What's most difficult about learning Mandarin?

[Charlie]

Quote:

I have barely ever needed to write a character by hand in my day to day life here so makes me wonder how useful it really is to have whole classes dedicated to just writing characters out 50 times in university studies.

It’s not a practical way to learn Chinese, but it is in line with the rote memorization learning techniques which are the status quo in China. It’s like us having to learn cursive as school children – mostly a waste of time and a skill that we never use as adults in the real world.

The benefit of learning all the radicals and then inputting text using the Wubi system is more practical, efficient, and beneficial unless you want to pursue calligraphy in which case you will have to write thousands of characters by hand. The number of Chinese learners that fit this profile is very small.

Preparing for things like high level HSK, where you’re required to write an essay by hand, is mostly just an academic hurdle to jump through that has little application in real situations. Like when Chinese students take English tests which require they remember an enormous list of technical words which they’ll never use in conversation.

It’s funny though when you see a Chinese person who stuggles to understand simple questions like “What time did you wake up this morning?” while they’re intensely studying flash cards with words like “mercurial”, “hyperbole”, and “hodge podge”. This is really common. In my office there are about a dozen people who don’t really speak English at all but their way of trying is by setting screen savers that flash SAT vocabulary along with definitions. Of course this is completely useless.

The point is to focus on what’s practical and suits your needs unless you’re in a Chinese school in which case you’re often at the mercy of their curriculum.

[Author]

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