IME on PC's etc and do everything they need/want perfectly well, others may have a desire (like me) to learn characters and will apply themselves to this task the best way for them.

 

I think it is a very subjective topic (but interesting)