Characters
To help students achieve success in the early years of the implementation of this curriculum statement, the number of characters has been kept relatively low.
At each level, a distinction is made between the productive and receptive use of Chinese characters. At level 1, for example, students can be expected to recognise up to 35 characters and write up to 20 from memory. By level 5, they should read approximately 280 characters and write up to 170 from memory. At level 8, they should read up to 600 and write up to 350 Chinese characters.
Pinyin
Teachers whose students readily achieve these suggested targets can encourage their students to increase their knowledge of characters through learning from the environment (for example, restaurant menus or friends' names), and by learning compounds and families of words, or words which have the same radical, and so on. Teachers can prepare materials written entirely in characters for their students, with the Pinyin for all characters which the students do not yet know written above the Chinese characters. This simple technique can dramatically increase the complexity of the material that students can manage.
It is important at every stage that both teachers and students see Pinyin as a tool, one which is useful for learning but which should be set aside whenever possible in favour of the characters.
Memorising characters
If they are to succeed with Chinese characters, students need to practise writing them daily, both at home and in class. They need support in learning the correct stroke order, and they need a classroom environment that is saturated with characters. Students can make labels, in characters and Pinyin, for all common classroom objects. They can be encouraged to make their own sets of flash cards, which include every character they have encountered.
Teachers can help students to remember their Chinese characters in a variety of ways, such as by:
- giving memorable interpretations of the origin or meaning of the characters
- inventing mnemonic devices
- ensuring that students practise writing meaningful phrases and short, complete sentences
- providing tasks of which the ability to read or write the Chinese characters is an integral part.