Tackling Written Chinese

For the first five or six months I spent in China I completely avoided the written language. For a while I learned Mandarin purely by listening and repeating, eventually learning the "pinyin" system, which is the English spelling of Chinese words. Initially frustrated by my inability to converse with people, my goal was to learn as many new words as quickly as I could. Learning characters seemed like a waste of time. My visual memory is definitely not up to the level of my musically trained ear, and characters seemed so complex and arbitrary.

My strategy worked, for a while. I definitely surprised myself at how quickly I picked up the spoken language and could understand and speak with people. After a few months in Chengdu however I started to realize it may have been a mistake to completely gloss over the written aspect of the language. Every text message I received, no matter how simple, required a translator. Looking for a particular store always required help from nearby shop owners. My favorite restaurants were always the ones with English menus, or at least those with pictures.

So as of a few months ago I broke down and got a couple Chinese text books for learning characters. My goal was to learn the characters for all the words I already knew how to say. It seemed daunting, but I at least wanted to give it a try. Now into my third textbook series (the first two earned well deserved places on the shelf) I believe I have struck language learning gold.

EazyChinese's "Magical Chinese Characters" series is exactly what I needed to make this process easier. One particular focus of this series is to explain why a character looks the way it does. Whether it's a visual depiction, shares the sound of a similar character, or carries some historic meaning, the book is great at finding a device to easily remember the character's structure. With the other books it was all about repition and forced memorization. The "Magical" series is about finding the rhyme and reason, looking at the glue that holds this surprisingly logical language together.

One thing this series lacks is guided practice. There is little room reserved for exercises or other memorization techniques. This is where you need to be a little creative. I've set up a system of flash cards and writing sentences to help retain everything I learn. There is a text accompanying each lesson to practice reading, and it helps to see any new vocabulary in context. The book also comes with a CD which could be used to practice dictation as well as listening skills.

Initially I was worried that spending all this time bringing my written skills up to the level of my spoken skills would slow down my progress. In fact, I think I've found that learning to read and write is really integral in understanding this language, and will definitely help me learn at a much faster rate in the future.

For anyone who has been reluctant to learn the written side, yet speaks decent conversational Mandarin, I fully reccommend EazyChinese. Here's the Amazon link.