Most of the people that have come trying to learn Chinese in China have all said almost similar things: “Oh, I simply want to be able to speak Chinese.”, “Learning characters is quite difficult and not necessary.”, “why would I waste my time to learn.” But it happens. If you are serious about learning Chinese characters here are simply some of the (tried and tested) ways in which you can learn Chinese characters effectively.

Learn characters alongside the spoken language

First of all, you don’t need to be afraid of the Chinese language. The simple reality is that without some knowledge of Chinese characters it is harder to make connections between spoken words. Most people make errors without understanding the concept. Learning to read, write and speak at the same, will be challenging, but only will improve your pronunciation, tones and your understanding of the language as a whole.

Learn radicals

Characters are not merely lines haphazardly thrown together to make your mind a numbingly complicated picture. They are formed up of radicals, sometimes just 1, whilst the more complicated characters are made up of multiple. These radicals indicate meaning and pronunciation. For instance, the character 切 meaning cut is formed up of two radicals. The first is the radical 七, pronounced (qī) which provides the pronunciation of the character. The second one is the knife radical 刀 which shows the meaning of the character. These two radicals together create the character 切 pronounced qiē. Once you start to learn some basic radicals, your character learning will enhance quickly (and more enjoyably).

Begin with 一 instead of 鼻

The character above is the character for nose pronounced bí and it consists of 14 strokes and is its own radical. It will make sense to begin with more simple characters like numbers, generally, used characters and even pictographic characters. These characters are some of the simplest to learn because they suggest an often definite representation of what the character is. 雨 for instance looks like rain falling outside of a window. Well, what do you know, this is the character for rain! How about 木， the character for wood? It distinctly looks like a tree with branches. To find a good beginning point you can also use the Chinese character Flashcard App by Written Chinese.

Writing and stroke order

Yes, writing characters are important in an attempt to be able to read. Actually, for most people, once they start to write the characters over and over and follow the stroke patterns, these assists retain the image of the character so one can remember it more quickly next time. But writing characters does not have to be all boring repetition in a notebook. For the more technical of you, you can use an app or Dictionary to practice writing the character. There are also some creative methods to learn to write such as buying a water pad and brush. If you make an error, no worries you can try again.

Get into a habit

This is one of the hardest parts of learning anything new (particularly, if it can sometimes be difficult). Create a routine for yourself and dedicate a specific time to your learning.

Keep learning fun through games and TV shows

Learning by only doing normal everyday tasks like watching TV, listening to music and even playing games can truly help develop your language skills faster and feels like less of a work than other methods. Certainly, these things will also assist your listening skills, but several TV shows and music videos have subtitles in Chinese so you can easily follow along with the dialogue or lyrics. Whereas there are some games too. There are a lot of cool, fun games for mobile and tablet devices that will help you to practice your Chinese characters.

Meanwhile you can also learn and master the Chinese Language on Hello Hello Language Learning App for iPhones and iPads.