In order to help students who learn Chinese in China to learn Chinese characters, we will study some teaching techniques that are frequently used in Chinese learning courses.
To train students’ capability of observing the characters’ structures and the ability to memorize and write Chinese characters, we can learn Mandarin by racing to remember and write characters.
In the following parts, we will see how to study Chinese by this way. Firstly, teacher writes a Chinese character on each page of two note papers. The characters should be written big enough for students to see. Then, fix the papers on the flip board, positioning it next to the blackboard to make all the class to see.
Before starting the game, students should be divided into two groups. Then, each team sends one student to turn the papers to a new page. Write down the characters on the blackboard after memorizing the characters with the shortest time. To encourage students’ to study Chinese initiatively, the team writes the most characters in limited time will win the game and prize.
For this game, the characters can be some new words because the purpose of it is to train the ability of memorizing characters. If some characters with similar structure are listed before and after, it will be challenging. To elevate the degree of difficulty, more than two words can be written on the same page fo rlearning Mandarin Chinese efficiently.
For the purpose of consolidating the words learned and enrich the teaching contents by using the words learned outside class into the class. Almost any Chinese school in China use the way of making new words to teach Chinese.
Teacher writes down one learned character that productive in word-formation on the blackboard. Draw some lines for writing characters which can form words with the given one. Here is an example to help students who study in China to understand. After writing the character “打” on the blackboard, teacher can cross some lines around the character for making words with the given ones like “水”, “人”, “架”, “柴” and “油”.
Teacher can ask one student to the blackboard to make new words and another student to supplement some other possible answers. Or students can practice on the exercise book and students make the most words will win the prize. This practice can be done by all levels of students. The more characters they learned, the more words they can make. Being applied to the qualified Mandarin program, it is also helpful for students to master the words that have many meanings.
To train students’ ability to find the connection of meaning among different characters by observing the character patterns, we can help students learn Chinese language in China by building the character network to understand the meanings of characters.
Teacher can writes down “立”, “生”, “阝” and “月” on the top, bottom, lift and right respectively with the blank in the middle. Then, students are encouraged to find a proper character to fill in the middle to form different characters with those on four sides. One possible answer is “日” to form “音”, “星”, “阳” and “明” respectively. What‘s more, teacher also can ask students to figure out all possible characters including the character “日” to enlarge the vocabulary
The most effective way to help students in Chinese language learning is to learn Mandarin in China with great interest. So we can teach by filling blanks with regularity, which is helpful for students to comprehend the Chinese character structures.
Teacher can write down four groups of regular characters with one blank for filling. For instance, “但 旦（1）俄”, “左 工 受（2）”, “（3）知 立 音” and “男（4）大 奋”. According to certain regularity, students are supposed to fill the four blanks. If students can find the regularity that the first character “minus” the second one and “plus” the third one is the last character, they will find the answer “我”, “爱”, “智” and “力” in each blank.
More than eighty percent of Chinese characters are phonograms, which composed of meaning elements and sound elements. For example, “湖” is made up of meaning element “氵” and the sound element “胡”. Therefore, as long as students can master the formation of phonograms, they will know how to learn Mandarin. There are six types of phonograms totally:
① Left form right sound: “城”
② Right form left sound: “功”
③ Up form down sound: “花”
④ Down form up sound: “梨”
⑤ Inside form outside sound: “闷”
⑥ Outside form inside sound: “围”.
After knowing this, students can consolidate by classifying the following characters: “情、战、雾、闻、描、盒、府、宇、期、松、效、园、珠、简”.
After mastering the learning methods mentioned above, students can learn Chinese very efficiently.