HSK - How important do you consider writing for a foreigner? -

> Learning Chinese > Reading and Writing
How important do you consider writing for a foreigner?
Home New Posts

Login: Pass: Log in or register for standard view and full access.





Page 1 of 5 1 23 > »






xuechengfeng -

I know that Chinese people still need it (although I'm guessing increasingly less with computers),
but how useful is it for a foreigner? I'm sure it's helpful to know certain aspects of it and some
of the basics, but is it really that necessary to master many characters? When will I ever be in
the situation to write Chinese characters, outside of studying in school? Obviously, reading them
is necessary, but writing?? I figure the Chinese dept. must find it not very useful because our
first-year, we had to listen to tapes then write down what we heard, and after about 500 of them,
we moved into doing compositions at home, so basically, you can just look up what you don't
know/forget.



Pleco Software Learn Chinese with our Dictionaries for Palm and Pocket PC.
Learn Chinese in China Learn to speak Chinese 1MonthChinese.com -Mandarin School in China.
Chinese Textbooks Wide range, cheap, varied languages. Also Chinese cartoons, toys, gifts.
Study Chinese in Beijing Affordable Mandarin language courses at BLCU with ChinaUnipath.com.
HNHSoft Dictionary Learn Chinese on Smartphone and PDA with real person's voice.
XueXueXue IQChinese Get beyond the plateau.Take your Mandarin to a new level.
Chinese in Lijiang Short term Chinese study in a beautiful town with a focus on daily life.
MandarinTube Chinese Access to current everyday Chinese language and culture, 24/7.
Learn Chinese Homestay Chinese course, cultural activities & volunteer events in China.
Learn Chinese Online 1-on-1 instant tutoring, diverse courses, native teachers. FREE trial now!
Nihao Chinese Progam Free one-on-one Chinese lesson. Win 5-years of free lessons now!


About Ads (and how to hide them) -- Your message here









Shadowdh -

Personally I feel its quite an important part of learning and getting to know the language... it
also helps that learning a character cement the character into my memory and thus makes it easier
to read later...










xuechengfeng -

Yeah, I know what you're saying, I just get discouraged because I studied so long and hard to
drill a certain character into my brain. Then, I don't use it for a while, and I can't remember
how to write it for the life of me. Quite depressing.










Shadowdh -

I know what you mean... its even worse when you have only just learned a character and then forget
it the next day... DOH...










Long Zhiren -

Do you mean just writing, or reading as well?
In all of my language studies, reading/writing always led the way for speaking/listening. I have
to write and read it before I have much confidence in using it in conversation. I can't settle for
just pinyin either for fear that the homonyms will get me.
Writing lags because I don't write much and forgetting how to write them happens very quickly.
Typing it is much easier! This seems to happen to native Chinese as well.
Reading and character recognition is by far easier and thus my present preferred way to grow my
working Chinese vocabulary.
I'm envious of those who have the talent to learn by just merely listening. However, I'm really
skeptical of how well they can advance their vocabularies. They constantly confuse words if they
can't read or write. There's constant guessing as to which words are which. I believe the
situation is hopeless for them until they start writing/reading.










ange9s -

I'm sure you could learn without reading and writing, I know a lot of ABCs that speak and
comprehend fluently but can't read a whole sentence. I can't remember characters so well unless I
write them, though.










Chinapage -

I know that American people still need it (although I'm guessing increasingly less with
computers), but how useful is it for a foreigner? I'm sure it's helpful to know certain aspects of
it and some of the basics, but is it really that necessary to master many words? When will I ever
be in the situation to write English words, outside of studying in school? Obviously, reading them
is necessary, but writing??










wushijiao -

I think ideally it would be great to learn to write well. As Shadowth said, it can help in the
reading process as well. I suppose in most schools you need to know how to write.

However, I also think there’s a good argument to be made for putting off learning to write (by
hand). I think the argument is fairly simple: all the hours that you spend in the first year in
writing a character over and over again could be better spent in listening speaking and reading.
Chinese has 189 radicals and about 1,800 phonetic components. Getting familiar with most of these
as fast as possible is also beneficial for guessing the meaning of new characters. I also think
it’s good to get a huge amount of hours listening and then speaking under your belt as fast as
possible. Also, you don’t really need to know how to write in order to read. Personally, I was
at the point of not really being able to write, but still being able to read books. In short, some
linguistic theorists think that there is a core groups of words, phrases, and grammar that form
every language, and a beginner should try to learn it ASAP. The more intense the studying is in
the beginning, the better, and, some might say that although the hours spent writing characters
have some intrinsic value, they could be better shifted into other areas so as to better improve
your whole Chinese ability.

Also, I think once you get into the more intermediate stages, in addition to new vocabulary
acquisition, I think a good way to measure your daily performance is comprehensible input per day
(reading and listening that you understand) and quality output (ie. correct speaking) per day.
Basically, the bigger your vocab, the more you will be able to understand. As you understand more,
a wider variety of stuff will go from “too hard” to “comprehensible”. As bomocai’s post
showed, once you can understand the basics of something (ie a soap opera or short story, novel,
newspaper article…etc) then you can learn new vocabulary from it. In other words, at some point
you get caught in a beneficial cycle of learning, but you must first have a big base of practice
(which might take hundreds of hours).

This whole argument hinges on the fact that it is possible to re-learn how to write later on. I
think this is possible. In late February I decided to take the HSK advanced, which includes
writing an essay by hand. I then spent about 1-3 hours per day writing. I then stumbled upon a
book that I really liked “Learning Chinese Characters from Ms. Zhang:
张老师教汉字;汉字识写课本” 张惠芬, 编者. (I’d recommend that book for people
re-learning how to write due to the usefulness of its practice exercises). After that book, I
wrote a bunch of random stuff, trying to do essays by hand. Every time I didn’t know a useful
word or phrase, I’d write it over and over again. To make a long story short, by the end of
April I was able to spit out a handwritten essay that was a long as most other people taking the
test. Granted, it was aesthetically the ugliest piece of crap the HSK people will ever see, and,
in fact, learning how to write well at the beginning so as to write aesthetically well may be a
good enough reason to learn to write from the start. In any case, I was able to do it. So, I think
it is possible to learn to re-learn to write later on, if you choose to do so.

Just my two cents. I’m not insulting people who think writing is best learnt at the start, just
saying it can be a matter of priorities. Also, every learner has a different learning style, so
writing may be appropriate for some people.










gato -

Elementary schools in mainland China now also treat reading and writing differently. Teachers now
recognize that students don't necessarily have to be able to write every character that they are
taught. It's a good idea to get students to learn to READ as many characters as quickly as
possibly so that their reading vocabulary at least match the size of their oral vocabulary. Even
Chinese characters for everyday words like "arms" (胳臂) and "knees" (膝盖)are fairly
complicated to write. When you break through the 2000 character mark, you can move on to much more
interesting reading material.

As I posted in another thread, mainland children are typically required to recognize 1600-1800
characters and write 800-1000 by the end of second grade, recognize 2500 characters and write 2000
by the end of fourth See http://www. /showth...8810#post68810

Here's a vocab list for grades 1-4 for one particular textbook series listed by grade level (about
2700 characters for reading and 2000 for writing):
http://www.ywcbs.com/UpFile/UpLoadFi...%DA1%CC%D7.pdf

Here is a vocab list for grade 1-3 for a series of experimental textbooks (which means that they
are more demanding).
http://www.ywcbs.com/web/more.asp?i=...ss5=0&press6=0
2006年春季双册教材（小学语文S版）生字表










xuechengfeng -



Quote:


Originally Posted by Long Zhiren

Do you mean just writing, or reading as well?
In all of my language studies, reading/writing always led the way for speaking/listening. I have
to write and read it before I have much confidence in using it in conversation. I can't settle for
just pinyin either for fear that the homonyms will get me.
Writing lags because I don't write much and forgetting how to write them happens very quickly.
Typing it is much easier! This seems to happen to native Chinese as well.
Reading and character recognition is by far easier and thus my present preferred way to grow my
working Chinese vocabulary.
I'm envious of those who have the talent to learn by just merely listening. However, I'm really
skeptical of how well they can advance their vocabularies. They constantly confuse words if they
can't read or write. There's constant guessing as to which words are which. I believe the
situation is hopeless for them until they start writing/reading.


I only mean writing. Reading is without a doubt important.



Quote:


Originally Posted by Chinapage

I know that American people still need it (although I'm guessing increasingly less with
computers), but how useful is it for a foreigner? I'm sure it's helpful to know certain aspects of
it and some of the basics, but is it really that necessary to master many words? When will I ever
be in the situation to write English words, outside of studying in school? Obviously, reading them
is necessary, but writing??


I think there's a pretty clear difference between learning how to write out a romanized alphabet
and Chinese characters.












All times are GMT +8. The time now is 06:54 PM.














Learn Chinese, Chinese language, Learning Materials, Mandarin audio lessons, Chinese writing lessons, Chinese vocabulary lists, About chinese characters, News in Chinese, Go to China, Travel to China, Study in China, Teach in China, Dictionaries, Learn Chinese Painting, Your name in Chinese, Chinese calligraphy, Chinese songs, Chinese proverbs, Chinese poetry, Chinese tattoo, Beijing 2008 Olympics, Mandarin Phrasebook, Chinese editor, Pinyin editor, China Travel, Travel to Beijing, Travel to Tibet