Chinese characters are difficult to write and boring to learn for overseas students who learn Chinese language in China. To solve this problem, some interesting games are designed to stimulate students’ interest and initiative to study Chinese.

It often happens that students who learn Chinese in China can’t remember the words have learned not long ago. To consolidate and review the words learned before, here is an interesting method to use.

Firstly, draw a square with 25 small squares on two pieces of papers. In the blank, 25 Chinese characters need to be mastered will be written. The characters on the two papers are all the same, but in different order. The first paper will be handed out to the first group of students and the second for group B. Now, start the game to learn Mandarin. Following the order of A B A B, each student says a character on the paper. When the other students hear the character, they should mark this character on the paper. The group firstly finish connecting five characters in line will win.

With this game, teachers can expand the square in accordance with students’ degree of Chinese learning. For the high level students, some characters with the similar pronunciation could be listed for distinguishing.

Another game for students learning Mandarin Chinese is to write the order of strokes of Chinese characters. This game is set to train students to master the rules of writing Chinese characters.

Divide the students into two groups to write Chinese characters on the blackboard alternately. Each student writes one stroke of the character. At Chinese school in China, teachers often demand students write the set phrases.

For example, when write the idiom “朝秦暮楚”, the first student of the first group is supposed to write the first stroke of each character. And then the first student of the second group will write the second stroke of each character and then move on like this.

During the process of playing this game, teachers should correct the mistakes when it happens. To make it equal for everyone to learn Mandarin in China, teachers should choose the phrases that have the near strokes of each character like “望眼欲穿”, “铜墙铁壁”, “深恶痛绝” and so on.

The structures of some Chinese characters are very interesting and fantastic. To train students’ sensitiveness to the Chinese characters, we can teach students how to study Chinese by finding characters from a relatively complicated character.

We know some English words can be decomposed into several words. For example, the word “branch” can be separated into words like brand, bran, bra, ran, an, a. It is also suitable in Chinese characters.

Let’s take some examples to show students how amazing the Chinese characters are. The character “重” can be separated into 26 characters as follows: “一、二、三、口、日、田、十、干、工、土、里、中、王、千、甲、由、申、亘、旦、早、百、圭、山、川、舌、电”. More characters can be listed to show how to learn Mandarin. The character “赢” includes characters like “亡、口、月、贝、凡、员” and “黄” for “一、二、三、十、土、王、口、日、田、八、只、山、干、川”.

In order to improve students’ recognition to Chinese characters’ structures, we can train them by guessing the pronunciation. It you study in China, you may find there are many phonograms in Chinese characters that the pronunciation of the part of a character is similar to that of the whole character.

First of all, teachers write some new words on the blackboard, especially the typical phonograms like “忧、闷、邻、蕃、骑、煎、愁、颈”. Then the Pinyin will be written next to them with the wrong order. Students should find out the matching Pinyin. This is good for students to learn Mandarin Better.

But the words couldn’t be too many. And teachers can point out which characters have the same pronunciation with the phonetic and which similar.

All interesting games played above are helpful for students to remember the forgotten words and consolidate them. Students can practice more with teachers’ help.