Reading and Writing Chinese by William McNaughton and Li Ying

[vvenk2004]

Hello ppl. ,

First off would like to say thanks to TCookie for suggesting this book to me. So far I think it has been a great help. I have reached about 100 characters in one week by studying the characters at http://lc.ust.hk/~courses/113/characters , and using the above book as a guide at the same time. However now that I have studied all those characters , I am now wondering what are the characters that I should study next, it is a stupid question i guess , but basically , if any of you have a reference by which you go as to what characters you are learning, please do share them. I guess I could just go through every character from beginning in the above book , anyways , like to hear your comments , thanks!

Venk.

[johnmck]

I learn my characters by following a course book, that way I learn them in context and build upon them with each new lesson. If you want some flashcards to print you can get them at:

http://eall.hawaii.edu/yao/ic1flashcards/

They are from the Intergrated Chinese course book (I follow a different book)

You can try learning the HSK vocab lists, (on this site) but I have found that if I do not use a character I forget it fairly quickly.

[vvenk2004]

Thanks ,

Yes I am starting to realise how easily I can forget the characters if I don't use them as often. I am interested in knowing what book you are using to learn your characters.

Je te remercie mille fois !

[johnmck]

I'm following a course from Dan Shan that is broadcast on CCTV9 called "Communicate in Chinese". The main reason why I am following it is because it is cheap (I record the video part of the course from the TV so I only need to buy the books). The course is aimed more at speaking in daily situations than at reading and writing. It was initially a series of 15 minute programs and the course books were added afterwards. The books do not add much extra information but are more useful as a transcript of the video. Such a format is limiting, for example the lesson on numbers concentrates on how to use numbers in different situations, at no point does it tell you how to count to ten. Also the books contain no exercises to do. I use the “Communicate in Chinese” course as my basis for study and have other books and resources that I use for filling in the gaps.

As for learning characters, each lesson has a transcription in English, pinyin and characters. I try to translate the English to pinyin and characters (as the book contains no exercises I am effectively creating my own). It is long and tedious work but by trying to translate and seeing my errors I learn and remember how the characters are used and the repetition of writing the more common characters helps me to remember them. I would guess that one could do this with most course books that include pinyin and characters, the important thing is to have texts that become progressively more difficult. I would not recommend "Communicate in Chinese" for learning characters, it is primarily a speaking and listening course, I only use it to learn characters because it is the course book that I happen to have.

The dictionary on www.zhongwen.com is also invaluable for helping to remember characters (it is based on traditional characters but is still useful for simplified), its explanations are not useful for all characters but it is worth checking them up.

John