Product Review

This highly-visual book introduces an effective new method for learning Chinese characters using visual stimuli and pictographs.

Learning the necessary characters used to write even simple Chinese sentences can be a long and arduous process. Chinese Characters Made Easy makes the learning process fun and easy by presenting the 1,000 most common characters using a new mnemonic approach that associates each character with a memorable visual and verbal clue—making memorization easy. The character for "person", for example, is superimposed over a sketch of a man representing "a person standing on two legs"—drawing the reader's attention to the distinctive shape of the character and associating the drawing with the character's meaning.

The Chinese characters are presented in groups or clusters all sharing common elements and meanings, for context and ease of identification. These groups of characters all share common root symbols known as radicals or relate to a particular theme or topic such as colors, numbers, animals, or body parts. Pronunciations, meanings and vocabulary compounds are provided for each character in the group. A free audio CD delivers native-speaker pronunciations for all the characters and their associated vocabulary.

Key features of Chinese Characters Made Easy include:

• Audio recordings of native-speaker pronunciations for all the characters
• An introduction to the history and structure of the Chinese writing system
• 1,000 characters and over 3,000 words for beginning learners of Chinese

This Chinese character book's visual approach is a powerful learning tool. It can be used by students and is entertaining and useful to general readers who are curious about how the Chinese writing system works and how it developed.