There are many benefits to learn to write Chinese characters:

• Writing can strengthen your memorization of characters
• Communicating with Chinese friends
• Studying in China, or doing business in China may require Chinese character writing
• Exercise your brain to visually recognize form and function in Chinese characters instead of an alphabet
• Better understanding of Chinese culture

Many learners may think that if they know pinyin, they can type the characters they need into a computer keyboard. However, even learners who know pinyin may frequently input incorrect sentences into the computer and may express the wrong meaning. Others may not understand what they want to express. The reason is, in Chinese, one pinyin input may match multiple Chinese characters (homonyms). Readers cannot understand what you wish to express if you choose the irrelevant characters.

Here are two steps that you can take to begin learning to write Chinese characters:

Step 1: Know how to start

Just like building a house, we have to build in order as we put the characters together. Characters are written by combining different "strokes". So, you need to start from learning the various strokes. Learn the stroke order and know the rules to construct the character properly (and beautifully!).

You also need to learn Chinese character components and structure. Chinese characters have different types: single-component characters (人) and multi-component characters (妈). Complicated types contain more strokes and components, such as "森", which consists of three "木".

The basic structure of Chinese characters...Read More