How I Practice Writing Chinese Characters
After about of month of practice, I’ve developed a system for practicing Chinese characters. I’m still using Pinyin for now as I learn the basics and develop my ability to write and recognize characters, but I’ve found the following 5 step process to be effective for adding new characters to my vocabulary at the beginner stage.
Step 1: Trace the new character on writing sheets repeatedly
When learning a brand new character, I’ve found repetition extremely useful to get familiar with it. It helps me, with writing of course, but it also helps with recognition and understanding how the character is formed. I even tend to notice how it’s related to other characters or used to form other words and phrases. Whether your goal is to become a fluent writer in Chinese or just to be able to get by in conversation and recognize the most frequently used characters, repetitive writing is an awesome ways to make some serious progress 😍
Step 2: Add it to the master list of characters page
Aside from individual practice, I like to keep a master list of all my characters - at least at this beginning stage of my Mandarin studies. It likely will evolve in the future into a list of the characters I’m currently studying, but for right now, it’s all of them. This does a couple things for me:
It’s more writing practice as I create the list in my notebook - but more entertaining than just simply writing the same character repeatedly
Aside from variety of practice, it’s a list I can refer to for reference whenever I’m studying - it’s super helpful to have everything organized and all in one place ❤
Step 3: Review & identify which characters need practice
Now going back to that master list. . .
it’s quite common for it to get covered in scribbles and notes pretty quickly after I finish it. I show my list to my Chinses tutor when I meet with her, get corrections, and add any other notes I feel like would be useful as I progress. By this time, my notes have become a little messy, so. . .
Step 4: Trace challenging characters repeatedly
I rewrite them - both to have a fresh character list and for additional practice. But first . . . When I notice a character that I don’t write well - at least, one that I write more poorly than the others - I choose that one or a few and do isolated practice again on tracing paper to improve my penmanship and to practice the word. (I like to say the words as I write them for even more practice).
Step 5: Rewrite character list to document progress & review old vocab
Then I rewrite the master list. Sometimes it’s right after my tutoring session to add the new characters and review the old ones. Others, it’s after practicing the characters I noticed I really need to practice. There’s really no limit to how many times and different ways the list can written - especially for learners like me who need a lot of repetition 🙃
