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Memorizing Chinese Characters by Explain Them in Humorous Ways

Many students of Chinese learning program have great problem in memorizing Chinese characters. In order to help the overseas students to memorize Chinese characters firmly, our teachers have made lots of efforts.

One teacher who is teaching summer program in China stretched her arms and legs and asked students what the character was. Students said, “it is ‘大’.” Teacher then wrote a “雨” down on the blackboard and told students to imagine this character as two windows and each of them had two spots which were the rain dropped on the windows.

Teacher wrote down “早” on the blackboard and asked students who study Mandarin Chinese why it represented “early”. It can be explained like this: the upper half is “日” which means sun in English; the lower half is “十” which can be imagined as the cross on the top of church; sun is above the cross which represents morning and people have time to go to church.

Teacher introduced to students how to learn Mandarin Chinese character “画”: imagine the “田” in the center of the character is a picture which is decorated by a frame.

When memorizing the character “看”, teacher told students who study in China to imagine like this: the upper half is 手(hand); the lower half is 目(eye); people use hand to block strong sunlight in order to see or watch clearly. During the introduction, the teacher did as she said to let students have deeper impression.

Western students who study Chinese were afraid of memorizing Chinese characters, for Chinese characters are far more different from the alphabetic writing in western country. They have never had contact with character patterns so that the combination of image, sound and meaning of Chinese characters will be more difficult for them. As for this problem, teachers should take some irregular teaching approaches to help them remember some basic Chinese characters by explaining even with the ridiculous and humorous ways.

Then the teacher wrote down “今”, “左”,“右”,“杯”,“说”,“买”,“宿”on the blackboard and asked students who are taking part in the HSK Preparation Program in China how to explain one by one and how to memorize these characters easily.

The pinyin of the character“今”is jīn; the lower half of it looks like the letter “j”. The pinyin of the character“左”is zuǒ and the lower half of it “工”looks like the letter “z”. The lower half of “右”is“口”and people use mouth to eat. The radical of“杯”is“木”; Is cup made of wood? No! the “不”on the right side is telling us that it is not made of wood. After one group of students who study Chinese characters said their ways of memorizing these characters, the other group also had a wonderful presentation. 
The radical on the left side of“说”is“讠”which means speaking; the right part “兑”can be imagined as a television with wires on the top half and stand on the lower half. The lower half of“买”is “头”(head) and the upper half is like a hat wearing on the head——you can just remember the phrase买帽子. The upper half “宀” of “宿”represents house and the lower half has a hundred(百) people(亻); it must be a 宿舍,for so many people are living together in the house.

Teachers should increase their interest in learning Chinese characters and make overseas students never fear to learn Chinese characters.

For many Chinese characters, as long as teacher and students work together to think of good ways, the analysis and explanations which are easily to be accepted by western students who learn Chinese in China. This kind of teaching approaches is warmly welcomed by students, especially the students who came from western countries.

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