Do I Learn Characters First or Characters and Sounds?

[Daryn]

I am using Remembering The Hanzi (simplified) by Heisig. I was wondering if learning the characters first before sounds is a good method. Or should I learn both character and sound at the same time?

What I'm doing now is using Anki, I have the RTH desk w/ audio installed. I do 10 characters a day along with the sound. I want to know if others have different methods that is more effective compared to mine.

 

Any suggestions?

[Video Vocabulary]

 

 

Or should I learn both character and sound at the same time?

 

You should learn the sounds first, children learn new words by listening, not by reading or writing, on the other hand, most of the language students do the opposite, they learn new words by reading and writing them first...

That's why children are so fluent with their tiny "children's" vocabulary even without knowing how to read and write ))

At the same time, that's the reason why most of the language students doesn't sound fluent at all even after passing HSK6 and being able to read and write ((

[renzhe]

There is no "correct" way to do this. However you do it, you will run into some difficulties. Chinese characters are like that.

HAving said that, I'd encourage everyone to start by studying basic phonology (sounds of the language) and the phonetic writing system (pinyin). Getting this wrong in the beginning is one of the biggest mistakes people make, and it is very hard to fix this later.

Most people will mix character learning with vocabulary and listening/speaking. Heisig developed his method for Japanese, where the phonetic element in writing kanji is much less pronounced than n Chinese, so people have always been skeptical of applying the same method to Chinese.

[Shelley]

I don't understand how characters and sounds can be separated. When you learn a character with out the sound, what are you learning?

 

My personal method is to learn pinyin, character and meaning all together. I learn the pinyin so I can learn the sound and tone along with the meaning and character.

 

I am not a fan of Heisig, I find the stories are sometimes very tenuous and its extra baggage I don't need to waste my time with, just learn what the character means and sounds like, spend time with a pen and paper and write the characters out a lot to help remember them, say the sound out loud as you write.

 

If you really feel you need some sort of help, make up your own stories, it will mean more and stick better, but abandon even this as soon as possible and rely on the meaning of the character itself.

[Demonic_Duck]

I don't understand how characters and sounds can be separated. When you learn a character with out the sound, what are you learning?

 

The meaning.

 

However, I'd strongly recommend against it. Use the Heisig books by all means if you think they help, but disregard anything he says about ignoring the sound to start with, because it's very bad advice. The majority of characters have sound components, and by not learning the connections between them you're shooting yourself in the foot.

 

Classic example: 骂妈蚂 etc. You can make up plenty of fun stories about how two people are shouting at a horse cursing it (骂), your mother is a female horse (妈), and ants are the horses of the insect world (蚂), but if you avoid learning the sounds you've ignored the much more obvious connection between them, which is that the sound component of all three is 马, hence they are pronounced mà, mā, mǎ respectively.

 

By all means keep the horse stories if you think they're useful to you, but learning the sounds of characters is generally a help, rather than a hindrance, to effective memorisation.

[Shelley]

The meaning.

 

Oh, I see how pointless, what can you do with that knowledge? read I suppose.

 

I agree that learning the sounds is helpful, if not vital.

[roddy]

Edit: Sorry if this sounds a bit of a rant - nothing personal, but anything that looks like the 'oh, it's easy, just do what a three-year-old does' school of thought sets me off. I may well be arguing against things you weren't arguing for...

 

Apologies, Video Vocabulary, but there's a lot of 'makes sense to me' stuff in there which I'm not sure stands up. I'm not going to hunt down references for all this stuff, but some quotes from Wikipedia in lieu and general thoughts...my emphasis

 

"You should learn the sounds first, children learn new words by listening, not by reading or writing, on the other hand, most of the language students do the opposite, they learn new words by reading and writing them first..."

"Beginning around age 3–5, word learning takes place both in conversation and through reading"

"By this time, [school-age] children learn new vocabulary mostly through conversation and reading.Throughout schooling and adulthood, conversation and reading are the main methods in which vocabulary develops."

 

Two points here. One, don't underestimate the importance of reading in child vocab acquisition. Two, note the use of the word 'conversation' - not one-sided listening, which is what a lot of Chinese learners, due to lack of handy native speakers, are going to be doing. 

 

"That's why children are so fluent with their tiny "children's" vocabulary even without knowing how to read and write ))"

It's got nothing to do with whether they can read or write or not. It's because the little buggers have got incredibly plastic brains with a language learning module running overtime, loads of patient and encouraging interlocuters, and nothing else to do all day. 

 

"At the same time, that's the reason why most of the language students doesn't sound fluent at all even after passing HSK6 and being able to read and write"

That's probably a failure to get pronunciation nailed down and a lack of good quality speaking practice. More and better speaking practice is needed, 

 

If the whole 'oh, learn by listening, that's what kids do' idea holds up, there'll be studies which link greater vocal fluency in children with illiteracy. Maybe they exist. 

 

What happens here is people get a) crap quality conversation practice with no useful feedback, or none at all, and b) focus on reading / writing because it seems like that's the 'easier' (in terms of resources available, need for native speakers, less embarrassing, etc) thing to study. Then they blame their poor speaking ability on too much b), when the real problem is a).

 

Children and adults are utterly different in terms of experience, the way our brains work, attention span, cognitive abilities, ability to work a keyboard. Looking at a three-year-old and saying 'hey, I'm going to learn Chinese like that' is akin to a giraffe pointing at a duck and saying 'hey, I'm going to swim like that.'

[Demonic_Duck]

Oh, I see how pointless, what can you do with that knowledge? read I suppose.

Even though I agree with your conclusions, I'm not sure I follow your logic. Most people learn how to decipher written text for the purpose of reading.

 

That said, knowing only the meanings of isolated characters is only one rather limited skill out set of skills needed for effective reading in Chinese.

[Video Vocabulary]

note the use of the word 'conversation' - not one-sided listening, which is what a lot of Chinese learners, due to lack of handy native speakers, are going to be doing. 

 

Well, I agree that children learn most of the new words from conversation, but by listening I ment conversations as well, since conversation has nothing to do with reading and writing.

[Daryn]

My plan:

 

1. Go through RTH book 1 and 2.
2. Use Anki to cram sentence with a new vocabulary or none based on frequency.
3. As I do 2, I'll start to read materials and watch TV shows in Chinese.
4. Once I can comprehend a bit more, I transition from speaking English to Mandarin with my native Mandarin-speaking friends.

Are these steps still effective? Or do most of you swear by learning sounds along with the characters as more effective and healthy for long-term growth? My main concern as I'm learning right now is to not form bad habits or go a route that make it hard for me to unlearn these "bad" methods.

[Shelley]

When I read English I don't actually say the words in my head but the sound is there, I find it really hard to imagine being able to detach the sound from the letters and the same applies to chinese. How can I look at 我 and not have an associated noise, just the concept of I, me is weird. I still attach a noise, even if it is just the English sound for I, me, I might as well learn wo when I see 我.

 

Sorry to go on but I find it hard to grasp the idea of no sound associated with a character.

 

Have to agree with roddy's "rant"  you managed to express some concepts very well that I have had trouble putting into words clearly.

[roddy]

Daryn, I don't think you'll find many people advocating a characters-first approach, with or without sound and meaning. We talk in words and sentences, not characters. Learn words, learn how to put them together in sentences, learn to recognise and perhaps write the characters for those words. Repeat for several years. Done.

 

Some of my thoughts on how to start are here. Other sources of advice are available...

 

Shelley, you're right - read up on subvocalisation if you want, but basically thought and speech are as good as inseparable. 

[Shelley]

Do you have a textbook? You don't say what level you are at and what your long term goals are.

 

Learning characters in isolation is not the best plan in my opinion, you need grammar, usage and meaning. A structured textbook will take you through these things in a tried and tested format.

 

I am for learning it all together, pinyin, characters, sounds, and meanings.

 

i also suggest getting Pleco, very good dictionary and very easy to use flashcards, lots of topics about it to search through on the forum or try out the free version but remember the free version is not "real" Pleco. http://www.pleco.com/

 

Have a look at my study plan in my blog here. http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/blog/108-my-chinese-learning-blog/

 

I have also recently discovered a new app called Learn Chinese - HelloChinese which is very good, have a look

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hellochinese&hl=en

 

Hope this helps

[anonymoose]

For what it's worth, I started learning Chinese by learning primarily the characters. In those days, I was using only Basic Chinese: A Grammar and Workbook by Yip and Rimmington, and the internet wasn't very advanced then - the only useful Chinese site in those days was zhongwen.com, from which I learned stroke order and how to write characters. I didn't know any Chinese people, and I didn't have any audio Chinese material, so essentially, I didn't have any reference for pronunciation intially. That didn't stop me working my way through the book, though, and being able to read and write basic sentences without knowing how to say them.

 

I'm not suggesting this is an optimal learning strategy, but it can be done.

[Daryn]

@Shelley, My long-term goals is to enjoy Chinese literature written in its original language. I have command of two other language beside English; one of the two is my native language which is dialect of Chinese from minority based in Southern China. My grandparents were the only one in my family who knew how to read, write, and speak Cantonese/Mandarin but English and our native dialect was the main language spoken at home. So, my level is beginner.

I have many friends who prefers to speak Mandarin over English, so I believe having conversation in the target language will not be a problem. What I'm interested to know besides the helpful advices and resources already offered is what steps to go from here given my two choices:

Choice #1

1. Use RTH to study 5 characters along with their sounds each day
2. Everyday, use Anki to learn a few sentences based on how common the vocabulary are used within their context
3. Watch a couple TV Show episodes in Mandarin per week
4. Listen to Chinese music
5. Hang w/ friends who speak Mandarin which is a given

 

Choice #2

1. Go through first RTH book 1 which covers 1500 characters
2. Move on to RTH book 2 which covers the next 1500 characters
3. After I have about 300 characters under my belt, I'll start read materials in Chinese such as children book to web novels
4. Cram sentences based on vocabulary frequency in Anki with audio to learn how to pronunce
5. Watch TV Show to be more fluent

 

I prefer choice #1 better. I haven't committed yet to either but each day, I'm using RTH for characters and learning useful sentences in Anki with audio. Any suggestions or inputs?

[Shelley]

I didn't have any reference for pronunciation intially.

 

Did you not have pinyin?

[lechuan]

To start, I would personally use pinyin and audio materials for learning to speak, and treat character learning as a separate, parallel exercise. You can merge the two paths once you have the basics down. No need to let character learning hold you back from learning to communicate verbally (and with pinyin).

[lechuan]

For what it's worth, I went through the first 1500 characters in Heisig, using Skritter (with reading and writing tests only) to review. I learned pronunciation at the same time because it helped me to immediately connect with the spoken Mandarin I had already learned or was learning in parallel.

 

If I were to do it again, I think I might try learning the characters with McNaughton's Reading and Writing Chinese, which also list characters based on frequency order AND component buildup (ie. while Heisig has the most common characters, you have to pretty much slog through the whole book to get the most useful ones. For example, 那 (that), is introduced in the last chapter of Heisig).

[anonymoose]

Did you not have pinyin?

 

The book contains pinyin, but I didn't know how to pronounce it.

[davoosh]

While I agree with Roddy overall, I think it is still quite true that children do learn their native language to a more-or-less fluent degree (fluent relative to their needs at that age) without being able to read. The base 'structures' and grammar are well implemented by then, the rest is vocab acquisition and fine-tuning. I know plenty of 3-4 year olds who can't read but can speak quite confidently about things from their little worlds. They do start learning to read in most countries just after this stage however, which helps expand their vocabulary even further than what they hear from mum & dad & co. Plus the fact that native speakers, even children, are nearly always going to sound more fluent than an L2 learner which is a given..

 

Personally, I feel that I emphasised characters far too much at the beginning which has led to my reading being great but my listening not-so-great. I often hear a word that I know 'in characters' but draw blank, however as soon as I see it written, I understand. This is kind of the opposite of how language should work...

 

@Shelley, Pinyin isn't self-explanatory...you still eventually need to hear the sounds to be able to imitate them accurately.