University of London

SOAS

Dr William X. F. YU

The aim of this paper is to provide some knowledge of Chinese characters and discuss how to teach Chinese characters effectively.

I remember that in a newspaper a scientist claims that if one learns an European language, one needs to use one’s half of brain; but when one learns a language like Chinese, one must use whole one’s brain. Regardless, whether the claim is completely correct or not, we can see the difference between these two languages since they come from different language families. The major difference between Chinese and European languages is that Chinese is a pictorial language in which a Chinese character carries a shape, a sound and a meaning but the languages in Europe only carry a sound and meaning. So, if one learns Chinese, It is very important to know Chinese characters. Sometimes, one character may change the sentence meaning. There is a story in China, which is ‘a teacher of for one character’一字师. The story says: one day Jiadao 贾岛(a famous poet in Tang dynasty) was carefully choosing a character for his poem. He could not decide if he should use ‘tui’ 推 (to push) as in“僧推月下门”or ‘qiao’ 敲 (to knock) as in“僧敲月下门”. He was so concentrated on his poem that he did not hear the officers shouting---at that time, a governor went out, people ought to make a way for him; otherwise the guy would be in trouble. Jiadao was arrested for this reason. Luckily the governor was Hanyu 韩愈 (a very famous poet and writer in Tang dynasty).  Jiadao told Hanyu whole the story and apologized for it. Hanyu appreciated Jiadao’s hard working. Hanyu invited Jiadao to his home and had a discussion. Hanyu gave Jiadao his opinion and said, it was better to use ‘qiao’ as in “僧敲月下门”since there would be a sound that made the poetic situation more realistic and attractive. The story told us that it was not so easy to use a Chinese character indeed.

As a teacher, we have responsibility to teach our students to recognise a Chinese character correctly, to read it correctly, to write it correctly and to use it correctly.

Part I. Some background of Chinese characters

1. An introduction of Chinese characters

1.1   A Discussion why we should learn Chinese characters.

a) As is well-know, since she opened her door, China became a member of the international community.  Great responsibilities in the world made China try to know more the world and let the world know more China as well.  The language takes an important role for China to communicate with the others. We as a language teacher have a responsibility to promote Chinese language and culture.

b) A teacher must have three good skills----s/he can speak Mandarin fluently; s/he can write beautiful Chinese characters and s/he can write excellent essays.一手漂亮的毛笔字；一口流利的普通话；一篇高质量的好文章. This is the basic requirement, otherwise, how can we be called a Chinese language teacher? Chinese language, especially the characters is one of the treasures all over the world.  If we cannot give a correct knowledge to our students, we will disappoint our motherland and our ancestors.  

1.2 Chinese characters vs. Chinese words

Before we are going to detail the characters in Chinese, let us clarify the concept of a character and know the difference between a character and a word.

i)the reasons for us to distinguish the concept of character from word

In Classical Chinese, most Chinese words were monosyllable. But In modern Chinese, most of Chinese words are compound words.  However, in a formal written form, for some reasons we still keep the classical words. For an example, 学means ‘study’ in the classical Chinese and 习means ‘to practise’; while 学习is a word in modern Chinese meaning ‘to learn’ and ‘to study’. However, we often use 学 for ‘study’. However, 朋 and 友 in the classical Chinese both mean ‘friend’, but they cannot be used alone.

ii)  The difference between a character and a word

A character carries certain meaning. It also has sound and picture: 字音，字形and 字义. For an example, 字 not only gives us a shape of the character, but also tell us the sound ‘zi’ and the meaning ‘characters in Chinese’. However, the meaning of the character may be various and it should be in accordance with its word containing it.

A word should have an independent meaning and grammatical function, while a character has no independent grammatical function and its meaning must be decided by the empire word that contains the character. In the other word, a word has a grammatical function in a sentence but a character has not. Some characters in classical Chinese might be a word, but might not be a word in the modern Chinese language.  For an example, 朋in classical Chinese was a word. There is a sentence from Confucius: “有朋自远方来，不亦乐乎？”But in the modern Chinese, 朋is no longer a word, it can occur in a sentence if only if it forms a word such as 朋友 with 友.

iii). Of course, some characters could be words as we have mentioned before. For an example, 学 is both a character and a word.

Having discussed what the characters are now we introduce the different inscriptions.

1.3 An introduction of Inscriptions

1.3.1 The seven different scripts

There are seven different scripts:

a.     Oracle –bone script 甲骨文

Oracle-bond script refers to the script that was carved on a torte’s shell or the bone of animals. It is said that the script was the earliest one. It has more than three thousand years history. It might be created for praying in the first stage.

b. Bronze script金文

Bronze script was a type of script with metal instruments. It can also be called big seal script大篆 as well. Most of masterpieces could be seen on the tablets of the graveyards. It is clear that the iron was used at that time.

c. Seal script篆文

It refers the script that unified by the first emperor in Qin in 220BC. After he unified the country, the first emperor in Qin dynasty unified the writing system. The seal script became an official script. At that time, people carved the Chinese characters on a piece of bamboo or a piece of wood since there were no papers or pens.

d. Layman script隶书

It is said that during Han dynasty a higher rank official whose name was Cheng Miao程邈 offended the emperor. The emperor put him in jail and forced him to do labouring job. In his spare time, he created the layman script. The advantage of this type script was easier to carve the characters on a piece of bamboo or a piece of wood since there were no more curved strokes.

e. Draft script草书

According to some researchers, the draft script was developed on the base of the layman script. Like the short hand in English, the draft was developed for convenience. We believe that there were pens and papers or silk piece that had been used. The script was not very easy to be recognised. In the older days, there were only few scholars and calligraphers who could do it and recognise it.

f. Running script行书

Having seen the difficulties in using the draft script, somebody created another type of script which was easier to be recognised than the draft script, but easier to write than the layman script. We still use that kind of script today. It is very popular.

g. Regular script楷书

The regular script is an official script which was used in documents since it is not easy to change once one writes down. We are still using today.

1.3.2 More popular scripts and styles of scripts in today’s China.

Today, the regular script and running script are still using. All documents and formal writing must be in the regular script, but all hand writing all are in running script.

However, the regular script has many, many different styles. For an example, we have weibai style魏碑体, wang xizhi style王羲之体, Fangsong style 仿宋体 (Yan Zhengqing 颜正卿, Liugongquan styles柳公权 in Song dynasty) and shutong style 舒同and so on…but those belongs to regular script.

2. The six ways of creation of the Chinese characters

Having discussed the scripts, now let us talk about the creation of the Chinese characters.

2.1 Xu Sheng’s许慎the author of the first dictionary and liushu 六书

There were a number of the books on Chinese characters. The most famous one may be the first dictionary was《说文解字》. The book was written by Xu Shen. “五经无双许叔重”，(nobody can compare with Xu Shen on knowledge of five text books). His book《说文解字》includes 540 部首，9353 字. Whole book was sub divided into 14 volumes. In his book, he first mentioned that “liushu”六书 means the six ways to create the characters in accordance with Xushen.

     a). Descriptive  characters 象形

From the seal script, one can see the pictures for many characters clearly. It looks a drawing. For example, 日‘sun’、月‘moon’、山‘mountain’、水‘water’、竹‘bamboo’、目‘eye’、木‘wood’、马‘horse’、羊‘sheep’、牛‘cow’、人‘people’、大‘big’、象‘elephant/to like’、立‘to stand’、习‘to review’、羽‘fur’、鱼‘fish’、耳‘ear’、儿‘son’、女‘daughter/female’、力‘strength’、几‘tea table’、丁‘nail’、爪‘paw’、贝‘mussels shell/money’、虫‘insect’、卉‘grass/plant’、足‘foot’、巾‘towel’、火‘fire’、手‘hand’ and so on all are pictures.

b) Indicative Characters 指事

This type of characters was formed by one meaning part and one is a stroke that points out the part that the whole character is talking about. For instance, a knife 刀 plus a dot indicates ‘blade of the knife’刃. The line of the bottom of 上 indicates the ground, and the stroke points the part vertical line of it. The meaning of上 is ‘up part’ and ‘above’. 下is just opposite. 本 is a tree marked with a line. It indicates that the part of the 本 with an underline is root. 本 means ‘root’ or ‘essential’ since a tree will die if without the root. 末 is just opposite of the本, and it is a soot. For more example, 甘 is a tong with a stroke. It indicates that the tongue can taste sweet.

c) Associative Characters 会意：

It is derived from two meaningful parts. For examples 打 is formed with a ‘hand’ and a ‘nail made of bamboo’. A hand hit a bamboo nail with a tool. So it is ‘hit’. If a sun just rises above the horizontal, it is early morning. 旦was formed with a horizontal line and a sun to indicate ‘early morning’. 冬 is formed with a stream coming from a carve and ice and indicates ‘winter’. 采 contained a hand and a tree, and it means ‘to pick up’. 看is formed by an eye with a hand above it, which means ‘to look at’. A man standing under a tree made a休 for ‘a rest’. 问consists of a door and a mouth and it means ‘to ask’; 闻 consists of a door and an ear, indicating ‘listening’; 继is silk part plus a loom machine since people need to join the broken threads together. 断 contained a loom machine with an axe and it means ‘cutting’. 退 is formed a man who looks from back and a moving distance part and means ‘retreat’. 妇 is female with a sweep for cleaning. 囚 is a person who was put in the square.

沙 ‘sand’ consists of ‘to lack’ and ‘water’. For more examples, 学to learn、语language、早early、春spring、秋autumn、男man/male、分to divide、初first、名name, all belong to this type.

d) Phonetic-semantic compounds形声：

Most of Chinese characters belong to this type. The education authority listed 7000 everyday Chinese characters (recently, it changed into 3500 characters); among them about 5620 Chinese characters belong to this type. The reason for the xing-sheng characters was the demand of the development of the society since the existing characters could not meet the demand.  For example, 洪means ‘flood’、哄means ‘to ease’、烘means ‘to bake’. All of them share the same consonant and vowel, in other words, they have the same pronunciation marked by 共even though the tones are not the same. 狠means ‘cruel’、恨means ‘to hate’ and 痕means ‘scar’ share the sound marked with 艮，and contain a different semantic  part as well.

These four ways are the ways to create Chinese characters. The other two are the ways to use the existing characters as follows:

e). Synonymous characters 转注

f). Phonetic loan Characters假借

Since it is too hard for people to understand, we usually do not detail it for students.

2.2 The radicals

In order to check dictionaries, radicals were introduced. In Xu’s book, there were 540 radicals. In Kangxi dictionary《康熙字典》, it changed into 242. There are 243 radicals in Ciyuan《词源》. There are 245 radicals in <Chinese dictionary for Hongkong Middle School’s Students>《香港中学生字典》. There are 243 radicals in <China’s New Dictionary>《中华新字典》.  All of them are in traditional version.

In Mainland of China, Chinese characters were simplified. The radicals are also reduced into about 200.  For instance, there are 188 radicals in <Pocket Chinese Dictionary—English—Chinese; Chinese—English> published by Oxford University Press; and <Chinese-English Dictionary> published by Beijing Foreign Language Institute.

2.3   Phonetics system 

2.3.1 Yinxun 音训and 反切 in the classical Chinese

In ancient China, there was no zhuyin and pinyin system. Linguists created a “Yinxun” 音训 ‘shengxun’声训 and “fanqie” 反切 system. The earliest period, the phonetic system was used ‘zhiyinfa’ 直音法 “directly marking’.  读如 ‘reading as’，读若，同。。。those terms were often used. Later on ‘fanqie’ 反切 was introduced. ‘Fanqie’ was the way to mark the pronunciation and it took the consonant in the first character and  a vowel from the second character to mark the character unknown：For an example, ‘mao’毛，莫袍切. Take ‘m’ from ‘mo’ from ‘mo’ 莫 and ‘ao’ from ‘pao’ 袍and then make a ‘mao’ 毛. 

This system was used for more than two thousand years until 1920s. However, after 1920, some linguists in Hong kong and Taiwan still prefer the system.

3. The reform of Chinese language

3.1. Language reform in 1920s

Before 4th May movement, the written Chinese was classical Chinese. Modern Chinese was created during the 4th May. We should say ‘thank you’ to Prof. Hu She胡适、and Chen Du Xiu陈独秀and the other old generation who joined the New Cultural Movement. Prof. Hu She胡适was the founder of the Modern Chinese. When he was a PhD student in the British Columbia University, he proposed to reform the language. At that time, they used colloquial Chinese at that time to replace the classical written Chinese. Of course, the colloquial Chinese at that time may be a little bit differs from the colloquial Chinese and much more like today’s written Chinese. They took the famous novels in Northern dialects as official written form. However, the reform of Chinese language in 1920s did not change the characters writing indeed.

3.2   Zhuyin 注音system

The first Chinese phonetics system maybe created in 1920s.

Following the 4th May movement, there was a new cultural movement. Hushe 胡适 was the first one who proposed to have a reform on Chinese language. Modern Chinese were introduced. Nine top linguists voted Cantonese or Mandarin to be an official language.  Eventually, the decision was made: based on the Peking dialect, a phonetic system was established. But the phonetic writing looked like as Japanese. It was ‘zhuyin’ 注音.

3.3 The Romanization of the phonetic systems

In the mid of 1950s, the zhuyin system have been changed into pinyin system which was Romanization.  The advantage is that it is easier to publish papers in the international papers since at that time there was not computer at all.

3.4 The Simplified Chinese characters

3.4.1 Its purposes

The reform aimed at keeping the Mao’s power for ever. After Mao was in power, of course, he wanted to make his region stable.  Of course, he would trust his own men rather than any intellectuals. He realized that it was difficult for his man ruling China if his men had no knowledge of the written Chinese. He launched a movement to eliminate illiteracy. However, Mao’s men all were from countryside and factories and they did not know any written Chinese. Moreover, at that time, they were all in mid-age. So it was so difficult to keep basic Chinese characters in their mind. And in 1952 Mao ordered professor Yang Shu Da leading a group of university students to simplify the traditional Chinese characters.

3.2.2 How did they reform the Chinese characters?

Professor Yang was a very well learnt scholar and he compiled a dictionary in 1928. Under his leadership, a group of university students investigated the most popular simplified characters in the mass. They also checked some documents in the history.  In 1956, the first time published the simplified characters. Since then, there were simplified Chinese characters published for total four times.

3.2.3 The disadvantage and advantage of the reform

In the history, every dynasty, there were some simplified characters. For an example, there were at least seven simplified Chinese characters in <Huang Ting jian’s tablet in running scripts> 《黄庭坚行草帖》. So it is very normal. However, there were not so many simplified characters in Mao’s dynasty. The simplified Chinese Characters has its own advantage and disadvantage. For an example, it did help Mao’s men to learn written Chinese. I remember that the workman writer Hu Wan Chun 胡万春could not write more than two hundred of Chinese characters at first; but later on he became a professional writer. On the other hand, due to the unreasonable simplified characters such as ‘ting’ 听 which completely changed the original one into unknown status, it is hard for people to recognise.

          Our opinion is that it was easy to memorise and recognise the Chinese characters in the traditional version; but is it easy to write in the simplified version.

4. The difficulties the students meet in their studies

4.1 The pronunciation and characters

As is well know, each Chinese character has its shape, its pronunciation and its certain meaning. This is why a western scientist claimed that if you learn European language, you only need your half brain; but when you learn Chinese language, you have to use your whole brain. But, how many syllables in Chinese? Total 419 syllables, plus the four tones, we made about 1200. But, how many characters? In the Kangxi dictionary康熙字典，there are 47053 Chinese characters; there are 48000 Chinese characters in Zhonghua dictionary中华大字典; Zhongwen dictionary 中文大字典（台）in Taiwan collected 49905 Chinese characters；The biggest dictionary is the Hanyu dictionary汉语大字典which collected 56000 Chinese characters.  So, one syllable may accommodate a long list of Chinese characters. In other words, a lot of words may share one syllable.

4.2. One character may have couple of pronunciations

As is well known, one character may have 2, or 3, even more different pronunciations.  For an example, 了can pronounce it  ‘le’ in 吃了饭and ‘liao’ in 了解、不得了two pronunciations. 似has ‘si’ in 似死人一般and ‘shi’ in 似的two pronunciations. Sometimes, 和may be read as ‘he’; but sometimes it has to be read as ‘huo’ such as in 暖和.  A Chinese character like 累 has four pronunciations. It makes a lot trouble for non-native speakers, and even native speakers.

4.3. The characters have no long keep the original shape.

As we mentioned in the previous sections, one of methods to create a Chinese character is to draw a picture. For an example, 日means ‘sun’ and was a circle with a dot inside in seal script. As soon as we see the image, we can guess.  So is 月. As soon as we see the character in the seal script，it reminds us the half moon in the life. 山in seal script still kept the image of the mountain;  So were 水, 手, and 毛in the seal script. As for 目, it was eye’s rotation; and 自was a nose with finger. But how can we recognize the Chinese characters in the today’s scripts, i.e. in the running script and regular script?

4.4 . The shape has been changed

Following time being, some shapes are changed. For examples, the radical in 朋 ‘friend’ is different with from肥 ‘fat’ in seal script since the radical of 朋should be 月, but the radical of 肥should be 肉. But in the regular script and running script who can see the difference? The top part on笑and on笠 were not the same in the seal script: the top part on 笑 was a smiling face, but the top of 笠 was 竹bamboo leaves. The development of the language makes the written form simple, but the radicals may lose their original meanings. It increase s the difficulties for the learners.

4.5. The similarity of the characters

Chinese has many characters which have a similar shape. For an example曰 ‘to speak’ is similar with 日’sun’；士’scholar’ is similar to土 ‘earth’. It is not difficult to find more examples. If one did not pay big attention, one might make mistakes. We have a joke about it.  A rich man wrote a poetic sentence to praise his family: 父进士，子进士，父子皆进士，婆夫人，媳夫人，婆媳皆夫人. The meaning is that the father passed the imperial exam and the son passed the imperial exam, so the father and the son both passed the imperial exam; the mother became a lady and the daughter –in-law became a lady and both mother and daughter –in-law became ladies. A man made a joke by changing or adding more stokes for some characters, the meaning of the poetic sentences suddenly changed: 父进土，子进土，父子皆进土，婆失夫，媳失夫，婆媳皆失夫.  The sentence now says father (has been) buried into earth, so did his son, and both father and son have been buried. The mother lost her husband, and the daughter-in-law lost her husband and both mother and daughter-in-law lost their husbands. If you compare these two sentences, there are only a few storks changed in a few characters.

4.6. The phonetic part 声旁in the xing-shen 形声characters could not actually serve as a phonetic symbol.

4.6.1 the phonetic part has different pronunciation. 

For an example, 屋 in 屋(wu)子 should pronounced as ‘wu’, but when it occurs in the words like 握、渥、龌、握、幄、喔、楃, it must be read as ‘wo’ ，in other word,  it represents a sound like ‘wo’. When 察 in 警察 ‘cha’ became a phonetic part in ‘ca’ 擦 in ‘cabei’ 擦背, it changes into ‘ca’. When ‘si’ 寺 is used alone as 林隐寺linyinsi， its pronunciation is ‘si’; but when it is a phonetic part for the words like诗 ‘shi’、持 ‘chi’、侍 ‘shi’、待 ‘dai’, the pronunciation  of寺 is various. For more examples, 秤 ‘cheng’，平，萍，评，坪，苹（ping）all contained a平as its phonetic part, but the first one秤 ‘Ceng’ completely differs from the others.

4.6.2 Some characters may be created in a different way but it has the same symbol

Let us take艮as an example. 艮originally is a picture in which a man turned his head to look through back.  From this point, 退 is created. It means ‘to retreat’. 艮pronunciation is ‘gen’, it is phonetic part in some words like艮，根 ‘root’，跟’to follow’，哏 a ，茛 ‘a type of a grass’. All of them can pronounce as ‘gen’. Now, can anybody give clearly explanation to the words as follows: 退，腿，煺，褪，all  share the pronunciation ‘tui ; 很，恨, 痕, 痕 share the pronunciation ‘hen’;）垦, 恳, 裉all  share the pronunciation ‘ken’；艮，根，跟，哏，茛all  share the pronunciation ‘gen’, 银，垠share the pronunciation ‘yin’ 眼 ‘yan’ .  How can students to remember them?

4.6.3 The location of the phonetic part

          Even if we know the words belonging to phonetic-semantic compounds, it is still hard for us to find the phonetic part. For instance, 歌，龚，病，肝，衷，忠，钟all are phonetic-semantic compounds. 哥in 歌 is in the left，共in 龚is in the down part，丙in 病 is in right down，干in肝is in the right. Take 中as an example, 中in 衷is in the middle，中in 忠is in the top，中in 种is in the right, so is 中in 仲, but 中in 筗is in the right down. It is hard for students to follow.

4.6.4 The phonetic part cannot have effect as it in English

In Chinese, there are about 236 ideal phonetic part，among of them 211 are characters. But one phonetic part can only mark few of characters. The most effective one was ‘皇’Huang， which marked only thirteen Chinese characters。

4.7 Some problem with the simplified characters

We have discussed in the previous section, some simplified version of the tradition characters are very reasonable for examples, 尘 ‘dust’，气 ‘air’，从 ‘from’，and 众 ‘mass’ are very reasonable. However, some of them are unreasonable. For an example, 听，里，干those characters are completely unacceptable. It is not possible to give any explanation at all. The original version of 听 was something to do with ear but now one cannot guess the meaning from the characters. The original version of里 was clothing plus it. It means the liner of clothe. But it mixed with the measure word里 ‘mile’. 干was the simplification of two original versions:  One of them means ‘to do’ and another one means ‘dry’.

4.8  It is not easy to find the radicals for characters.

The radicals of the Chinese characters play a very role for checking of a new character. However, after the Chinese characters were simplified, it is hard to find the radicals in the characters.  For an example, 丫，头，为，叛, and 主 share the same radical ‘ 、’. Moreover, 主 also can be found in the 王 radical. Why? No reason. Who knows?

4.9 The different cultural background

          As we know, Chinese language is a pictorial language; the consequence is that Chinese people are good at ‘thinking in term of images’, but non-Chinese may be good at abstract thought. Moreover, some people do not have any background of China; therefore, sometimes it is not easy to reach one’s teaching target.

4.10. The team of Chinese teachers in Britain has mix sources.

According to our investigation, apart from those non-Chinese who got a degree in Chinese, there are teachers who are from Mainland China; there are teachers from Taiwan; there are teachers who grew up in aboard. In later 1980s, most teachers were from Taiwan, or those who grew up in aboard. For those who grew up in aboard, may be divided into two groups: some of them are very well learnt, but some of them are lack of knowledge. They are learning while they are teaching. Even those teachers from mainland China who grew up during the Cultural Revolution may not all have enough knowledge of Chinese. There were few teachers who learnt Chinese before the Cultural Revolution, but their English was comparatively poor so that they could not have a post in the Chinese department at universities.  Some teachers who were from Taiwan, and had a good knowledge of Chinese left for Taiwan since they thought it was no way to develop in the western. The different backgrounds make the teaching quality different.

4,11 The mistakes in news paper and magazines

Everybody in England wants to promote Chinese language and to earn living as well. Chinese news papers companies established one after one like the bamboo soot appearing after a spring rain. They have been doing a lot good things for us; however, there are some mistakes as well. For examples, most news papers used the traditional characters, it is good, but since some of them did not learn traditional characters before , when they changed simplified characters into tradition one with some mistakes. They wrote 宿舍 as 、里 as 、武松as and so on.

Part Two.   How to teach Chinese language

Having introduced some knowledge of the Chinese characters, and situation of teaching, now we are going to discuss the methods.  We will demonstrate a number of methods.  However, it is not necessary to adopt one method, 教无定法 everybody should create his own ways to teach effectively.

I Be diligent to practise

There is a proverb in Chinese: 勤能补缺. It means diligent can amend the lack. It is not possible to have achievement if one does not practise. Now, it is also impossible to practise in the way we did in China. In China, a teacher might ask a pupil to write 20 time for one character in China, but there is no way for a teacher to ask a pupil write ten times for a character. We suggest that we ask the students to write three to five times for every character at the first stage.  We also encourage our students to practise. 咄咄书空 means practise Chinese characters in the air with a finger.

II Telling the origin of a character

The creation of Chinese characters makes students feel interesting.  It is also good for the students to memorise the characters. If we teach a character ‘zao’ meaning ‘early’, you tell your students that the character consists of two parts: top is a ‘sun’ and down part is plants. When the sun just rises above the plant, it is very early indeed. If we teach ‘yu’, we may separate the character into three parts 言 ‘yan’, 五 ‘wu’ and 口‘kou’.  If some five or more than five people speak the same words, it is a ‘language’. It may help the students to keep it in their minds.

III Comparative studies

Comparative study is the effective studies. Comparative study means to put two or more Chinese characters to find out the similarity and difference of these characters. For examples, we put 渴 and 喝 together and asked the students to find out the similarity and difference. The students found that the former one consists of a radical of ‘water’ and a 曷 as its phonetic part; but the later one consists of a radical of ‘mouth’ and a phonetic part曷. After comparing, the students found that the character with a radical of ‘water’ means ‘thirsty’ since one needs water; the one with a radical of ‘mouth’ means that one drinks water with mouth. We also compared 大 with 太，犬 to emphasize that people need write Chinese characters carefully.  We compare士 with 土 to show the students it is necessary to write Chinese characters precisely since one stroke longer or short may affect the meaning of the characters. Comparing some characters in the same pronunciation is also helpful. For an example, we compare 他 with 她 and 它, and then tell the different meanings and usages.

IV Making cards

Making cards is a very good method for learning Chinese characters. It is easier to carry cards than a book. Anytime when you are available, you can take out a piece of cards to have a look. However, it is important to ask the students to use the copied characters from the book, not their own writing. The reason is that they as beginners often forget strokes. Once they keep the wrong characters in their memory, they might make mistake all the time. So you must ask them cut out the Chinese characters from photocopy of the book and cut one of them to stick on the one side of the card, and turn it over and write the explanation and Pinyin on the back. If they like, they also can put one sentence containing the character there as an example.

V.Play games

There are many ways to play game in order to learn Chinese characters. 5.1 The teacher can ask the students to make a group.  In the group, each person writes one stroke only and then passes it to the next one until the character is finished.  The last person should read it out and tell the meaning of the character they have written.

5.2 The teacher divided his students into a couple of groups first.  And then the teacher writes down a few of radicals and then asks the students to write down the Chinese characters with the radicals. And the teacher asks the students to have a competition.

5.3 The teacher ask one student to write a Chinese character or give a card with a Chinese character, the other students should continue by adding one more character in the left or right to build a sentence, but any character must be compatible with the sentence.

5.4 The teacher gives several pieces of cards with Chinese characters not in order and then asks all groups to make a sentence with the cards given by the teacher. The game not only checks the students’ knowledge of Chinese characters but also the knowledge of the grammar.

Anyway, if the teacher makes the lessons more interesting, the students will recognise the Chinese characters more quick.

Part three An Introduction some software and dictionaries.

Now a day, more and more books about Chinese characters appear in the bookshops and in the web we also can find necessary information as well.  Here I introduce some books as follows:

I. Books

a. 汉字字源入门 王宏源 北京华语教学出版社

b. 汉语演变五百例 李乐毅 北京语言学院出版社

c. 外国人汉字速成 周健 华语教育出版社

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