Fastest, Quickest Way To Learn Chinese Characters
BTW – I did all of the Chinese Rosetta levels. It was fun and but you don't learn a lot of Chinese. It costs $500 and takes a few months, even if you put in a 2 or 3 hours every day. At the end you have a feel for what learning the Chinese language is like, but you really don't know anything useful. It's tourist Chinese and not even enough to order in a restaurant or ask for where the bathroom is. In real life, you won't experience the sanitized scenarios that the software sets up for you.
Use HSK study material instead and it won't take you nearly as long to become conversational in the language. There's no memorization of characters, no time spent learning how to draw them, and no stress in trying to learn to read them. Hearing a language spoken is a much easier, especially when you learn Chinese with software.
Thankfully, neither Chinese grammar nor its pronunciation are particularly difficult. Chinese pronunciation has sometimes been compared to Vietnamese (though there are of course some important differences), and the structure of the language is controlled by a set of rules which, though very different from English, are at least consistent. In the hsk you are not required to memorize a plethora of exceptions (as you might find necessary if you were learning English as a second language). In fact, if you do not intend to learn anything beyond actually speaking and comprehending spoken Chinese, you might find it to be much easier to learn than some Western languages.
In any case, you’ll notice that the more complex Chinese characters are actually made up of simpler characters. So, as you create these stories, it will become easier and easier to learn the more complex characters. The best thing to do is just to relax and slowly learn the characters as your Chinese studies progress. In this way, your brain will become more familiar with the way the characters look and you will find that you are able to pick up new characters with ease. Eventually you won’t even need to make up stories to remember the characters. Instead, you will just remember them naturally.
As for computer work, work on your Anki every day in conjunction with your Chinese drama watching. You will learn a lot of vocabulary and you will find you very often remember the context in which you first heard it. This is an important aspect. Learning Chinese through dramas gives you a good understanding of how each word is actually used and will also make it easier for you to remember certain phrases. As you continue learning Chinese through dramas, you will encounter the same word again in different contexts. This will improve your understanding of the word’s range of meaning and implication and also make it increasingly easy to remember.
