Learning Chinese Characters from Ms. Zhang - From Characters to Words (B)

Learning Chinese Characters from Ms. Zhang is a set of textbooks for an elective course of Chinese characters for foreign students in China without any Chinese learning experience, especially those beginners coming from the non-Chinese character-culture. In consideration of the real situation, in which those foreign students learn Chinese characters in China, this set of textbooks includes Reading and Writing Chinese Characters and From Characters to Words, separating in a proper way the teaching of writing Chinese characters from that of reading Chinese characters.

1. With the help of pictures, Reading and Writing Chinese characters encourages learners to associate pictographic elements with meanings. Grouping pictophonetic characters by their pictographic elements, the book lays special emphasis on writing characters and analyzing the origin and structure of the characters, aiming at helping learners establish a cognitive construct for Chinese characters.

2. Highlighting the formation of a character by combining different component parts, From Characters to Words establishes association and analogy among Chinese characters. The book groups pictophonetic characters by their phonetic elements and provides various tips for memorizing characters, aiming at helping learners master a system, by which they can change the regular pattern of Chinese characters formation into a law of learning Chinese characters.

3. To help learners master Chinese characters effectively, the set of textbooks pays attention to the relationship between the meaning of the character and that of the word by offering some words formed by using the character being learned and providing some example sentences for each of the words to be mastered. It is hoped that learners will gain a better understanding of the characters and the words in context.

4. While carrying out Chinese characters teaching, the set of textbooks also introduces various learning strategies, such as memorizing characters by recycling them repeatedly, associating new characters with the familiar ones by finding the similarity between them, and learning new characters with the help of the old ones etc. These strategies will assist learners to master more Chinese characters.

In accordance with HSK Guidelines for Chinese Words and Characters issued by the National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language, Learning Characters from Ms. Zhang includes 1885 Chinese characters altogether, among which are all the Chinese characters of Class A and Class B, over 260 of Class C and Class D characters and 20 not included in the guidelines. In Reading and Writing Chinese Characters 780 Chinese characters are taught, among which about 630 are of Class A characters, over 120 of Class B characters and a few of Class C and Class D characters as radicals.

Reading and Writing Chinese Characters has 25 lessons and From Characters to Words, 30. Each of the lessons takes 2 hours to teach.