How To Improve Your Chinese Handwriting

Are you trying to improve your Chinese handwriting?

Well, then you must know that Chinese writing does not have any alphabets. It has characters instead.

Thus, if you want to improve your Chinese writing abilities, then you must learn these characters. If you are a beginner, then you might have problems with stroke order and character composition.

If you are at a more advanced level then you might find it difficult to improve your writing accuracy. No matter whether you are a beginner or at an advanced level, you must improve your Chinese handwriting as it can benefit you in the future.

Want to know more about Chinese handwriting and how to improve your writing skills? If yes, then stay tuned. You will find everything that you need to know below.

The Importance Of Improving Chinese Handwriting

Although it is not necessary to learn Chinese handwriting, you can avail yourself of a lot of benefits if you decide to learn it. Many benefits come along with learning Chinese characters by hand.

You surely would not want to miss those out, right?

When you practice Chinese handwriting daily, you will see the benefits for yourself. This is why improving your Chinese handwriting is extremely crucial.

Want to know some benefits of learning and improving your Chinese handwriting? Let’s check them out below.

1. Active Recall

When people type in the Chinese language, they take the assistance of phonetic input. For those of you who do not know how the phonetic input option works, all you need to do is type a pinyin in it. When you type a pinyin, you get multiple Chinese character options that resemble that pinyin that you have typed. Thus, there is not much to remember in it. All you need to do is remember the general shape of the character and you are good to go.

 Although this method is fast and convenient, it is a lot easier to spot the correct character than to remember the character in your head. When you have no suggestions and phonetic typing tool to help you, you will need active recall to remember all the Chinese characters in your head. Each time you are writing a character, your mind is recalling it actively. As a result, your brain will get sharper as well.

2. Recognizing The Different Components

Practicing Chinese handwriting does not only help you in the active recall. It helps you in recognizing different components of the Chinese handwriting as well. When you will practice Chinese handwriting, you will be able to recognize all the different components that form the complex characters of Chinese handwriting.

As a result, you will be able to associate meanings with the structure of the character. As a lot of Chinese complex characters take some of the part of their meaning from their components, learning Chinese handwriting by hand is a great way to review all the complex characters that you have learned up until now. Not only this, but you will also be able to form a meaningful understanding between the structure of a character and its meaning.

3. Feeling More Empowered

What’s more, when you practice learning the Chinese language by hand, it will increase your confidence as a student as well. Not only this, but you will feel a stronger connection to the Chinese culture too. You will be able to help your other friends having trouble with the handwriting as well. As a result, you will start feeling that the Chinese is an integral part of your life and not just a hobby. Thus, you will feel more empowered too.

4. Appreciation Of Calligraphy

When you can write Chinese characters by hand, it will not only give you confidence and a feeling of being empowered, but you will start appreciating Chinese calligraphy more and more. Although you must know that calligraphy is an important part of Chinese tradition, you will never be able to fully appreciate it if you do not know it yourself. It is also commonly used in higher chinese tuition classes to raise the students interest in Chinese culture. When you will get better with Chinese handwriting, you will understand how much effort it takes to transform writing into the arts. Thus, when you will start writing Chinese yourself, you will start appreciating the beauty of the Chinese characters.

5. Relief From Stress

Surprised how practicing Chinese writing by hand can provide you relief from stress? Well, practicing Chinese handwriting can actually be a fun-filled activity that can provide you relief from stress. Want to know how? When you can take some time out from your daily routine to practice Chinese writing, it can provide you with a meditative experience. You will be able to clear your head while practicing the language. As a result, you will get relief from your daily stressful life for some hours.

Some Tips To Improve Your Chinese Handwriting

Thus, there is no denying the fact that practicing Chinese writing by hand can provide you with a lot of benefits. This is why a lot of people are trying to improve their Chinese handwriting. If you are also one of those people then you can find some useful tips for yourself below. No matter whether you are a beginner or at an advanced level, these tips will help you improve your handwriting for sure. So, let’s check them out below.

1. Practice Stroke Order

Although stroke order may seem irrelevant to a lot of people, it is extremely important if you want to improve your Chinese handwriting. Practicing stroke can be the main difference between the actual writing and the scribbles. This is why you must practice the correct order of the strokes. When you will know the correct stroke order, it will not only let you speed up your Chinese writing but you will also be able to maintain correct proportions of the writing as well. What’s more, you will also be able to look up characters more properly in the dictionary because the majority of the online dictionaries rely on the order of stroke along with the shape or number of strokes. So, if you want to improve your Chinese handwriting, you must practice stroke order.

2. Focus On The Stroke Type

When you are practicing Chinese handwriting, stroke type is extremely relevant unlike in simplified fonts. This is why you must focus on your stroke types as well. So, if you want to learn Chinese handwriting, you must focus on your stroke types to perfect your skills.

Apart from this, it will also be better if you learn the names of the strokes as well. Learning the names of the strokes will help you in distinguishing between different types of strokes. If you are a Chinese speaker, it gets even more crucial that you learn the names of different types of strokes. When you will know the names of different strokes, you will be able to explain better how a character is written without the need of writing it down.

3. Learn To Recognize Correct Proportions

If you want to master the art of Chinese handwriting, then you must learn to recognize the correct proportions of Chinese writing. Incorrect proportions are the indicator that you are new to the language. Just like stroke order, the characters in the Chinese language also have semi-standard proportions.

These patterns will become more perfect when you will learn the correct proportions of the characters. This is why recognizing the correct proportions of Chinese handwriting is associated with someone that has more experience in the language. So, if you want to make an impression on the audience as being an expert in Chinese handwriting, you need to learn to recognize the correct proportions of the characters.

4. Experiment With Different Styles

Once you have practiced basic Chinese handwriting skills, you can start experimenting with different styles available there. You can choose which style you want to experiment with. Just like English writing, Chinese writing has a lot of styles available such as cursive handwriting, bubble handwriting, and a lot more. You can experiment with any of the styles that you find interesting.

What’s more, you can even try to come up with a writing style of your own. The cǎo tǐ zì writing style is one of the oldest writing styles available in Chinese. It is more used by the older generation and is extremely difficult for the untrained eyes to read.

5. Practice

If you want to practice the art of learning Chinese handwriting, you need to know that there is no shortcut for it. A lot of students even take calligraphy lessons from a very young age because they want to perfect their Chinese handwriting skills. So, if you also want to be an expert in writing Chinese, then you should keep practicing. There is no denying the fact that practice indeed makes perfect.

Although Chinese handwriting is a bit complex than others as there are characters involved instead of the alphabets. But, if you want to improve your Chinese handwriting, you can follow the tips mentioned above. You will notice an immediate improvement in your handwriting.

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