Teaching Chinese Characters

This review chapter looks at how Chinese characters have developed and how they are learnt and taught from various perspectives. It opens with the section Learning about Characters discussing the cultural elements of Chinese characters including The character learning triangle , Replacing characters with a Romanized script? , Pronouncing characters , Number of characters , and Etymology . This chapter then focuses on practices and strategies for character learning under four categories: the Traditional Way , the Modern Way , the Creative Way , and the Self-Directed Way . The Traditional Way is also called the ‘pen-and-paper’ approach involving the development of muscle memory ; the Modern Way looks at how technology assists character learning; the Creative Way introduces kinesthetic methods used in learning Chinese characters; and the Self-Directed Way examines the importance of metacognitive strategies when it comes to routinely learning a substantial amount of characters. This chapter ends with the section Teaching Characters , which offers pedagogical choices drawn from research evidence that CFL teachers from different backgrounds and with different needs may find useful.