reading & writing Hanzi

zhuang1lei3
 June 02, 2010, 07:40 PM posted in General Discussion

I just got this great book by Allison & Laurence Matthews, "Learning Chinese Characters."  It helps you learn/memorize the first 800 characters you need to get through HSK level A.  It uses mnemonic stories to help you remember the characters.  I'm through three chapters, about 40 characters, I am doing better remembering than I thought possible.  It is published by Tuttle and cost $20 from Amazon.

I wish I had it a year ago.

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zaouli
 June 03, 2010, 09:26 AM

salut comment allez moi je me nomme blandine je souhaite faire votre connaissancr

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anonymous519113
 June 03, 2010, 09:31 AM

Thanks for that, I'm going to run it by my Chinese teacher and possibly by a copy. I'm just starting to learn the characters and this sort of method might be useful. I've got flashcards designed for babies I bought in a Chinese bookstore, so I could probably use those in conjunction with this book to test myself.

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zhuang1lei3
 June 04, 2010, 03:01 PM

I have flashcards too but they do not help me as much as this book and its technique.  Now that I am past 50 characters it is getting to be more work but I can honestly say I have some of the characters down pat.

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wo_aishi
 June 05, 2010, 01:37 PM

I am using the same book, its not bad.  This book uses the method popularised by heizig for learning japanese characters, but in both books it takes a lot of persistance to nail the stories into your head. Take it slowly and do lots of review and its useful.

Never underestimate the power of writing them out many times though, especially in sentence form.

good luck to us all!