Today I’m on my 51-day streak on Duolingo. I’ve completed all the topics in version one of the hello Chinese app and now I’m on to completing version two. I’m even replaying both versions using Hanzi characters only.

But is that enough? No…well at least not for me.

I believe it’s time for me to finally begin seriously writing. Yes writing in Hanzi! When I first started learning Chinese a couple years ago, before I became half as consistent as I am now, I used to think that the most important thing was just learning how to speak. I thought that I couldn’t possibly write or memorize Hanzi, so I told myself it was unimportant!

Fast forward to today: I’ve grown into someone who genuinely believes I can. And this belief in myself has helped me to discover and strategize some enjoyable methods that will continue to build my writing and retention skills.

I Designed a Hanzi Study Workflow

While practicing on the HelloChinese app, I noticed that they would include in their lessons a text box with faint grey Hanzi calligraphy. The app would highlight or let the strokes blink in the order in which they should be made, from first to last. So after playing and playing, I became more curious, so I looked for this section in the app that’s not included in its main lesson list, the one that teaches about the Hanzi components like Chinese radicals and so on.

Again, my curiosity about the writing system grew even stronger, which led me to researching until I found a site called hanzistroke.com. In the meantime, I continued writing English, Hanzi and Pinyin in my notebook until it just felt tedious and off.

As a perfectionist, I designed a mastermind plan to organize my study flow. All the efforts I made worked together for my inspiration to design a workbook for myself to practice writing and memorizing Chinese characters and track my progress daily.

The design contains:

• Ruled spaces for vocabulary and grammar practice and notes.
• Correction logs
• Character practice sheets with blank grids for my Hanzi practice.

The grid section is what I call the character practice sheet. It has a large box that frames 3 sets of grids. The largest box is so I can place a Hanzi character with enough space for arrows to indicate stroke directions. On the other hand, the smaller boxes that make up the grid are spaces to repeatedly write the Hanzi character drawn in the largest box for muscle memory.

Next I published it as a workbook on Amazon KDP called ‘Character Writing Practice Workbook’ just to make it feel official. I am so excited. And once my copy arrives first, I’ll post about it here. Also, for those of you who are interested, you can get your own and try this method. See how much it helps.

Remember I’m not an expert I’m just a student who is really interested in my work with creative ideas to share. 🙂

The Secret Power of Doodling Your Lessons

Another interesting way I try to memorize and practice Chinese is to doodle my lessons and write Hanzi next to them. I did this because I can remember looking back at my past sketchbooks or notebooks sometimes and seeing a doodle, a little drawing or scribble. By looking at them I could remember specific events that occurred that day. I find it fascinating how a simple drawing at the back of a book or within a sketchbook can bring back so many memories of things that happened on the day it was drawn. So I decided to capitalize on that by doodling my Chinese lesson. Yes, it will take a lot of time, but certainly I will be building something extremely great at the same time.

Takeaway:

So gentle people, while I was writing this article, I came up with the coolest idea! I still have my YouTube account and recently I noticed there’s this section that’s called Community. I think it would be engaging if the persons who will purchase my workbook would care to share their study progress with me. You could subscribe to my channel, follow along, and post the work you’ve practiced in the book.

My channel is really for art, but it’s not just about art, it’s about me integrating art into everything in my life, including writing, language learning, and even philosophy. I just intend to beautify my entire world and add beauty to those around me.

So that’s something you could consider if you’re interested in this idea. I will remind you in the next post. When my book finally arrives we can definitely start on something together because that would definitely make our learning journey more interesting.

Update: The book is ready and available on Amazon and I’ve just received the link to order mine.