If you look up certain Chinese characters in the dictionary, you may often make use of the Chinese Pinyin of eth characters to find them in the dictionaries. However, if you do not know the pronunciation of the characters, you need to search the characters you want according to the radicals of the characters. The radical character searching method is the method to search the characters according to the components of them. In Chinese dictionary, the characters with the same elements are put together as a part. And the element that the characters all have is called the radical. When searching characters, you can find those you want with the help of the radicals.

The radical character searching method was originally established in the book Shuo Wen Jie Zi written by Xu Shen. After that, it was applied in many Chinese dictionaries. At present, even though many dictionaries use the method of searching characters in accordance with the Chinese Pinyin, it is difficult for the foreigners who learn Chinese language to find out the characters that they do not know the articulation in the dictionary. Therefore, the radical index is attached in the dictionaries, making it an important part in sequencing of Chinese characters in dictionaries.

It is really important for every foreign student who attends to Mandarin language courses in China to know how to look up characters in Chinese dictionaries. First of all, you need to find the radical index which is in the front pages of a dictionary whether it is the dictionary arranged according to Pinyin or radicals. It is composed of two parts, the radical directory and index of Chinese characters. The second step is to find the radical of the character you want to search in the radical directory, which is arranged according the number of the strokes.

Of course, you need to make sure the radical of the character before you check it out. And you should count the number of the strokes of the radical. In the third step, you need to find the radical of the character you want in the index of Chinese characters. You can find any one radical in the index. The last step is to find the characters in the index. The numbers after those characters are the pages of the characters in the dictionary. Then you can find the characters with pronunciation and explanation by following the pages.