Learning Chinese Characters: (HSK Levels 1-3) A Revolutionary New Way to Learn the 800 Most Basic Chinese Characters; Includes All Characters for the AP & HSK 1-3 Exams

This book is superbly designed and executed. The story method is brilliant, fun and really works and you can use it for characters beyond HSK Level A. The book provided a foundation for me to "hook into" Chinese characters. Without it, I couldn't imagine how I would have gotten started. Characters no longer seem so intimidating and unintelligible. I finished learning all 800 characters in 5 months. I was on a mission and had a blast with this book. My method was to learn on average 5 to 10 a day. But a few weeks I learned as many as 100. After 5 - 7, I found it was important to review them. Review, review, review is the key. I wrote down the character, pinyin, meaning, tone (giant, fairy, teddy, dwarf), then sound word in a reporter notebook and used this for review. After learning 25 or so characters, I'd go back and review the last several pages of my notebook. After 50 characters, I'd go back and review half of what I'd learned. After 100, I'd go back and review them all and sometimes try to write out all the pinyin. I also did all the periodic character reviews the book provides. Now I carry around a copy of the table of contents and review 4 chapters a day like 40, 30, 20, 10, then 39, 29, 19, 9, etc., either saying the pronunciation or writing down the pinyin. I have moved on to other excellent learning sources: Tuttle Reading and Writing Chinese (simplified edition) for characters in the A, B, and C lists; Schaum's Chinese Grammar; Tuttle Chinese-English Dictionary; Berlitz 1000 Mandarin Words; Behind the Wheel Mandarin 1 audio program; and [...]. I have found that knowing how to write characters is very different than knowing how to read then. This takes much practice. Also, it is critical to hear the correct pronunciation of the pinyin. I still reference this book all the time to look at how they breakdown character parts (and the names they give them) and for guidance on writing characters. I'm using the story method for B, C, and D list characters in Reading and Writing Chinese. The limitations the book may have, such as providing mostly one word or phrase definitions and how the sound words are not exact, are really strengths because the authors keep it simple and encourage learning. Some people seem to think the story method is too difficult. Here's how the story method worked for me. I first tried to learn the exact story, taking a minute to get a mental impression of it. At first I would look at the characters and it would take some time to run through the story and get the meaning and pronunciation. But eventually it goes much faster and I would just say the components, tone and sound word such as for companion (peng2): moon + moon, companion, fairy, puncture and just see a vague mental image of all this. Now I look at this character and immediately just know the meaning and pronunciation. Sometimes the stories became something different in my mind from how they were originally written, but if I could look at the character and know the meaning and pronunciation, that's all I figured that mattered. The story method is only a bridge to learning to see the character and instantly know the pronunciation. Once you know that the character for one (yi1) means one and is pronounced yi1, you don't need the story. But if you forget a character, then it is good to have the story to review. I couldn't imagine just using wrote memorization to learn characters, that would have been way to boring for me. This method was a blast and I learned a lot of characters fast.

Like another reviewer, I started out with James Heisig's "Remembering the Kanji". This book in and of itself was revolutionary. It taught characters in an evolving method, focusing on creating a story in your mind to help remember the characters. This approach was great, and I learned about 500 characters in that method. However, I began to realize that I wanted to learn Chinese instead of Japanese (the characters are fundamentally the same), and I also began to realize most of the characters in the first half of Heisig's book were not the most common characters - some were quite obscure - and may not even have the exact meaning of the keyword put forth. I commend James Heisig for pioneering that incredible method, but refinement was needed. Then I found this gem. "Learning Chinese Characters" combines everything you need to know to remember and pronounce the most common Chinese characters. It uses a combination of pictographic representations and plot nmemonics. It does cover pronunciation and tone fully, including them in the story. A basic character that cannot be dissected into any more parts is shown with a pictograph, simply so you can remember how character looks, which usually has something to do with the meaning (for example, the character for "eight" has an octopus drawn over it). More complex characters that are composed of other characters - the majority - are not represented by pictures, but instead by mnemonic stories, contrived using the elements that make up the character as actors (for example, an OCTOPUS ("eight") cutting a pizza with a KNIFE is the story for "division", which is composed of the elements for "eight" and "knife"). Pictures do indeed accompany these characters, but only to help you visualize the *story* (maybe it would show the octopus with a pizza cutter and a chef's hat). Most characters also include a secondary, related story to help you remember the pronunciation. In the end, you will know the pronunciation (including tone), the writing, and the meaning of every character in HSK A. I realize this might be confusing for someone that doesn't understand the Chinese writing system. If that is you, let me just say this: "it's easy!" Every character in HSK A is included, and even some other characters are included in a limited fashion in order to explain compounds including them. Most characters have: * A listing of the equation of elements (ie "eight+knife=division"), complete with cross-references to elements used and the page number on which they are more fully described. * A list of some words using this character. * A story to cement the meaning and pronunciation of the character in your mind. * A stroke-by-stroke guide. * Comments on the usage of the character. * The corresponding Traditional Chinese character (if the given character is Simplified) - the book is optimized for Simplified, but the Traditional character is always there if you'd like to learn them too. If you don't know what Simplified/Traditional is, you probably want to choose to study the Simplified characters (they are more common)... check out Wikipedia. * The radical of the character, which is commonly used for dictionary lookup. In my opinion, this method is best paired with using the Leitner system of flashcards (a quick Googling will find what I mean), so you can be sure you do really remember the characters. Simply, this is bar-none the best way to learn Chinese characters as a foreign adult - as long as you *concentrate on the story!* Don't just read without thinking. Everything you need to know about every character in the book is right there on the page, but you must concentrate. Etymology, the history of each character, might be a good tool to remember characters once you learn a lot of them, but this is by far the easiest, most painless way to learn the characters and *remember* them. One thing, however; it won't teach you grammar. You need to find another course to learn how to assemble characters into meaningful patterns. This book just teaches you how to write and remember those individual characters. On another note, I was in contact with the publisher and saw that they are not planning to publish a Volume 2 of this great book. This is sad news. This is a great format, and if you like it, I'd recommend emailing the publisher to let them know we want to see more like this!

This book can help you on your way to learning Mandarin. If you work at it, you will be able to read and write the Chinese characters (hanzi) using this book. It's important to keep in mind that this book is not a complete recipe for learning the language but only a small part. For instance, millions of illiterate people can communicate effectively only by spoken word and yet reading/writing these characters remain beyond their ability. What I found most useful: * Provides a useful learning set and ordering of the thousands of characters in the language. * Helpful for identifying the various parts that make up some characters. Stroke orders are accurate and a must for learning to write the characters correctly * Pinyin text is accurate and helps you learn to pronounce the characters. Some of the characters have English 'sound words' to help you with the approximate pronunciation. Learning to speak pinyin correctly is a problem with all materials. * All HSK Level A characters are in one place. I am using this book as part of my study of learning Mandarin but here are some things I found to keep in mind or that are are not so helpful: * Doesn't teach grammar at all. This is to be expected as it is character-based and not sentence-based. If you only want to learn to recognize, understand basic meanings, pronounce and write Hanzi characters, this book will help you do that. If you want to become more fluent in conversing in Mandarin Chinese and reading and writing complete sentences then you'll have to go elsewhere. * Some of the character 'meanings' offered seem arbitrary and chosen to fit the 'story' as compared to the more common meanings found in other resources (books, official HSK A list, internet...) * Sound-words don't always help with the pinyin. A lot of the characters are DIY pronunciation anyway (have no sound words) and so offer no help at all. Perhaps it's just differences with dialects/regions, but the sound words chosen do not sound like real-world speakers. Having an audio companion to this book would be very helpful. * In my opinion, the character stories are of little value for recognition. With enough repetition, you will eventually recognize the character instantly (pinyin + meaning(s)) vs. remembering the 'story' can take a long time and clutter your mind with useless trivia. * Helps with speaking but listening is the other skill needed for communicating orally and that is not addressed - other than listening to yourself. * The HSK Level A words are not all single characters but most are 2 and some 3 and 4 characters. This books does not make it easy to learn these compound words. All the compound words are in there but it's not the most effective layout for learning them. * Using the book in 'flash-card' manner for learning new characters and testing yourself is difficult since you have to cover up various parts of the page. I have supplemented by using flash cards (purchased sets and missing ones printed on business cards).

To start off, this is a must have book for anyone interested in learning how to write the characters in Chinese. Growing up in a mandarin speaking household and neighborhood, I can speak Mandarin fluently, but I never really learned how to read and write well. I bought this book intended to learn how to write the characters and I can tell you this is a great book to learn the writing system from. This book gives you all the basic characters in the beginning, and as you go through it, it teaches you how to combine many of the basic characters to form more complex words. The words are all organized and contain phrases that use each word as well the number of strokes and the right way to write it. Each character also contains a short story that is used to remember how to write the character, and how to pronounce it. The only big flaw is that this book is not the best source when learning the PRONUNCIATION. I highly recommend, anyone who is buying this book, to first LEARN HOW TO READ THE PINYIN/Chinese alphabet and also to use a translator that can speak the words back to you. This book does a good job when it comes to learning pronunciation through just using words on a book, but to truly master and feel confident about the pronunciation, you have to hear what is being said to you. There are times in the later parts of this book where you follow their pronunciation rule, and try to pronounce a character, but feel unsure if it's right or not. That is when a CD and strong knowledge on Pinyin(the Chinese Alphabet) becomes VERY useful. PROS 1. Very organized and structured book. 2. Great for those who are learning how to read and write the characters. 3. Very detailed and provides you with all the information and tricks to help you learn to write. 4. The table of contents and back of the book helps you find words easily. Cons 1. This book does not stress grammar, "learn Chinese character book" not grammar so keep that in mind. 2. NOT the best source of learning pronunciation. Recommended with this book 1. Knowledge on pinyin and how to pronounce the Chinese alphabet. 2. Using a translator that can say words back to you. 3. A Chinese speaking friend or partner. Bottom line 1. Use this book to learn to read and write but don't use it alone, use it with other resources and something that can help you hear the spoken words.

When I first started reading the book, I thought the stories were downright stupid and added unnecessary bulk to learning hanzi. After all, why add remembering a whole story when you're usually looking for a single defining word? But then, I started seeing characters and having, for example, an image of a dwarf pointing out a German tour bus, and all of a sudden, I remembered the definition, pronunciation and tone. "Whoa," I thought, "this stuff works." I'm only 126 characters into the book, but I setup flashcards using Mnemosyne on my computer, and I'm amazed at my retention. My Chinese girlfriend is equally impressed, because the vast majority of "laowai" simply don't read hanzi. Sure, most characters go through the scenario visualization before I get it right, but I've already noticed several characters now skipping the story altogether to instantly produce the correct pronunciation, tone and definition. Now, let me just say I'm linguistically-challenged. Foreign languages and I just don't get along. I cannot confidently compose a single Chinese sentence, but darn it, I can read 126 characters, and that's helped me immeasurably now that I live in China. Obviously, this is a supplemental resource to the language. You're not going to learn how to speak or understand the language using just this book, but it will help you learn the characters and pick up some vocabulary. There is a learning curve to the book. If you pick it up and start straight into the characters, you'll get lost and wonder why they keep mentioning certain characters and wheels in the stories. Be sure to read the introductory User Guide and thoroughly digest it. Although the learning curve and stories may seem like an unnecessary waste of time, it's like taking the time to sharpen your axe to improve productivity when chopping wood (my physics professor would be proud that I used his pre-spring-break analogy).

Learning Chinese characters is notoriously hard for westerners and, I believe, the hardest aspect of learning Chinese. This book is one of the few that allowed me to make any consistent progress at all. It has a logical progression through the basic (HSK-A) collection and useful discussions. Also the Tuttle publishing company is very good with script and making characters just the right size to read them. They have an especially well typeset key to each character giving the stroke sequence as well. I would add that I am not so impressed that this book makes learning easy (it is hard no matter how you do it), but that most books of this type are poorly organized and poorly typeset. The process is not easy, but this book is a must have for a beginning westerner. A particular strength of this book is extensive cross referencing (between parts of characters) and the authors' system of story lines as memory aids. For each HSK character they have a story with characters representing tones and story elements referring to constituent characters. This is clever and doubtless required a tremendous amount of work by the authors. I don't find that part of the instruction particularly helpful. My approach has been to accumulate vocabulary through purely verbal practice and then acquire characters in groups when the words have some meaning to me. So the stories seem just an added burden to learn. But the are a clever and consistent framework for memorizing 800 characters. I hope some readers find this useful.

"...When she was good, she was very, very good, and when she was bad, she was horrid". This book is difficult to rate. It is excellent in some areas and terrible in orders: Since I have used and continue to use it to master Chinese characters I think its pros outweigh its cons: PROS: 1. The book is peerless in the economy with which it captures how to write the characters. Stroke order, radical, and the characters that combine to make up a single character are depicted compactly but completely in rectangular boxes. Writing the characters mentally and on paper is immensely helpful for recall. In addition, where a character is formed through a combination of other characters, the number for each "base" character is provided inline, so you can flip back to review that character (I had hoped that the kindle version would make each number a link to the description of the character. Ah well, perhaps in the next kindle edition of the book). Also words, short phrases, and sentences are provided for most new characters and include only characters covered to that point. Again a very helpful learning device. 2. The attempt to write the characters INTO images which I originally thought ludicrous is actually moderately helpful for instant recall of the character and its meaning. Every few chapters you get a dashboard of the percentage of characters you can recognize in print given the number of characters learnt up to that point. Its quite a motivator. 3. The book has a very comprehensive index that covers sounds and pronunciation, meaning, and a faster finder that classifies characters by "radical" and by character structure (radical on the left, right, top, bottom). CONS 1. The idea of learning the pronunciation of a word by tying the tone for that word to an image creates an additional, and unnecessary step which not only imposes a large computational burden mentally, but is completely useless in understanding the word when it is spoken. You learn the tone for a character by HEARING it spoken not by associating it with a giant, fairy, teddy or dwarf. For example if I heard "ma" I would have to recognized that it is said with the 3rd tone, and THEN associate that with a teddy bear (the image) and then translate that to mean horse ... all during running speech. To read a word in mandarin -- usually made up of multiple characters, I would have to cycle through multiple images and to read a sentence, I would need a running movie of giants, fairies, teddy bears, and dwarves. Readers should completely sidestep this supposed audiovisual aid to learning character sounds. 2. The stories associated with the meaning of each character might appear to ease the effort required to learn characters, but turn out to be damaging. The purpose of learning characters is to be able to read. Recognition of the character must therefore be instant. To call up a story in order to recognize a character becomes a major barrier to reading or even literacy! How many days in the month of June? Some people have to run through the limerick "Thirty days hath September, April, June and November..." It is impractical to use such a method for learning mandarin characters which -- like learning the 26 letters of the English alphabet -- is not an end in itself but is meant to enable you to read. The Chinese with over 5,000 years of civilization, settled on brute memorization, endless written repetition, to learn characters, and eventually turned to simplification of the characters themselves -- not mnemonics or stories -- to ease learning. Despite its flaws -- which are substantive - this book is still one of the better texts on the market for learning simplified mandarin characters.

The authors and their "helpers" created lessons to make learning Chinese Characters a snap. They use the knowledge of learning strategies and memory games that help to remember the Characters. I took online Chinese lessons through an Australian University about 14 yrs ago and after 1 1/2 years,still could not remember the characters since I had to go at such a fast pace. I just gave up. This book lets you go at your own pace, but at the same time you are gaining confidence and pleasure from what you're learning. At least I sure did. I did start a notebook with a page for each lesson. I would practice the vocabulary by covering up the definition and visa-versa. . You get the idea. We've all done it. The only additional suggestion I would give is to make your own flash cards starting with Chp. 1. I didn't and was having so much fun learning the characters so fast that I kept on flying through the Chapters - until Chp 5 when I couldn't remember the pinyin. So I started over with flashcards. Characters on the front, pinyin on the back with the clue word at the bottom. For me, Characters were easy to remember due to the way the Matthews taught the material, but pinyin was harder although the clue words given were sure a help. One warning! Others have mentioned the binding. They're right. By Chpt 2, the binding was loose. I solved that problem by using 3M Scotch Super Strength Clear Packaging Tape. I taped the outside of the book and the Content pages. The back section of the book will need it too over time. The publisher did a very sloppy job on a book that took years to create. Tuttle did not do this book justice. To those who want a second edition to learn more, I hope you went back and learned all the Compound Chinese words that the Matthews' gave us. I'm finishing the 800 Characters first, then going back. I project I'll have a vocabulary of no less than 1600 - 2400 Chinese words when I'm all finished. I truly am grateful for this book.