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Do You need to learn Chinese Characters?

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One of the most asked questions from our students is “Do you need to learn Chinese Characters? “

Well, the short answer is Yes & No.

Yes, if you want to learn the Chinese language as a language skill. Same as all other languages, Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing are the four core skills you need to master; but different from phonetic writing, Chinese characters originated from pictures (Hieroglyphic Writing) and still continue this system. For most phonetic writing background learners, it is not easy to learn Chinese characters.

No, if you only want to learn the Chinese language have a trip to China or chat with Chinese friends. You still can enjoy the Chinese language even if you can’t read and write Chinese characters.

To learn any language, you need to follow these four steps:

  1. Listening: Listen first. Like a baby learning to speak, you listen and mimick, even though you don’t understand.
  2. Speaking: Speak as much as you can. Don’t worry about mistakes, but you need a good teacher to help you correct your pronunciation and grammar at an early stage. Otherwise, you may grow up with strange accents and wrong grammar habits.
  3. Reading: A language is a communication tool. If you can speak Chinese, you can communicate with Chinese people and have fun. Also, with the help of the Pinyin system, you can read and write Pinyin if you cannot read and write Chinese characters. Though Pinyin cannot replace Chinese characters, it can assist with your listening and speaking. Reading Chinese characters is the next level.
  4. Writing: Writing is still a basic language skill, but more and more Chinese people type now instead of writing. Chinese characters are hard for handwriting but easier to type. Since Chinese characters originated from pictures, they are easier to read. The first 100 – 150 characters are hard to read, but as soon as you can read 150 characters, you can grow your Chinese vocabulary very quickly. You can type Pinyin and choose the Chinese characters. Even better, the smart input system nowadays can pick the correct Chinese characters based on the sentence you type.

If your answer is “Yes” and want to learn Chinese characters, our “Chinese Class for Professionals – HSK” is for you. The best result for this class is you can get a globally recognised Chinese Language Proficiency Test Certificate after you finish the class and pass the official exam. You can find the 2022 Brisbane HSK Exam Dates in Brisbane at UQ.

If your answer is “No”, our “Talk Mandarin Chinese Class” is for you. You will only learn Pinyin in this class so you can focus on TALKING. This class is perfect for people who only want to learn Mandarin Chinese for fun.

In HSK (Chinese Language Proficiency Test) standard course, you will learn Chinese step by step. You will learn Pinyin (a phonetic system to read Chinese characters) first and read Chinese characters with Pinyin on the top in HSK1 and HSK2. You are only required to read Chinese characters without Pinyin from HSK3. Chinese characters are hard to learn, but if you follow the steps, you can learn well. Walk first before your run.

For people who want to learn Chinese characters, we will post another blog “How to learn Chinese characters“ later.

You can also check our weekly Chinese character post on Facebook.

The best way to learn Chinese characters is to practise. We created Chinese character worksheets to you help you. You can buy an HSK Chinese Character worksheet for you or a YCT Chinese Character worksheet for your child.

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