Presentation from Prof Guo Baohua

“汉字难认，汉语难学”- 快速识字

How to Learn Chinese 15-20 Times Faster

Prof Guo Baohua’s presentation focuses on:

• Why teaching Chinese with the methods of teaching English is not effective
• Teaching English start with vocabulary, sentence, and enter into reading right away
• Teaching Chinese needs to start with 汉字Hanzi, and in the order of 字，词，语，句。Teaching in the reverse order is not effective.
• 汉字Hanzi or 字 is originated from pictograms. But Contrary to popular belief, pictograms 象形字 make up only a small portion of Chinese characters.
• 指事字 zhǐshìzì  (Ideogrammic compounds) or ideograms modify existing pictographs iconically, or are direct iconic illustrations. For instance, by modifying 刀 dāo, a pictogram for "knife", by marking the blade, an ideogram 刃 rèn for "blade" is obtained. Direct examples include 上 shàng "up" and 下 xià "down". This category is small.
• 会意字 / 會意字 huìyìzì symbolically combine pictograms or ideograms to create a third character. For instance, doubling the pictogram 木 mù "tree" produces 林 lín "grove", while tripling it produces 森 sēn "forest".
• 形声字 / 形聲字 xíngshēngzì: By far the most numerous category are the phono-semantic compounds, also called semantic-phonetic compounds or pictophonetic compounds.
• All Hanzi have 声，形，和意。