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Crivens200 -

I hate to dis a school and contradict a previous poster, but Bridge school is not for serious
chinese learners - it's for ex-pat wives with nothing better to do with their time. I made the
mistake of when first arriving in Beijing of believing their ads in CityWeekend and That's BJ and
signed up for a month . . . . . left after 2 weeks when I realised that no-one was actually there
to learn chinese and joined a proper school.

As for the original poster, I had that same attitude when I started - that I was only going to
learn to speak and would ignore the characters, but then after a while realised that knowing the
characters was a vital part in the learning process and helped the spoken chinese.



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raincoat -

Just a little suggestion for arkilok, maybe you would want to learn the character as well, you'll
be surprised of how much wonderful beautiful things you may discover in this language. Give it a
try ;)










-葛亚辉- -

yeah....learning characters seems hard at first but gets easier and easier the more you know, and
it DEFINITELY helps you remember words and definitions...i would highly recommend you just learn
to write, its a little more of a time committment but 1) you'll have WAY more and better schools
to choose from and 2) a small increase in time commitment yeilds a large number of advatanges...

just my $0.02.

(if someone knows a good 成语 for "just my two cents" btw, PM it to me....)










simonlaing -

Hi all,

I know I am joining a chorus of voices. But as one who wasted 2 years of Tutoring learning just
pinyin and basic reading, If you really are serious about learning Chinese you should learn to
read and write characters at the same time as you learn Pinyin and speaking.
I found in the 3 year of study when I started studying full time and had to learn to write the
characters. I had to re-learn 80% of the words that I knew in Pinyin form.

I would only recommend your strategy if you plan on solely being a visiting business man who
doesn't spend more than a few weeks in China a year. If you are staying long term I think
investing in learning to read and write is worth it.
I espicially endorse the learning radiacals of characters before learning the characters method.
(Learning characters then becomes like learning to spell in English) A nu zi 女pang with an er
zi子 pang makes hao 好.

Also no Chinese person writes in purely pinyin.
The other poster's comment on Computer aiding the writing process is true. But I think to learn
the characters long term you should also be able to write them on paper. (I found I forgot how to
accurately write the characters using this method though I'd often get the outline some what
right.)

Good luck,
Simon Laing












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