Chinese Resources

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

For now or Forever?

Before your next 聽寫 ask yourself, do I want to learn these characters for now or forever?

If you just want to get a good grade on the next day's quiz than by all means copying characters over and over again. It doesn't take much time and you'll probably get an A. 

However, if you want to learn them forever this isn't going to work.  Instead: deconstruct characters, make up mnemonics, don't overload on information, and review old material often. It takes A LOT more time, but you'll remember things for much longer.

Researchers know it. Teachers (generally) ignore it. And students get to make the choice. So, what will it be? 

For now or forever?

2 comments:

  1. This is so important that I should write something about it to. Since I already have, I need to find a new angle, though. :) As I said when we talked about this the other day, it should be the teachers responsibility, but as you say, most teachers either ignore it or haven't realised what the problem is. Since they were always tested in a certain way (which doesn't require long-term investments), most teachers just keep on testing their students in the same way. It shouldn't be up to students, but unfortunately it is in a huge majority of cases.

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  2. I invest 2-3 hours per day, you have reason, my teacher don't care about it, so I do have to study the lesson of the week and memorize the new words, so I must find time to deconstruct characters and analyze them by radicals, yes, I want to learn chinese as deep as I can, thanks!

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