Reading versus writing

[Dan Bang]

First of all, I must say that the following thoughts might seem a little stupid - however, they belong to me... I've been thinking about the relationship between character recognition and the ability to write a character... It is it likely that you're able to write only 2/3 (or perhaps less) of the characters you're able to recognises? What are peoples thoughts on this issue...

By the way, are there any good books with small, stupid, simple stories that a person knowning perhaps 200-300 characters would be able to read with the help of a dictionary?

[Battosai]

I think I read maybe 2000 characters and understand the meaning of 2500 or so , but since I hardly ever write I would probably be able to write less than 1000 characters. Recognising is easier than writing, my chinese colleagues often forget how to write certain characters but rarely fail to recognise one.

I would recommend reading simple manga (漫画) i think 200-300 characters could be enough if you are also using a dictionary. 'Doraemon' is my favourite -very easy to read ,in Chinese he called 小叮当 or 机器猫. Good luck.

[roddy]

I can write much less than 2/3rds of what I can read. I'd be amazed if I can reach 10%.

On the simple stories, try this, there's also a relevant post, which itself followed on from a post on stages of reading

Roddy

[nipponman]

Hmm, I suspect that I can write 75% of what I can read. technically you should be able to write 3/3 of what you can read, but some wiggle room must be given to errors in pronunciation and such. Why would one not be able to write what one can read? This is a new concept for me. It reminds me of one time I talking with my chinese friend, and we were talking about the usage of ying1 gai1, and just gai1. So, she writes down a sentence and uses 刻, instead of 該, needless to say I was confused for a second. So maybe even natives have a hard time writing what they can read, though I doubt it, cause they were pretty steady in their writing.

[gougou]

Why would one not be able to write what one can read?

Same as active and passive vocabulary...

[Altair]

I am with Roddy. My guess is that I can write less than 10% of what I can read, even though at one point I used to make a mighty effort to learn exact stroke orders for every new character I learned. My guess is that I approached 1500 to 2000 characters at my best, before slipping down now to a couple hundred that I can truly write with confidence and without hesitation.

One thing I find interesting is that my reading ability is highly dependent on context. For instance, I had to think very hard about the 刻 in Nipponman's post, since I first assumed that it was pronounced "gai." I then thought vaguely about 核 (he2, kernel) and characters with related phonetics and then wondered if it was some sort of "ke." Without context, I could not clearly recall the tone or meaning. This would have been child's play in a phrase like 三点一刻, but I am not sure I could have done it in a phrase using the meaning "to carve."

Another thing I find is that because I read a mix of material in simplified and traditional script, I am beginning to confuse the two. If forced to write, I sometimes recall the form of one character and sometimes the other, depending more on the structure of the strokes than on their number. Reading recognition is not really a problem either way.

From what I have read on this forum, it seems that native speakers generally have few problems reading materials in either script, simply picking up the other script by "osmosis"; however, it seems that the average native is usually not comfortable trying to write correctly in the other script, presumably because the error rate would be embarassingly high.

I think a vague analogy can be made to the ease in English of reading versus the difficulty of spelling. For instance, what well-educated English speaker would have difficulty recognizing the name of the communist leader of Rumania that was deposed during the wave of change in Eastern Europe (His initials were N.C.)? How many native English speakers could really come up with the proper spelling?

[mlomker]

For instance, what well-educated English speaker would have difficulty recognizing the name of the communist leader of Rumania that was deposed during the wave of change in Eastern Europe (His initials were N.C.)?

I don't recall discussions about Nicolae CEAUSESCU in any of my computer science classes.

There seems to be quite a few liberal arts students out there that are elitist. I certainly don't have time for European history classes.

I can spell Romania. How's that?

How many native English speakers could really come up with the proper spelling?

Precious few, I'm sure.

[nipponman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nipponman

Why would one not be able to write what one can read?

Same as active and passive vocabulary...

I don't know. I can't imagine a scenario where I can't write what I can read, I can only read 3000 characters or so, but as a matter of fact, I can write better than I can read, I think. Maybe it was my previous Japanese training. For example, I can't read these characters 仞倏倔傯 but I can write easily all but the second, giving it a second glance. I have seen the first and the third before, and the fourth is rather easy. Now, I can guess that the first has something to do with ren the third something to do with qu, or maybe que, and the forth something to do with zong, I think zong3.

[Altair]

QUOTE]I can spell Romania. How's that?

Touche.

As for the elitism of liberal arts folks, I think the issue boils down to a matter of age difference. I remember the collapse of the regime in Romania as a saturation news item over the space of a week, rather than as history to read in school. Perhaps, a better choice would have been to pick out a name from Iraq that many people would again recognize, but might hesitate over how to spell.

Nipponman,

I wonder if I have been misintepreting your previous words. I agree that these characters are pretty easy to write once you look at them.

What I meant to convey with my previous post was that I can no longer retain such characters in my memory easily. Is this the sort of thing you were talking about?

Having just glanced at the four characters you wrote and changed the window on my computer, I was able to trace out three out of the four characters from memory accurately, but screwed up the second. I remembered it as a variation of 條, but managed to forget the third stroke and the last dot. If you ask me a week from now, I am unlikely to remember how to write any of them without putting forth an effort in examining their etymologies and studying their usages. Even then, I would most likely lose them in another few weeks.

I recently put my thoughts on learning how to write characters on this thread .

I have never failed to recognize 书 or 车, but I am embarassed to say that I once suddenly realized that I did not know exactly how to write them, since I never systematically studied simplified characters. I can now. I have never forgotten 書 or 車, however, which I find much more intuitive, despite the increased number of strokes. Similarly, I find 龍 and 竜 quite easy to remember, but somehow stumble over the details and proportions of 龙, since the angle of the "tail" and the depth of the cross stroke give me trouble.

Even when I think over such simple things as the three particles pronounced "de" (的地得) , I usually manage to get at least one of them wrong if I try to write them out from memory. In this instance, I managed to screw up the right element in 的 and had to remind myself about the left element of 得. In context, recognizing these characters is, however, ridiculously easy. When I need to bother with the stroke counts in looking these up as character elements in a dictionary, I can simply refer to the character before my eyes to remind myself.

The only characters I find difficult to write irrespective of memory are ones like 龜 (gui1, the traditional form of the character for tortoise), where there are just two many claws, legs, appendages, and eyes to keep straight and too many choices about stroke order. I can make it up to the sixth stroke, but then start to hesitate about where to go from there. Though I have a personal preference for traditional characters, this is one character where I great simplification with open arms.

Since I have absolutely no reason to handwrite characters in my daily life and write Chinese only through the medium of Pinyin, I think it is understandable that my skills deteriorate. I think that the difference between people like me and native users is that the latter spend a good decade working their skills almost on a daily basis as they work their way through school, whereas learners like me spend the equivalent of only a few days in total working on ours.

Many English-speaking high school students routinely spend consecutive hours writing out or typing homework assignments or tests. What Chinese learner besides a graduate student in Chinese routinely spends hours writing out continuous characters? (Here, typing probably does not count, since it will likely be through transcription.) Even if a learner is given essay assignments, two hours of work probably result in only a paragraph or two of actual writing. Easy come, easy go.

[nipponman]

(I want to put your whole article in quotes!)

I wonder if I have been misintepreting your previous words. I agree that these characters are pretty easy to write once you look at them.

Yes that is easy, but what I think I am trying to say is that, I have no problem recalling how to write characters, period. Without context I can write a character as easily or more easily than I can read it.

The only characters I find difficult to write irrespective of memory are ones like 龜 (gui1, the traditional form of the character for tortoise), where there are just two many claws, legs, appendages, and eyes to keep straight and too many choices about stroke order. I can make it up to the sixth stroke, but then start to hesitate about where to go from there. Though I have a personal preference for traditional characters, this is one character where I great simplification with open arms.

admittedly, when I first learned this character I also had trouble remembering it. But that was way back before I knew of trad vs simp. To me it looked like 亀. But I use 龜 way more than I would use 亀.

Since I have absolutely no reason to handwrite characters in my daily life and write Chinese only through the medium of Pinyin, I think it is understandable that my skills deteriorate. I think that the difference between people like me and native users is that the latter spend a good decade working their skills almost on a daily basis as they work their way through school, whereas learners like me spend the equivalent of only a few days in total working on ours.

Of course I can understand why your skills deteriorate. It has happened to me, in a different area. But the differences between you and me become clearer and clearer. I can honestly say that there is not more than 2 days that go by that I don't write something in chinese. Now your situation might be different so that you don't have time or inclination or whatnot, and that is good, but with me I am always writing something. Characters pop into my head all the time, especially classical forms. And I have been learning chinese characters (not chinese mind you) for 7-8 years now. So I have had a pretty good base to get started in. I think this is why I find it hard to not be able to write what you read. 'Cause writing is my thing. That is what I do. I do it much better than speaking (though this is improving, thanks to a few new techniques I just learned).

nipponman

[zh-laoshi]

Basically, when learning a language, the ability to read what you've learned is much simpler than writing or taking part in a conversation. The brain can recognize things visually faster than it can if the information is stored as an "audio". That's why most people learning a language can read a language better than they can speak it.

And the same is with writing. It's a little more difficult to remember how to write a Chinese character with all the strokes, etc. thus making memory in that way seem futile.

It takes more practice in writing and speaking than reading to allow you to have a smooth running conversation.

[Glenn]

Also I think that the frequency with which people misspell words (in English) compared to the frequency with which they can't read that same word is so vastly different that it shows without a doubt that reading is easier than writing. For instance, I can read "onomatopoeia" much more easily and quickly than I can spell it (I actually misspelled it on my first attempt: switched up the "o" and the "e").

[Tsunku]

My ability to read also far surpasses my ability to write. Recognizing a character, especially given a bit of context, isn't that hard. You have hints to go on. But producing a character from scratch, from memory, is a lot harder. It is then compounded by the fact that most of the time I am writing Chinese, I am actually typing using a pinyin input method. I rarely need to write Chinese by hand, so writing itself becomes another excercize in recongition.

And many Chinese people do have the exact same problem. My Chinese friends, even the most intelligent and well educated ones, have been known to "mispell" words, or forget how to write certain characters. They say that computers and text messages have caused people's handwriting skills to deteriorate a lot in the past few years.

[yuet_sien]

I have the same "problem". Does anyone know how to improve the writing skills, besides writing essays? It sound's like a waist not be able to use all the vocab you have, after so much studying.

[nipponman]

I have the same "problem". Does anyone know how to improve the writing skills, besides writing essays? It sound's like a waist not be able to use all the vocab you have, after so much studying.

My problem is not that I can't write the character, it is that I can't recall what I learned.

For example, you couldn't ask me to deliniate all the characters with thte pronunciation of

XI4. (But you could with JIAO1, JIAO2, JIAO3, JIAO4) because I just learned them, I never memorized how many there were. So I only write the ones that I use often. But if you were to give me the meaning of the character, and the pronunciation, I would probably get it (if I memorized it well:mrgreen: ) I can remember one character that used to drize me insane, 抓 I could never get the tone or pinyin right on this one, I be guessing zhuo2? or zhao4. or something like that. It sucks.

nipponman

[zh-laoshi]

I myself am able to recognize more characters than I can write. I tested myself last year, and can read, write and understand about 2,500 characters, but can recognize about 3,200 (maybe a little less, I need to look at the results again). Not sure how far up (or down? ) those numbers are now...

But when I'm reading in Chinese and come across a character I don't know, I'll most likely say what it means (i.e. the English translation), and then look it up later in my handy-dandy dictionary, to be sure I know what I'm talking about.

I remember a post here giving a link to a web page where you click a radio button next to a character you know/recognize and it keeps a running count of the characters you do know. I just can't find it now.