Chinese characters: from brain to paper

How I learned to write characters was that I would see the list of characters for a particular lesson, cover the characters, and try to write them from just looking at the pinyin. If I got one character wrong, I would do it over again. Also, my book had a little dialogue incorporating the characters learned from that section. I would read the pinyin-transcribed dialogue and write the corresponding characters for each pinyin, and if I messed up ONE character, I would do it all over again. 

When I was done with that, I would make my own sentences to try and make sense of what I just learned. This was also a way to recall previously learned characters.

Skritter is a website where you can write characters with your mouse, or writing tablet and it helps you learn, but they charge a fee.  There's also a book called Remembering the Simplified (or Traditional) Hanzi where they teach you how to remember characters by using mneumonic devices, but I find that a long list of characters without context bores me, even though I do remember a lot from that book.

Lastly, write every chance you get. If you're waiting in line for something, or during TV commercials, just write write write, even if it's the same character, 20 times. You can never write enough.

I'm in two minds about this one.  On the one hand, I do want to ultimately be able to handwrite Hanzi but on the other hand I do question why I'd ever need to.  When writing Hanzi I've only ever had a need to do it on a computer (come to think of it, I very very rarely these days ever even handwrite english!).  When typing Hanzi, you obviously use the pinyin and as long as you have a rough image in your mind's eye of what the characters should look like, then you can normally pretty easily select the appropriate pop-up.  And even then, if all you know is the pinyin and no clue what the character should look like, then you can always mouse-over to get the translations before you input the correct characters.

My preference is to just focus on the reading, speaking, listening and electronic-typing and only once I'm happy I'm as fluent as I'm going to get in those disciplines will I then approach handwriting.  (to be honest, even if you just focus on these disciplines you'll find you can remember how to handwrite a sigt number of characters without even thinking about it).

Chris

I hadn't thought about your 'when will I use it' point before. I can see that. This is how US Peace Corps trainers taught our team Russian when I was a volunteer in Uzbekistan. I developed a solid Uzbek and Russian vocabulary this way. I never wrote either language except at the bank or for taking class roll. I think writing in Chinese helps me connect with the language. Pinyin is really helpful to me to get the accents down. The accenting is a completely new facet of language learning to me.

I had to hand write things in Chinese on the board when I was an English teacher in China, or when I had to leave a note for someone.  Not to mention when I took my tests in Chinese class everything was handwritten and no pinyin was allowed. 

Well if repetition is the key, that's certainly what I've been doing. I guess it's hard because in a language where everything is in it's own 'pinyin' if you will. But it's a smart idea to just write in little spaces during your day, so thanks for that suggestion bweedin. I also haven't really been writing my own phrases, although I've been doing that with speaking as I mutter things to myself in chinese.

Have you tried Anki? It's "smart" flashcards using spatial recongnition technologies to make memorizing words easier and more efficient. It gives you words depending on how well you have remembered them. Many of our users use it to help them learn words and charatcers. Go here to export your saved ChinesePod vocabulary to Anki.