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漢字: individually or in context? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| ChristopherB Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6324 days ago 851 posts - 1074 votes  2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French | Message 1 of 6 26 August 2009 at 12:40am | IP Logged |
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I'm just curious what people personally mean by "learning Chinese characters". That is, do you study each character individually (be it meaning, sound, writing, whatever), or go straight to learning sentences/dialogues/passages containing them in use?
I ask this mainly as I had been debating for some time whether to finish Heisig and then start learning to actually read Chinese in whole sentences, or whether to do both at the same time. I've realised can't be bothered working exclusively on characters individually, so I've opted to simultaneously learn to read sentences and the like, many characters of which I may not have seen yet in Heisig will probably gain a passive recognition of in the meantime. Is the study of the characters individually actually necessary, in your opinion? Has anyone bypassed that and got straight into reading? Do you recommend this, and why/why not? Edited by ChristopherB on 26 August 2009 at 12:44am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6917 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 6 26 August 2009 at 1:27am | IP Logged |
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I study the characters in several ways. I enter the vocabulary from the texts I study into Anki, I might enter the sentences (or parts of them), sometimes I write them out by hand (including sentences). I have a few books which I use for reading comprehension, and sometimes I can understand a word without really knowing it.
Example: Teach Yourself Chinese has a text about the rooms in the house, and while I probably wouldn't even recognize the word for "bathroom" although I've seen it, I can guess that the unknown word in sentence actually is "bathroom". I can't imagine going straight into reading unless I have bilingual books, or do L-R with a close to perfect translation. But I wouldn't learn thousands of characters in total isolation before reading a single sentence either. Doing a little of both seems wise. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6858 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 3 of 6 26 August 2009 at 3:15am | IP Logged |
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I'd also say to do a little of both. To a raw beginner I would say to do something like this (mention of specific books is just my preference):
Phase 1: Learn pinyin (FSI Pronunciation and Romanization), basic conversational Chinese (ChinesePod, Integrated Chinese, Practical Chinese Reader, or whatever), and begin learning the characters individually (Remembering Simplified/Traditional Hanzi). I've found that when I learn a character in RTH that I've seen in sentences before, it's easier to remember. And on the other hand, if I see a character I've learned from RTH in a sentence in the textbook, it also makes it easier to learn. So it's beneficial on both sides. I do put the pronunciation in the question side of my flash cards, which also helps. Phase 2: Once the most common 3000-ish characters are learned (keep in mind you only learned how to write them given a keyword so it won't take years, and the readings and vocab are learned separately, in context) and you have a decent command of basic Chinese, you can begin using some higher level material. There's a great course on Smart.FM called Chinese Media. Now that I mention it, there are also some great courses based on Integrated Chinese I Part 1 and 2 that you could use in Phase 1. There is a plug-in for Anki that allows you to import Smart.FM courses into Anki decks, using whichever model you want (I have both reading and listening cards in my decks). You can also learn more characters as you come across them, or if you're like me and like learning characters, you can use something like Taiwan's 常用國字標準字體表 list of 4808 characters, or the Taiwan All Grades Anki deck I posted a while back (5568 characters) or whatever. In Phase 3 you should really be able to use native level material for the bulk of your study. You should start using it some in Phase 2 but you should be able to go all Chinese by this point. Not to say you'll be reading Lu Xun right off the bat, but it is a good goal to work toward. You should also start learning Classical Chinese at this point if it interests you. And why wouldn't it? There's so much material out there! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| maaku Senior Member United States Joined 5582 days ago 359 posts - 562 votes Speaks: English* | Message 4 of 6 26 August 2009 at 4:35am | IP Logged |
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both/neither. ideally, you would do the following:
Finish your Heisig studies. Then take it beyond Heisig and cover the full HSK (~3500 simplified) or Taiwan (~5500 traditional) lists. Don't distract yourself with anything other than the keyword and writing. Then move to doing full sentences in context. So to answer your question, do both but in series. In the long term that's the most efficient path. But depending on how many hours of study time you have available in one day, that may just be too long before you 'really' start learning the language. So as always, you mileage may vary. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Pyx Diglot Senior Member China Joined 5743 days ago 670 posts - 892 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 5 of 6 26 August 2009 at 4:41am | IP Logged |
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OneEye has some great tips there.
Still, you might be interested in my story: I started off with learning the characters a la Heisig because that's the most logical way, imho. However, it bored me to tears. So I figured, logical or not, if I can't get myself to do it it's the wrong method for me. Since I've always loved reading and I attribute my English to all the books I've read, I decided I'd just jump right in and pick up the characters along the way. I've started with children's books but they soon got too boring, so now I'm reading manga (大剑 / Claymore) and short stories and whatever I can get my hands on. It's working pretty well for me. So, in my opinion you should get the Heisig book, and try to study it - I still think that's the King's way :) If that doesn't work for you, try the other route. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Z.J.J Senior Member China Joined 5616 days ago 243 posts - 305 votes Speaks: Mandarin* | Message 6 of 6 26 August 2009 at 7:52am | IP Logged |
If you like, I recommend a children's primer 「笠翁对韵」 (all with hànyǔ pīnyīn & some with DVD/MP3), it relates to elementary education of Chinese rhythms, tones, & antithesis (对偶).
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