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 things. Not only that, Chinese is also a tonal language with four different tones, commonly marked with accent marks, many years . unmarked represents the neutral tone. The accent marks are only available using furniture that is 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 possible. The third tone sh can mean history or to start or to cause. Lastly tone sh can mean yes or room or matter. In essence, strategies many similar sounds with various meanings. As a few fact, a Chinese linguist in the 20th century Zhao Yuanren composed a 10-line classical Chinese poem using only the sound shi.
Next, it is not always possible to guess the pronunciation of a design. The character for wood, for instance, is pronounced mu. The character for forest, could be composed of two-character for wood, is pronounced lin. Although in this example the pronunciation isn’t related, the meaning of the characters would be able to. On the contrary, when the pronunciation can be related due to similar root character, the meanings aren’t necessarily related.
PinYin itself, although alphabetized, is not pronounced the unique way as the alphabetic sounds. There are unfamiliar sounds because u with an umlaut () that sounds like a compounding of I and u. Like as much as possible unfamiliar, it might lead to uncertainty and are worried. Thus, knowing the challenges learners face is the first step in devising effective learning strategies that directly affect their language achievement.
The Strategies Would once Learn Chinese Characters
Prof Ko-Yin Sung of Chinese Language Study from Utah State university conducted a hunt amongst non-heritage, non-Asian Eastern learners and uncovered interesting results could be help future learners in forming an effective study tactic. Her study revolves around 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 characters.
The study finds that among leading twenty most important used strategies, eight regarding are most typically associated with when a character is first introduced to learners. These include:
1. Repeating the character several times aloud or silently.
2. Writing the character down.
3. Noting how the smoothness is found in context.
4. Noting the tone and associating it with pinyin.
5. Observing the character and stroke order.
6. Visualising the letter.
7. Experiencing the explanation of the smoothness.
8. Associating the character with previously learned character.
The next six strategies are often increase learners’ understanding from 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 character has been used a long time ago.
12. Finding out how to say hello in chinese very good used in conversation.
13. When using the character in sentences by mouth.
14. Asking how the smoothness could be taken in sentences.
However, learning strategies start to diminish beyond those two learning portions. There are only three strategies implemented in memorising newly learned character.
15. Saying and writing the character at the same time.
16. Saying and picturing the character in consideration.
17. Imply sound, visualising the character shape and meaning.
And tend to be : only one strategy discovered practising new characters.
18. Making sentences and writing them out.
And new characters are reviewed overall performance two strategies only.
19. Writing the characters many time intervals.
20. Reading over notes, example sentences and the textbook.
Of the twenty strategies mentioned above, four are simply to be most significant in increasing learner’s skills of speaking, listening, reading, and writing of the actual characters. Some strategies are:
Writing the characters down
Observing the stroke order
Making connection to a similar character
Saying and writing the repeatedly
Discussion
A research by Stice in 1987 showed that students only retained 10% of how they learned from what they read, 26% from the things they hear, and 30% from what they see. When learning modes are combined, an essential improvement in mastering retention is noted. Learning retention jumped to 50% when seeing and hearing are combined, and even higher at 70% when students repeat the materials these kind of are learning, and learning retention is in the highest at 90% when students repeat the materials usually are learning as they quite simply 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 create them memorable, and practice recalling the newly learned characters.
Study shows that recalling new characters learned improves learning retention and reinforces learning. One way work with this is actually using an app since The Intelligent Flashcards. Distinct flashcard app is manufactured for the New Practical Chinese Reader textbooks, making it convenient to review characters created from chapters. Not only does it show stroke order animation, it can be accompanied by native speaker sound files, making this app so significantly more convenient that another app with regard to Anki. With Anki, although user can add personal notes on it, the sound file is not available and must be imported through another app.
Another important learning strategy to incorporate is observing any characters are widely used in framework. This can be practiced by observing real-life conversations to complement the textbook and audio recordings conversation. The time interesting to remember that university students studied in the abovementioned research were often unwilling to adopt the learning strategies recommended by the instructors, such as watching Chinese TV shows or listening Chinese popular music. There could be many reasons for this. The style of the shows or songs usually will not appeal for the learners.
Regarding this program is not only convenient. Or if the shows become accessed online, rarely a tick subtitled in both Chinese and English which makes the shows more helpful to beginner learners in having the language. Also, most on the very popular Chinese Television fall into the historical genre, which is a favourite one of several Chinese, with regard to example The Empress of Asia. However, the language spoken in this type of TV show is much more complex than the contemporary spoken Chinese.