SHOULD CHILDREN LEARN HOW TO WRITIE CHINESE CHARACTERS?

Chinese4kids.net

Is there Chinese ALPHABET?

Witten Chinese Has No Alphabet

Written Chinese has no alphabet.

Script - Based

phonetic

Is Pinyin Chinese Alphabet?

Pinyin is Not a Chinese Alphabet.

Pinyin was introduced to help learners to know how to pronounce correctly.

Initials

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin

Pinyin is Not a Chinese Alphabet.

Initials (声母 ; 聲母 ; shēngmǔ) and finals (韵母 ; 韻母 ; yùnmǔ) – and not consonant and vowel letters, form the fundamental elements in pinyin.

Finals

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin

Isn’t Pinyin Enough in Chinese Learning

Pinyin is to help people master the pronunciation of the Chinese characters, but not to replace them

One Chinese character normally does not form a word.

In most cases, a Chinese word is composed by 2 or more characters. Pinyin represents the pronunciation of single characters, therefore it does not give the whole picture of the words.

早 + 上 = 早上（MORNING)

Pinyin becomes confusing at certain level

There are only around 420 different syllables in Pinyin system.

There are more than 10,000 Chinese characters.

These 420 syllables of pinyin actually represent the pronunciation of all the characters in the entire language!

MA 妈 (mother)

麻 (linen)

马 (horse)

骂 (to scold)

Should Children Learn Chinese Characters?

Believe it or not, children learn Chinese characters much faster than adults do.

Should Children Learn Writing Chinese Characters?

Children should learn how to write Chinese characters, step by step

Chinese characters are fun.

They are full of cultural insight and they are a form of art.

Like sight words in English, children can start to learn the simple and commonly used characters. Recognizing the characters is the first goal; knowing how to write them is the next target.

Writing in the Right Stroke Order

Stroke

source: Wikipedia

Where to Start

Start Simple

Practise with simple writing worksheets like this.

http://chinese4kids.net/should-children-learn-how-to-write-in-chinese/