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Learn Chinese Characters the Fast & Easy Way with a Unique Flashcard System
Join hundreds of students just like you that have learned to read Chinese in just a few months using this break-through system.
Dear Chinese Language Learner,
If you are new to learning Chinese you are probably nervous about the idea of learning Chinese characters. Indeed, to most beginning Chinese learners the idea of learning to read Chinese seems like it would be too hard or would take too long.
In the past this has been true. But fortunately in the past 10 years with the growing interest in learning Chinese, a lot of research has been done on the best way for foreign learners to quickly and easily learn Chinese characters.
Now more than ever being able to read Chinese is well within the grasp of every Chinese learner that is willing to spend a bit of effort.
Before you start learning Chinese characters you should make sure you can answer this question ...
What is the fastest and easiest way for me to learn Chinese characters?
To start actually reading real Chinese (ie. not deliberately simplified Chinese that exists only in textbooks) you need to first learn at least 2000 Chinese characters. Fewer than that and you will spend so much time looking up characters that you won’t be able to read effectively.
Before you start investing your time learning these characters, make sure you are guaranteed that you will get the most back from the time your are going to put in.
It’s the difference between spending years as students in the past have done and getting nowhere and spending a few months and actually then being able to read Chinese.
One this page I'm going to show you the fastest way to learn Chinese Characters. You will soon see that learning Chinese Characters is not something that requires some sort of super-memory. You just need to know how to learn Chinese Characters.
So ... What's The Fastest Way to Learn Chinese Characters?
First, imagine you worked for Fedex and you had to deliver packages to all the locations in downtown San Francisco shown below. Which route would you take?
Just like in the example above, the speed you can learn Chinese characters with depends on the order you learn them. Start studying characters in a random order (ie. based on the order you find them in a textbook, or by so-called character frequency) and you’re going to be wasting a lot of time.
The fastest way to learn Chinese Characters is by following these three principles:
- Focus on the basic components
- Learn characters as part of their phonetic series
- Study easily confused characters together
Take a look at the examples below.
Focus on Basic Components
To learn Chinese Characters you should start with the most basic components first. Although Chinese Characters are written as a series of strokes, they are more logically thought of as consisting of one or more basic components. So before you try to remember more complex characters you must first make sure you have a good grasp of the basic components.
As mis-recognising characters is a major problem for beginning students you should start by focus on make sure you can distinguish similar looking basic components. Beginning students for example might not realise that the characters mù and ěr here are actually two different characters, not the same character written differently.
Likewise, the difference between these characters is subtle but very important so it’s useful to see them all together and to study them all at the same time.
These characters are also easily confused and you need to make sure you get passed that confusion as early as possible.
Learn Characters as Part of Their Phonetic Series
Once you have a good grasp of the basic components you can start looking at characters that share a common phonetic root (ie. sound the same or similar). Using the picto-phonetic method these characters are easy to remember and by grouping them like this you can learn whole groups of characters at a time.
Sometimes the picto-phonetic methods works really well, like in these characters that are all based on the character fāng.
Other times like you have seen it works well although there is some phonetic drift.
On other occasions it works well for some characters and not at all for others. Despite this, it is still beneficial to learn all these Chinese Characters at the same time so you know where the exceptions are.
Study Easily Confused Characters Together
Finally, you should also study easily confused characters together. These characters for example have no real relationship to each other. However, they are likely to be confused with each other by beginning students. Learning them together helps you differentiate between them so that you don’t confuse them later on.
Introducing the Remembr.it Flashcard System
Studying Chinese characters in the correct order makes them easy to learn. And now there is a unique flashcard program called Remembr.it where the 2289 most common Chinese characters have already been laid out according to this order ready for you to study.
Not only are all the characters already there for you to study but Remembr.it ...
- contains audio for each character along with sample usages
- uses a unique lesson drill algorithm that makes it easy for you to learn 30-50 characters in a single lesson
- automatically schedules tests for each character you study to make sure you don't forget the characters you have already studied
Find out how Remembr.it can help you learn Chinese characters the fast and easy way.
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