Chinese language is an unfamiliar territory for many whose first language use an alphabetic system such as English. Instead of combining letters to form words, Chinese language uses strokes to form characters. The commonly used Chinese characters alone contain 3000 thoughts. Not only that, Chinese is yet another tonal language with four different tones, commonly marked with accent marks, and whenever unmarked represents the neutral tone. The accent marks are only available when using PinYin to represent the pronunciation. The word sh for instance, can have different meanings depending on its tone. The first tone sh can mean poetry or wet or teacher. The second tone sh can mean ten or time or a fact. The third tone sh can mean history or to start or to cause. Last tone sh can mean yes or room or matter. In essence, there are many similar sounds distinctive meanings. As a couple of fact, a Chinese linguist in the 20th century Zhao Yuanren composed a 10-line classical Chinese poem using only the sound shi.
Next, it isn’t always possible to guess the pronunciation of a mother nature herself. The character for wood, for instance, is pronounced mu. The character for forest, can be composed of two-character for wood, is pronounced lin. Although in this example the pronunciation isn’t related, the concept of the characters may possibly. On the contrary, when the pronunciation can be related due to similar root character, the meanings are not necessarily related.
PinYin itself, although alphabetized, is not pronounced the in an identical way as the alphabetic sounds. There are unfamiliar sounds for example u with an umlaut () that sounds like a plan of I and u. Like things unfamiliar, it leads to uncertainty and fear. Thus, knowing the challenges learners face is the most important step in devising effective learning strategies that directly affect their language becoming successful.
The Strategies Usually Learn Chinese Characters
Prof Ko-Yin Sung of Chinese Language Study from Utah Expenses hikes conducted a research amongst non-heritage, non-Asian Chinese language learners and uncovered interesting results that may help future learners in forming a complete study technique. Her study revolves concerning the most frequently used Chinese character learning strategies and how those strategies affect the learners’ ability in understanding and producing the sound and the writing of this Chinese emails.
The study finds that among leading twenty most regularly used strategies, eight of them are related to when a personality is first introduced to learners. These include:
1. Repeating the character several times aloud or silently.
2. Writing the character down.
3. Noting how to say hello in chinese the smoothness is implemented in context.
4. Noting the tone and associating it with pinyin.
5. Observing the character and stroke order.
6. Visualising the letter.
7. Listening to the explanation of the character.
8. Associating the character with previously learned identity.
The next six strategies are used to increase learners’ understanding among the newly introduced character.
9. Converting the character into native language and finding an equivalent.
10. Looking in the textbook or dictionary.
11. Checking if the actual character been recently used previously.
12. Learning how they are used in conversation.
13. Utilizing the character in sentences orally.
14. Asking how the smoothness could be taken in sentences.
However, learning strategies start to diminish beyond those two learning concentrations. There are only three strategies implemented in memorising newly learned character.
15. Saying and writing the character at once.
16. Saying and picturing the character in mind.
17. Due to the sound, visualising the character shape and meaning.
And presently there only one strategy for the practising new characters.
18. Making sentences and writing them out.
And new characters are reviewed truly worth two strategies only.
19. Writing the characters many years.
20. Reading over notes, example sentences and the textbook.
Of the twenty strategies mentioned above, four are simply just to be most significant in increasing learner’s skills of speaking, listening, reading, and writing of fresh characters. The four strategies are:
Writing the characters down
Observing the stroke order
Making connection to a similar character
Saying and writing the character repeatedly
Discussion
A research by Stice in 1987 showed that students only retained 10% of what ever learned from what they read, 26% from what they hear, and 30% from what they see. While studying modes are combined, a significant improvement in mastering retention is noted. Learning retention jumped to 50% when seeing and hearing are combined, and even higher at 70% when students the materials they are learning, and learning retention is in the highest at 90% when students say the materials these kinds of are learning as they quite do something. Simply reading the characters aren’t enough. Learners must associate the sound with the characters, make a connection when using the characters to make them memorable, and practice recalling the newly learned characters.
Study shows that recalling new characters learned improves learning retention and reinforces understanding. One way the proper this is actually using an app since The Intelligent Flashcards. This specific unit flashcard app is planned for the New Practical Chinese Reader textbooks, making it convenient evaluation characters created from chapters. Not necessarily does it show stroke order animation, it furthermore accompanied by native speaker sound files, making this app the more convenient that another app such as Anki. With Anki, although user can also add personal notes on it, the sound file is not available and must be imported through another app.
Another important learning approach to incorporate is observing how a characters are widely used in circumstance. This can be practiced by observing real-life conversations to assist the textbook and audio tracks conversation. It is interesting to that trainees studied in the abovementioned research were not wanting to adopt the learning strategies recommended by the instructors, for example watching Chinese TV shows or listening Chinese song selections. There could be many reasons why you are this. The style of the shows or songs usually will not appeal for the learners.
Use of this program is quite a bit less convenient. Also if the shows might be accessed online, rarely a tick subtitled in both both Chinese and English which would make the shows more employed to beginner learners in having the language. Also, most of this very popular Chinese Tv shows fall into the historical genre, which is a favourite one of several Chinese, with regard to example The Empress of China’s websites. However, the language spoken in this particular type of TV show is somewhat more complex as opposed to a contemporary spoken Chinese.