Research For American Students Of Chinese Characters Pedagogy

In today's world, the study of Chinese is very popular. Every year the number of people arriving in China to study Chinese increases. At the same time, the number of high schools, universities, and colleges that are beginning to offer Chinese courses is also increasing. The "common language" of the first century world was Greek. Later it became English. Even to this day English is a very dominant language that is used for business and foreign relations. But a new dawn is approaching, and with it is coming the Chinese language. Chinese is becoming the most popular and important language of the world today. Therefore, study of Chinese as a foreign language is necessary.Learning to read and write Chinese as a second language is indeed a difficult task. College-level courses introduce the students to about 500 in the first year and another 500 in the second year. However, it is generally accepted that one needs to know between 3000-4000 characters in order to be able to read a standard Chinese newspaper. For those of us in the learning mode this is a daunting challenge. How do we get there from way down here? How do we make sure that we are learning the most common ones first? While we don't claim to know the answer to these questions, we have some ideas we'd like to share. Wouldn't it make sense to ensure that we are learning the most frequently used characters (and words) first?This thesis paper will investigate and discuss the study of Chinese characters by American students. An emphasis will be made to propose and offer a teaching method and course design that will help and aid American students to improve their study of and retention of Chinese characters.