Play to Learn Chinese

It has always been difficult to not write to learn Chinese characters and there are limited ways to play Chinese words like Scrabble or Crossword. One reason is that characters are not reorganised for easy dismantling and construction. In this book, you will learn to decode Chinese characters by their structures and not by strokes. Now Chinese characters are seen as square boxes that can be broken into blocks, strips, L-frame, 7-frame, etc. Hence, you can imagine playing Chinese characters... it is like playing Brickgame, Lego or Tetris. In these games, there are components that can be put together in different ways to create different formations. Learning Chinese characters is more challenging than these games because

* There are more formations (patterns) to remember * There are many similar-looking formations that need to be distinguished carefully * Characters can be further broken down into smaller components—alphabets and strokes * The sequence of the components in characters is important

To play the Chinese characters game, beginners will need to find a systematic way to remember the components—alphabets (covered in Learn Chinese Without Writing 2) and strokes (covered in Learn Chinese Without Writing 1). Now, in Learn Chinese Without Writing 3 you will learn how to ‘play’ with these parts and put them together.