Strategies of Learning Chinese Character

Dear students:

This is a strategy inventory designed to understand how you learn Chinese characters. Please tick what describes you best among the answers, not what you think you should be, or what other people do. It will take you about 10 minutes to answer every question. Many thanks.
Name: 


  1. Your major is:


  1. What is your mother tongue?


  1. What are the other languages that you have learned, other than Mandarin Chinese?


  1. I listen carefully to the pronunciation and tone of the character and associate them with pinyin.
     
      1 2 3 4 5  
    Never true of me  Always true of me


  1. I try to repeat the character several times aloud or silently to myself in order to remember its pronunciation, shape and meaning.
     
      1 2 3 4 5  
    Never true of me  Always true of me


  1. I try to use the character in a sentence orally.
     
      1 2 3 4 5  
    Never true of me  Always true of me


  1. I try to associate the sound of the character with its shape and meaning.
     
      1 2 3 4 5  
    Never true of me  Always true of me


  1. I feel that I remember the character better if I know how to pronounce it first.
     
      1 2 3 4 5  
    Never true of me  Always true of me


  1. I look carefully at the stroke order in writing a charater, and try to visualize it.
     
      1 2 3 4 5  
    Never true of me  Always true of me


  1. I find it more useful to demonstrate stroke orders by computer animation than manually.
     
      1 2 3 4 5  
    Never true of me  Always true of me


  1. I do not find useful the demonstration of a stroke order in any way to remember the character.
     
      1 2 3 4 5  
    Never true of me  Always true of me


  1. I listen carefully to the explanation of how the sound or meaning of the character is derived.
     
      1 2 3 4 5  
    Never true of me  Always true of me


  1. I try to recognize the radicals (components) that I have already learned.
     
      1 2 3 4 5  
    Never true of me  Always true of me


  1. I observe what radicals are in a character and try to make sense of why certain phonetic and/or semantic (meaning) components are there.
     
      1 2 3 4 5  
    Never true of me  Always true of me


  1. I try to make a story of the radicals/components in a character.
     
      1 2 3 4 5  
    Never true of me  Always true of me


  1. I associate the new character with previously learned radicals to find connections among sound, shape and meaning.
     
      1 2 3 4 5  
    Never true of me  Always true of me


  1. I usually say the character (or word) to myself as I write it repeatedly.
     
      1 2 3 4 5  
    Never true of me  Always true of me


  1. I say the character (or word) over and over again to myself, trying to picture what the character looks like in my mind.
     
      1 2 3 4 5  
    Never true of me  Always true of me


  1. I write the character many times in the air, visualising it in my mind.
     
      1 2 3 4 5  
    Never true of me  Always true of me


  1. I write a character many times, covering the one previously done to avoid the pure copying.
     
      1 2 3 4 5  
    Never true of me  Always true of me


  1. I use my imagination to associate a character with a picture/image, as if each character is a picture.
     
      1 2 3 4 5  
    Never true of me  Always true of me


  1. I group the characters/words with similar shapes/appearances, similar sound, or similar meaning.
     
      1 2 3 4 5  
    Never true of me  Always true of me


  1. I classify characters/words into different categories according to their shared radicals.
     
      1 2 3 4 5  
    Never true of me  Always true of me


  1. I make my own flashcards and flip through them many times to familirize myself with sound, shape and meaning, then I write down many times of those I don't remember.
     
      1 2 3 4 5  
    Never true of me  Always true of me


  1. I discuss with other students the methods of memorizing characters.
     
      1 2 3 4 5  
    Never true of me  Always true of me


  1. I memorize the characters (or words), then have someone (friends, language partner, etc.) quiz me.
     
      1 2 3 4 5  
    Never true of me  Always true of me


  1. I quiz myself during the memorization; for example, given the sound, I try to think of the character's shape and meaning.
     
      1 2 3 4 5  
    Never true of me  Always true of me


  1. I memorize the shape of the character first, then the pronunciation.
     
      1 2 3 4 5  
    Never true of me  Always true of me


  1. I make sentences or phrases with the new characters, and/or write the sentences down.
     
      1 2 3 4 5  
    Never true of me  Always true of me


  1. I find the teacher's worksheets about characters more useful than the workbook exercises.
     
      1 2 3 4 5  
    Never true of me  Always true of me


  1. I convert the character (or words) to my native language and find an equivalent in meaning.
     
      1 2 3 4 5  
    Never true of me  Always true of me


  1. I ask others (e.g. teacher, classmates, language partner, friend) and remember better, when I don't know what a character or word means and/or how to pronounce it.
     
      1 2 3 4 5  
    Never true of me  Always true of me


  1. I look in the textbook or dictionary to check a character's (or word's) meaning or pronunciation when I am not sure of them.
     
      1 2 3 4 5  
    Never true of me  Always true of me


  1. I plan my time to preview the new characters before learning the lesson in class.
     
      1 2 3 4 5  
    Never true of me  Always true of me


  1. I plan my time to review the characters/words regularly.
     
      1 2 3 4 5  
    Never true of me  Always true of me


  1. I review characters only before exams.
     
      1 2 3 4 5  
    Never true of me  Always true of me


  1. Do you use additional materials other than the textbook to learn or review characters? If so, what are they, and how do you use them?


  1. What is the most interesting way of learning Chinese characters in this year's study? How useful is it?


  1. What are the ways that you use in learning Chinese characters, but not mentioned in this survey?





Zhiyan
Senior Tutor of Chinese
Language Centre, The University of Warwick