Het leren om Chinese Karakters te lezen en te schrijven
Wat kunnen worden doen schrikken weg om te leren dat op één punt er wel 50 000 verschillende Chinese karakters (door sommige ramingen) waren. Gelukkig, is dit aantal whittled neer aan ongeveer 6500 voor vereenvoudigde dubbel computerfonts (dat voor traditionele fonts) geweest. Dat is nog een groot aantal voor aan te pakken iedereen, zodat wordt de vraag hoeveel karakters een Chinese leerling zouden moeten leren en hoe u welke karakters om kennen te leren?
De gemeenschappelijke norm om deze vraag te beantwoorden moet een typische krant in Vasteland China gebruiken. De studies worden regelmatig uitgevoerd aan nota die de karakters het meest meestal in gedrukte media worden gebruikt. Om 100% erkenning van de karakters te bereiken die in een krant worden gebruikt, zou u ongeveer 3000 karakters (4000 voor traditionele karakters in Taiwan) moeten kennen. Het is gemeenschappelijk om woordenboeken te vinden die slechts zich op deze 3000 karakters concentreren. Zo nu u weet wat het doel is, wordt de vraag hoe u over het leren van hen gaat? Draait begint u enkel aan pagina één van het woordenboek en een paar karakters per dag te leren? U kon, maar er is een veel gemakkelijkere (en efficiëntere) manier.
U moet slechts de 400 het meest meestal gebruikte karakters leren om op het niveau van 67% erkenning te krijgen. Zo houdt het steek om deze 400 karakters eerste te bestuderen, alvorens op de kleinere gebruikte zich te bewegen. Telkens als u een karakter ziet opnieuw het weet u, versterkt u dat erkenningspatroon in uw mening. Bovendien, wordt het proces gemakkelijker, aangezien tijdens het leren, u zult leren ook bent basissen de geïmpliceerde, zodat nieuwe karakters zullen enkel het wijzigen van karakters impliceren u reeds, eerder dan moetend hen van kras leren kent. Zodra u aan dit krijgt merken magische 400, kunt u dan bij het leren van de volgende 600 karakters werken, die u al manier op 88% erkenningsniveau zullen krijgen.
Zo gemakkelijk aangezien dit klinkt, hanteren vele studiematerialen daar dit concept niet. Een snelle blik bij een paar handboeken die onderwijzen hoe te karakters te schrijven toonde het één onderwijs het karakter voor draak (het 659ste gemeenschappelijkste karakter), het een ander onderwijs het karakter voor brand (427ste het gemeenschappelijkst) en een ander onderwijs het karakter voor bezig (672ste het gemeenschappelijkst). And this was the first lesson! It is easy to see why many students may give up learning how to read and write, when having to use methods like this.
August 30th, 2007 at 2:43 am
“You only need to learn the 400 most commonly used characters to get to the level of 67% recognition”
Does that mean you’ll be able to understand 67% of a Newspaper? No! You’ll be lucky if you can understand 3%.
This is just a little lie teachers and books and the like tell students to get them to study. It not only happens in Chinese, it happens in English and Russian and many other languages. They tell English students that 60% of a typical English Newspaper is made up of less than a hundred words used over and over again. But when you find out that these are function words,( the, or, but, a), you realize that these aren’t enough to gain an understanding of what’s going on.
With Chinese, it’s not how many characters you know, it’s how many combinations, how many compounds. It took me well over 2000 before I was able to read an article with out having to look something up. Well over 3000 before I was able to read a Newspaper from cover to cover. But just knowing those 3000+ characters wasn’t enough. I had to know the tens of thousands of compounds that they made up.
If you want to learn to read and write in Chinese, be prepared to work at it for a few years. And I do mean work at it. You can actually learn to recognize 3000 characters in just over a year, if you put your mind to it. Writing takes the longest time.
Learning to speak, which is really the main purpose of ChineseLearnOnline, can be done in as little as a year, if you’re able to hear it every day. You won’t be able to understand radio news broadcasts; that take another year or so. But you will be able to understand the people around you. Here’s the catch though, the longer you keep you mouth shut and just listen, the better your understanding will be and the better your pronunciation will be.
I know this goes against what many of these sites say. They say you should practice speaking at every opportunity. I disagree, here’s why. I speak Mandarin, Cantonese and Shanghainese fluently. I studied Mandarin in the U.S. And China about 15 years ago. I did the usual. Memorized phrases, characters. Practiced speaking whenever and where ever I could. I was a true believer in the “learn a little use it a lot” method. But I still speak with a bit of an accent. And even though I’ve worked as a Mandarin/English translator in China and the U.S., there are still things that fly right by me.
Cantonese and Shanghainese are two languages that I have never studied. I’ve never cracked open a book in these languages. I have never asked anyone to translate something for me or for any help with these languages. Yet Cantonese and Shanghainese are languages that I speak and understand at Native level. Unlike Mandarin, I have never studied tones for Cantonese. They don’t even come to mind when I’m speaking Cantonese, they just come out right. I’m not Asian, but some people in Shanghai truly believe I was born there.
Well, why do I have a Native level of Shanghainese and Cantonese and not in the language that I studied? Because for these two languages, I didn’t study, I just listened. The languages grew in me like English did when I was a child. And the cool thing about it is that I absorbed both of them at the same time.
August 30th, 2007 at 10:34 pm
Thanks Jemini. I really appreciate your insights (that is what this blog is all about!). You are right that recognition doesn’t equal understanding, but I still think there is value to being able to recognize characters even if the overall meaning isn’t clear. There are different levels of understanding, and to me getting to this level of recognition is a step up from staring at text and being completely clueless as to what it represents.
Recently, I’ve had the pleasure of working with some of my users on the new Premium Plus plan which has given me further insights on what their strengths and weaknesses are and what can be improved in this course. I really appreciate comments like yours that tell me what has worked and what hasn’t worked for you since that helps me set the direction on what areas this course should focus on in the future.
September 2nd, 2007 at 3:46 am
Who wrote those characters you have in the picture?
September 2nd, 2007 at 9:06 am
Actually, it was the handiwork of one of my users. I took it (with permission) from his posting elsewhere.