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How to Write a Chinese Article?

For those Chinese learners, writing is a hard work for them because they have to think in Chinese manner and pay much attention to the grammatical rule of Chinese language. The grammar of Chinese language contains a wealth of contents that Chinese learners may make mistakes. As a result, writing is a big problem to them. As to writing, here are some tips from those Chinese learners.
1. Writing has nothing to do with examinations. Chinese beginner should not treat writing as a kind of text project and write only when teachers require or when you take an examination. Remember that NO frequent and effective practice, then No good articles. If a Chinese learner wants to write a great article, then he must start from scratch. He can begin from writing a short diary which records all the happenings in his daily life. At the very start, writing down all the things in an order of time is probably much easier for him. He can write that “我今天很早就起床了,吃完早饭后我和好朋友去看电影了,直到晚上九点了才回家••••••”(I got up early this morning and went to see a movie with my best friend. And I didn’t come home until nine o’clock in the evening……) After continued practice, he will get some idea of how to write and have a strong feeling that I should add more details into my article. Then he can begin to write like this:“我今天看了一篇关于中国古代朝代更替的文章,它详细地介绍了中国历史上的各个朝代。”(I read a article on the changes of dynasties in ancient China, and it gave an detailed introduction to all the dynasties in Chinese history.)At the beginning, he might be able to write an article of 100 words. Later he might be able to write an article of more than 500 words or more than 1000 words. And if he persists in practicing, then there is no doubt that he will make a great progress soon.
2. Try to observe the colorful world around you and write down what you have seen. Things get blown up everyday and what you need to do is keep an eye on the world and find something that you are interested in as your objects of observation. Then you should try to grasp every detail such as the color and the size of a pen and then write down on a note. A note is an indispensable thing while you are observing something because your memory can’t be completely dependent on. Besides, while you take notes, please make attempt to describe what you see in Chinese words. Maybe you can only write down few words in the beginning, but I absolutely believe that you will find more words to describe after keeping doing so. And what you have written down can be your abundant resources in the future. Moreover, making observing as your habit and keeping observing wherever you are.
3. Keep a good mood while you are writing the articles. What you write is a bridge linking you and readers from all over the world. Try to step into the shoes of your readers and Do not write when you are angry because it will also make your readers unhappy. Also always keep in your mind that your article is a good way for promoting the development of social civilization and expanding friendly exchanges, then you will try to write something good.
4. A large vocabulary is a sure warrant of a good article. Chinese learners find it difficult to write a Chinese article due to a lack of vocabulary. This is the problem not only facing foreigners but also facing Chinese students. When they are writing, they may come across this kind of situation that they can’t find a suitable word to express their ideas even though they scratch through their minds.
In order to enrich your Chinese words and enable you to write a good article, you can read more Chinese articles which contain a great amount of beautiful words and sentences and try to learn them by heart and put them into practice. And having a dictionary may be very useful. In Chinese dictionary, there are always synonyms and antonym listing on dictionary, you will be able to use them with ease if you keep using them in your articles repeatedly.
5. Try to write something unusual. Illustrating can make your articles more specific and visual. But adding some clichéd example also makes your articles dip into the ordinary. Never using the resources which come to your mind at the very beginning because others will think of those things as you do.
6. Be suspicious of What has happened. A good writer should act like a scientist who doubts everything in the world. Know more about the outside world and never believe everything at the first sight. Then you should think in your own way and select those useful infos out afterwards.
If you want to learn more about how to study Chinese, please go to www.learnchinese1on1.com. I’m sure you will get more information and find it easy to learn Chinese on this page.

posted by claire in Chinese Writing and have No Comments

Seeing the Glyphs and Knowing the Meaning

The form of a Chinese character stores the character meaning frequently. So, if knowing the laws between the characters’ glyphs and the meanings, then the foreign students could guess  what the meaning or sectiion meaning according to the glyph structure is , which is the feature of the Chinese language different from other languages. Understanding the meaning in terms of the glyph is easiest to Chinese students, the same to the students belonging to the Chinese character circle. The most typical example is a phenomenon like that when the Chinese go to Japan, maybe they can not speak Japanese, but can understand a lot signs written in Chinese characters on the streets, because at this moment, the ability of understanding the meaning according to the glyph has put into great play, although they don’t know the pronunciation, the reading is not affected. For the students of non-Chinese-character circle, It needs a process of accumulation to get the ability being able to understand the meaning by the glyph consciously. First of all, the students should learn some characteristics of it, then remember some meaning of useful character glyph being highly idegraphic, for example, the character “禾”( grain), its ancient glyph just likes an appearance of sagging ears, standing for the crops; “酉”(the tenth of the twelve earthly branches), likes an image of a wine jar, so the characters with the “酉” are related to the fermentation and making wine, such as “酒(wine), 醋(vinegar), 酸(sour)” and so on.

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Affected by the thinking ways of Chinese nation and methods of Chinese coinage, Chinese characters present the square shape. The ancient Chinese characters reflected the thought to create characters referring to one’s own body nearby and the objects far away, so many useful characters concerned with human body, natural plants, animals, the daily necessaries, would mainly focus the pictograph, understanding and so on, such as these concerned to human beings” 人、大、口、尸、身、子、女、母、手、目、耳”, or that concerned to the natural plants , such as “木、禾、竹、不、来、米” , the animals” 牛、羊、马、鹿、它、能、隹、犬、豕”, about daily life” 衣、酉、冒、车、鱼”, all these are the pictographic characters. The ancient Chinese people used many methods of echoism and loan character to create a great quantity of phonograms. Because the modern Chinese characters have symbolized, so compared with the ancient Chinese characters, it is difficult to identify the characters of the ideographic quality directly, pulsing the using of the simplified charcacters, the laws being hidden more deeper. But if you learn the Chinese characters, you should learn the laws of them, because it is helpful to shape the ability of understanding the meaning through the glyphs. And that, knowing the laws of the characters could help the students to find the component features, for example, when learning these Chinese characters ”木”, “目”, “相”, if we don’t know the component laws, just treating them as the three complicated marks with the line, strokes, then it is hard for our to remember and the interest of learning certainly has been reduced. When we learn the character, “木”, we should know that it shows the simple image of a tree, so, in Chinese, the characters referring to the tree would have this side of a character. The Chinese characters with the side of a character ”目”, almost refers to the eyes or the actions about the eyes.

The integrated characters mostly can be divided into two parts, the left-right structure and the up-and-down structure are in the majority. For the part first being syncopated out, what the role does it play? Because the phonograms occupy the most of the Chinese characters, so we always make a judgment according to the part of the Chinese characters whether show the meaning or the sound. With the development of the history, the sound and meaning which the Chinese characters record having changed, especially the change of the sound, naturally, add the difficulties to make a judgment for the character part whether it show the meaning or the sound. So, with these development, we can figure out the complete meaning according to the glyphs, but just to the features to the greatest extent, and then get the probable meaning.

Learn Chinese characters, if mastering the glyphs of the characters, the students would be more easier to understand the meanings of the Chinese characters, and necessary later for the more words learning.

 

posted by angela in Chinese Writing and have Comments (2)