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This morning it dawned on me, after years of learning Chinese, hours spent of searching, trying different ways of learning these characters, it finally hit me, THERE IS NO SHORTCUT. You have to study, I mean really study, and you really have to give it your all.
The net is full of ways how to learn, but it turns-out unless your living in China and fully submerge in the language, you really have to put in 110% to learn it. All this "watching Chinese movies, listening to Chinese music" etc. those serves more as supplementary aid.
I find that,you have to give each character the attention and energy to really makes it your own. One thing about the characters, especially traditional characters, some have a story behind the pictograph. If you understand the story behind the character, that's less you have to memorize.
I love writing Chinese more than anything else. so don't just force it on your brain. There is no joy in forceful memorization, make each character personal, enjoy the learning and meaning each character provides and the brain will takes care of the rest on it's own. I mean think about it, did you had to try to memorize your first kiss?....
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(photo credit: dawnallynnstock)
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An interesting observation Wood. I think that if you don't want to learn to read and write in Chinese you shouldn't bother. I know of someone who was only interested in speaking Chinese and that is all the learned. They do speak with fluency. They can read and write in pinyin when necessary. I think to some extent you can pick and choose what you wish to learn.
There's a really interesting article from Science daily about the impact that writing has on memory. I highly recommend everyone learning characters read it. (try to ignore the atrocious web design & focus on article content).
The article basically says that physical movement & feedback play a significant role in remembering written symbols. It's not written for Chinese but obviously could be applicable. Better Learning Through Handwriting
I've personally seen big improvements in the past week from 30 minutes daily writing, which I didn't do much of before. Just reading & typing.
(h/t to John Biesnecker at Chinesepod for sharing on his tumblr blog)
I agree that you have to give it 110% if you aren't in China - I'm in that position and I spend far too much of my time studying Chinese in one way or another. As far as learning to write characters goes, I use Skritter a lot, at least 20 minutes of study time every day (can equal 30 - 45 minutes of real time) and if I take more than a couple of days off then it can take another 3 or 4 days to get back where I was.
As you say, forcing the learning on your brain doesn't work. I have seen a few people that are learning Chinese for work or family reasons and they don't have a love of the language / culture. I am learning purely for fun and a love of the culture, so spending an hour or 2 ... or more ... every day isn't a chore, it's fun. This means it is very easy to improve more than those don't enjoy the language in the same way.
To learn effectively, I think you have to enjoy what you are doing. If you don't enjoy it, it will always be hard work, you won't be interested in learning and you won't learn - this is true of anything, not just Chinese or languages. If you have to learn something, first you have to learn to enjoy it.
After taking a 2 week break from daily character practice it felt like I had forgotten a ton of them after returning. So there is probably something to what you are saying.
I personally get frustrated with...
1) When you recognize a character you've studied but can't remember pinyin/meaning in real life.
2) When you think a character is familiar but then can't remember if the left half is the same thing as the character you're now trying to read.
3) When you can't make sense of a sentence because you didn't realize that two familiar characters mean something different when put together - like 爱好 can mean a hobby.
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