The only way I learned to write characters was by writing them over and over and over again. But this was for Chinese class, where you had to actually write essays and stuff. Now that I’m self-studying, I never write characters. I want to be able to listen, speak, and read, and I can learn those skills so much quicker without the burden of remembering stroke order etc. If I really need to compose something in Chinese, I could just use software where you type in the pinyin + tones and the characters appear to choose from. Tedious, but how often will I have to write something in Chinese? In all likelihood, never again.
Gao Bohan: That’s precisely my point. The OP wants to be able to read rental ads. It’s complete overkill to write characters hundreds of times and with input software, the case for being able to write characters is eroding even faster.
JourneyMatt: The amount of output for me to really solidify a character with lots of strokes (say over a dozen strokes) would have to be enormous. How many times would I have to write it do you think? Probably several hundred, if not thousand, times. We’re talking a massive amount of time there and on an ongoing basis. I see Taiwanese forget characters all the time and it’s probably because they had to write them a billion times in school, have not encountered them in any meaningful context since, and so have forgotten them. It’s exactly the same with why the average adult, despite studying all sorts of stuff at school, can’t solve simultaneous equations, conjugate a French verb, name five former political leaders of his country or all the rest of it. After thirteen years or more years of formal education, the average adult anywhere, in all but the areas he uses for his job, operates at about the level of what he learnt in school when he was twelve. Because everything after that was abstract learning for its own sake. Anyway, if I took that equivalent amount of time and put it into reading, I suspect that I’d probably be able to write the character. There are tons and tons of really common characters with half a dozen strokes that I have never written that I could write if I had to. I couldn’t write more complex characters because I can’t read them either. That’s the important point. By read them, I mean that they’re not instantly recognisable to me even within a sentence (unless I’m really familiar with the sentence, in which case it’s something else entirely) without having to carefully re-read the sentence several times and think about the character. If I could read the sentence as smoothly as in English then I would have acquired that character and would have a fairly high chance of writing it.
The trouble with this way of learning characters (by writing them lots of times) is that it’s going to be practically impossible to ever really test if it’s the most efficient way to learn them simply because no one would ever really be able to get a large enough sample population of L1 speakers to learn in a different way. This is how they do it here, as much for cultural reasons and general pedagogical reasons (where, in Taiwan, controlling the students is more important pedagogically than them actually learning anything in an effective or efficient manner).
[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]Gao Bohan: That’s precisely my point. The OP wants to be able to read rental ads. It’s complete overkill to write characters hundreds of times and with input software, the case for being able to write characters is eroding even faster.
The trouble with this way of learning characters (by writing them lots of times) is that it’s going to be practically impossible to ever really test if it’s the most efficient way to learn them simply because no one would ever really be able to get a large enough sample population of L1 speakers to learn in a different way. This is how they do it here, as much for cultural reasons and general pedagogical reasons (where, in Taiwan, controlling the students is more important pedagogically than them actually learning anything in an effective or efficient manner).[/quote]
Not entirely true.
High school students that study lit and other very “advanced” characters DO NOT write them over and over, yet they are able to recall them when writing and reading. I wonder why. No need to answer. I know the answer, just some others don’t.
On another point, all of this talk about learning Chinese got me all motivated again so I started reading the Doraemon comics. Man they are good. If I laugh at some of the things, you can imagine. I will buy the books Gao Bohan suggested later. For now I am just reading cartoons. I think I will get Deathnote next. I hear it is quite good.
I gave up on writing a llooonnnggg time ago, and my speaking has improved in it’s place because I’ve concentrated less on memorization of characters, which I prefer. I’m reading the first Percy Jackson book in Chinese right now, and I can get about 95% of the characters, skipping the ones I don’t know and using context to figure it out. If someone were to read it to me and I wrote the characters, I could write maybe 15% completely. Another 15% with pieces missing. I can still read with mostly no issues, go to KTV and sing Chinese songs I don’t know (the melodies are all the same), but when it comes to writing, epic fail for me. Honestly, though, I have no will to learn how to write either, just use my phone/computer’s pinyin, and then copy.
Since I gave up actively trying to learn writing, I hate characters much less. I write an awful simplified/traditional sloppy mix and nobody (except chinese teachers) seem to care. They’re impressed I can write Chinese at all. I never have to write Chinese in my daily life, except maybe filling out a form or something, but I do have to talk to people all day long.
How many cards are in your set? Where/how can one get it? 
Memorizing characters is really just a new skill that has to be developed like any other, not an impossible goal that only be reached with decades of struggle. This is doubly the case if you use a mnemonic system. Students here do little if any mechanical practice after elementary school.
There’s no doubt that writing takes time and is of questionable use, however.
How many cards are in your set? Where/how can one get it? [/quote]
Yuli, I’m so sorry, I missed your question. The set I’m using is Chinese in a flash by Philip Yungkin Lee. Here it is on Amazon: amazon.co.uk/Chinese-Flash-v … 485&sr=8-1
There are 448 cards and the characters are in simplified and traditional Chinese (which is just plain confusing to be honest).
Sorry again, I’m crazily busy at the moment.
[quote=“Gao Bohan”]The DeFrancis books are written in traditional characters. Every new character is written in extremely large font so you can see how to write it, but even the illustrative sentences, dialogues, and narratives are written in large, easy to read characters.
Heimuoshu, I will answer your question here in case anyone else is curious. I am referring to the Chinese Reader series. When I started reading them, I already had a firm grasp of Chinese grammar, so I didn’t need the primary textbook. But if you are doing self-study, they would need to be used together. For example:
Beginning Chinese: Second Revised Edition goes with,
Beginning Chinese Reader Part I and Beginning Chinese Reader Part II
The same naming convention is used for the Intermediate and Advanced textbooks/readers, so they should be easy to find.[/quote]
Bump for Petrichor.
Petrichor,
If you buy the books referenced above, you may also want to get DeFrancis’ Character Text for Beginning Chinese. The textbook, character text, and reader all go together. I only buy the readers, because I already understand Mandarin Chinese grammar fairly well, but my understand is that beginning, intermediate, and advanced each have a textbook, character text, and reader(s).
Thanks Gao Bohan. I’ll get all three.
that’s why I can’t read calligraph, but taiwanese and chinese people (sometimes) can.
I almost forgot. The Beginning Chinese (textbook) and Beginning Chinese Reader come with audio files, available from Seton Hall University here. I bought mine on cassette tape years ago. Good for audio-lingual reinforcement. I’m sure ironlady is correct that it is best to learn how to speak first. But for those of us learning on our own, that’s not always possible. Lately I’ve been watching VCDs of some show about four young people living in Shanghai. I watch it with the Chinese subtitles on, and I find that I can read the subtitles better than I can understand through listening. Learning Chinese is so damn hard.
I almost forgot. The Beginning Chinese (textbook) and Beginning Chinese Reader come with audio files, available from Seton Hall University here. I bought mine on cassette tape years ago. Good for audio-lingual reinforcement. I’m sure ironlady is correct that it is best to learn how to speak first. But for those of us learning on our own, that’s not always possible. Lately I’ve been watching VCDs of some show about four young people living in Shanghai. I watch it with the Chinese subtitles on, and I find that I can read the subtitles better than I can understand through listening. Learning Chinese is so damn hard.[/quote]
Thanks, those prices are more reasonable than others I’ve seen online. If I can learn the pronunciation at the same time as the characters that will help enormously. I’ve found that I can learn a character and pronunciation, then use it in speech and this reinforces my memory of the word.
I keep telling myself that learning Chinese isn’t hard, and that it’s just a matter of putting in the hours of - meaningful and productive - work. 
Sometimes I glimpse the enormity of the task ahead but I’m pretty good at hood-winking myself most of the time.