Question

What is the best way to remember the characters? When I read them I can remember them, but trying to write them is really hard. If someone ask what 你是哪国人？means, them I'm able to say... nishinaguoren. But if you ask me, how to write nishinaguoren them I'm totally lost. Why is this, is there anything I should be doing to practice writing english-to-chinese better?

Answer 1

This might sound childish but this worked for me. Get a magna-doodle and draw the characters, then shake it to erase it. Try it 5 times each for each flashcards.

Answer 2

Thank you for the advice! So you think by being able to write them many times quickly and easily will help? Yes, I'm constantly writing and writing them on paper. I will have to get something simular to this machine you say.

Answer 3

My son uses his cell phone. He says he can enter the character's phonetics using western characters and the phone displays choices for the character that he can select from. As he enters more characters, it narrows the choices until he gets the one he likes. This simplifies the process and with repetition, he learns the character. This was a trick he used in his first year in China. He is into his fourth year there now.

Answer 4

the Integrated Chinese Character workbook helped me out a lot with that.

Answer 5

When you write a character, take note of the radicals involved. Sometimes they go with the meaning of the character. You can use the useful associative memory skill e.g. 湖 (lake) which has both water and moon - I think of moon reflecting off water. Remember radicals change according to position in the character e.g. 水 and 江. Oh and 江 means river and is comprised of the radicals for water and work - not hard to associate with the word 'river'!

Answer 6

When you write a chacracter, most characters are two symbols added together for example你(you) can be seperated to two symbols. I'll draw it in a moment.