学会如何读和写汉字
一些也许把吓跑获悉有多达50 000个不同汉字(由有些估计)。 幸运地，这个数字被消减了下来关于6500为被简化的计算机字体(双那为传统字体)。 那仍然是一个大数字为了应付的任何人能，因此问题成为多少字符应该中国学习者学会，并且怎么您知道学会的哪些字符？
回答这个问题的共同的标准是使用一张典型的报纸在中国大陆。 研究通常进行对字符通常用于打印装置的笔记。 要达到100%用于报纸的字符的公认，您会需要知道大约3000个字符(4000为传统字符在台湾)。 它对只集中于这3000个字符的发现字典是共同的。 如此，即然您知道什么目标是，问题成为怎么您去学会他们？ 您是否正义转向字典的第一页并且开始学会每天的几个字符？ 您可能，但有一个更加容易(和更加高效率的)方式。
您只需要学会400个通常使用的字符有67%公认的水平。 如此它有道理在移动首先学习这400个字符，向较少之前使用了部分。 每次您看您再知道的字符，您在您的头脑里加强那个公认样式。 另外，因为在学会过程中，您是也将是学会，过程变得更加容易 基础 包含，因此新的字符将介入修改您已经知道的字符，而不是必须学会他们从头。 一旦您有这个魔术400标记，您能在学会下600个字符然后工作，一直将有您88%公认水平。
一样容易，象这听起来，许多学习材料那里不使用这个概念。 快的扫视在教如何的两三本课本写显示了一教字符为龙(659th最共同的字符)的字符，另教为火(427th最共同性)和另教字符为繁忙的字符(672nd最共同性)。 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.