Learning to Read and Write Chinese - Part I

After completing Pimsleur, I decided that I needed to focus on expanding my vocabulary as the next step towards growing my Chinese language skills. And, I concluded that in order to do so, I needed to start becoming literate – to learn to read and write. How did I come to this conclusion? I found that the plethoric homophones in the Chinese language make it very difficult to imprint new words into one’s memory just from the sounds and the pinyin representation of those sounds by themselves. All the shi’s and xi’s and xiao’s and shu’s start to blur together over time.

The reasons I waited 2.5 years before starting to study the script are twofold: 1) learning the script seemed of secondary importance and value to learning the spoken language, and 2) I find the Chinese script to be unappealing, both in terms of aesthetics and function. To me, characters look like lots of random scribbles, and there doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason between the design of characters and their meaning and pronunciation.

Most laowai who eventually develop proficiency in the language seem to have originally been attracted to the script. I wish that were my case, but it isn’t. The Chinese script seems like a pointless puzzle, like Rubic’s cube or Sudoku, and I have no interest in those kinds of games.

I had only dabbled a bit with the script prior to embarking upon this new initiative. Since the script is not phonetic in nature, it is not intuitively clear what the best way to learn it is.

So, how best to proceed?

I decided that first and foremost, I needed to tackle reading and writing in a contextual manner, integrated with my limited speaking capabilities. While revisiting the characters I had poked at previously, it instantly became clear that I only remembered ones associated with words that I was already very comfortable with using verbally (e.g. 好hăo - good). The rest seemed completely foreign to me. They had failed to stick in my memory.

So, maybe a textbook would be a good tool? It seemed likely that an introductory textbook would focus on words I was already familiar with, and on applying them in context, rather than just introducing discrete characters (as “What’s in a Chinese Character” does).

I remembered seeing mention of a popular college textbook named “Integrated Chinese” on the Chinesepod blog, so I decided to give the first semester of this series (Level I, Part I) a shot. As the title implies, the series is designed for learning all four aspects of the language (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) simultaneously. I can’t imagine taking on such a challenge, but I’m sure there are benefits to this kind of approach.

The first book introduces about 350 characters and 550 words. I was familiar with most of the words, so was able to focus most of my attention on the written aspects of the language. The book also addresses many basic grammar points that had previously puzzled me, such as when to insert a “de” between adjectives and nouns, and when not to.

It took me a few months to work through all 11 chapters of the textbook. I used Plecodict as a vocabulary list and flashcard tool to aid the process. I learned early on that it was important to work with full words in addition to the individual characters. For example, I had difficulty remembering one of the most basic of characters, 生 (sheng1 – to be born) until I repeatedly saw it as a component in the compound, 先生 (xian1sheng1 – Mr.). The reason being the power of context, of course. I rarely come across the verb “to be born” in every day language, but “Mr.” is very common.

The outcome (so far)

Studying the written script has turned out to be very valuable – I wish I had started much earlier. I recommend starting to study the script within 6 months of initiating study of the spoken language, rather than waiting 2.5 years as I did.

Having a visual representation associated with each word makes it easier to identify the relationship between words, and to imprint them in memory. As an example, the written script makes it clear that 已经 (yi3jing1 – already) and 经常 (jing1chang2 – frequently) both share a common character, 经 (jing1 – pass through). This is helpful because both words are temporal in nature, so the shared character helps reinforce the relationship between the words. This relationship would not be readily identifiable from the pinyin alone, since “jing” is such a common sound in the language.

Although I still don’t care much for the written script, I feel that I am becoming more comfortable with the language as a whole from studying it. The language is starting to feel less opaque than pinyin leaves it. A tangible example of this surfaced while looking at a map of the country. The names of the provinces never meant much to me before. Sichuan, Shandong, Shanxi, etc. used to seem like arbitrary names. But, when written in the script, these names suddenly come to life: Sichuan is written as, 四川. This is 四 (si4 – four) plus 川 (chuan – river). Of course! Four Rivers! Likewise Shandong is written as 山东. 山 (shan1 - mountain) plus 东 (dong1 - east). Of course! East Mountain!

Upcoming Posts

• Learning and Remembering Characters
• Australians who speak Chinese
• Lexical Chunks
• American Celebrities who Speak Chinese