TEACH CHINESE CHARACTERS FOR YOUNG LEARNERS

Learning Chinese characters could be very challenging for non native Chinese. I was born as Indonesian and I experienced how hard it was writing Chinese characters. It took many hours to practice the stroke order and another hour to memorize them.

Based on my teaching experience, I know that we can start to write once we can recognize the character itself, because every Chinese character is a piece of art by itself. It means, most of the character is made up of building blocks of pictographs or symbols, which can be visualized. The more exposure we got to Chinese characters the more easy for us to memorize them.

Here, I share some tips to teach Chinese characters for young learners:

1. Choose simple and easy Chinese characters from vocabulary list to teach to your students. There are no necessary forcing students to memorize everything from the list.

 2. Use picture or image to introduce the meaning of a character. You  can browse “Pinterest” to get more ideas.

3. Put the characters as classroom displays. You can ask students to create flash cards or posters. By doing this way student can have ownership with their learning and your classroom will look interactive.

4. Build classroom’s library where you can display many Chinese books and set activities in this corner. These books will be fantastic resources to help expand your student's vocabulary as well.

5. Show and teach the writing order. I usually use a website “www.bishunwang.com” to help my students visualize the stroke order.

6. Independent practice. Once they know the correct order directly ask students to copy and practice 1 to 2 lines. Move around and check their writing.

7. Repetition. Next day show the character, revise the meaning and ask a volunteer to write stroke order. Then, challenge students to think how they can use that character in form of sentence. By doing this way, they also practice their speaking skills.

8. Be creative in practicing Chinese characters. Prepare many tools/media in the classroom for students to practice their characters as this will sustain your student's interest. You may prepare play dough, brush and ink, magnetic sand or even puzzle.

9. Create classroom games. Everyone loves game and this activity can help students to retain their memory of Chinese characters.

•     Recognizing characters game: Prepare flash cards with Chinese characters only and divide students into some groups. Distribute the cards and ask them to spread them out on the table. The only rule is no one touches the cards. Teacher calls a word and they have to race to touch the correct card first. Those who win can keep it.
•     Writing stroke order game: Students sit in groups on the carpet. Prepare one small white board and one marker for each of groups. Show the Chinese character and then they have to take turn to write the correct order. Those who finish first show the white board to the teacher.

10. Involve parents in student’s learning. Build good communication way with parents because learning Chinese characters needs a lot of practices. Only rely on school time definitely not enough. Update your lesson regularly and ask their help to remind and encourage their kids to practice at home.

11. Create assessment task that allow students use Chinese characters. Even if you have a unit which focus more on speaking we still can incorporate Chinese characters into their assignment. Example:

Thematic unit: “Going to a doctor”

Assessment task: present a role play between doctor and patient

Criteria of assessment: 1. Use comprehensive vocabulary and correct sentence structure in writing the script. (This part you can ask students to write it in Chinese characters) 2. Pronounce words correctly 3. Speak fluently 4. Show appropriate gesture and eye contact.