Many students interested in learning Chinese ask if there is a way to make learn Chinese other than rote learning.
Rote learning certainly has its own benefits, but learning Chinese through it is hard, not to mention boring. Here are some tips to help you memorize Chinese characters faster.
Develop a sound understanding of how Chinese characters work
This is extremely important. If you don’t understand how Chinese characters work, you are likely to have a hard time learning Chinese. You need a good resource to develop a sound understanding of the way Chinese characters work. This is why, if you are serious about learning Chinese, you should join regular Mandarin classes Singapore. A professional teacher can explain to you the basics as well as the nitty-gritty of the language, paving way for faster and more efficient learning.
Use a mnemonic system
The main principle is that you should create a story-like scene or small mental image using all the things that make up the character, as well as its pronunciation and meaning. By using this method, you can learn two times the number of characters you learn currently in any given time duration.
Sounds too good to be true? Well, this method has helped many students with Chinese, and it can do wonders for you, provided you work as directed.
Remembering stories or images is easier than the strokes and pinyin pronunciation. When you learn symbols and words, you use the semantic memory. We use a different memory called the episodic memory for remembering fantasy events or real-life events. Compared to the semantic memory, the episodic memory is more powerful and stronger. The episodic memory can store a lot more data than the semantic memory, and that too with significantly less effort.
Whenever you write a character, it swiftly moves from the episodic memory into the semantic memory, eventually becoming real knowledge, identical to the characters you have learned by rote learning.
Of course, learning through this new method requires some getting used to, but the effort is worth it because you will get much, much better results. The other thing is that you should learn this new method from a trained professional. It is possible that some regular Chinese might be teaching Chinese this way. You are recommended to a little research before enrolling if you are interested in learning the mnemonic system.
Practice Regularly
This goes without saying. Chinese, as you might already know, is a complex language. Therefore, fluency can be only achieved if you practice regularly. Obviously, the more the effort you will put, the better the results are likely to be.
While the quantity of the practice is important, the quality of practice is no less important. In fact, quality of your practice is more important than quantity. There are many regular language classes and if you really want to learn Chinese in Singapore, you are recommended to join one. Of course, private tuition is another option, but it is extremely costly.