For many Chinese learners, learning characters is very difficult, however, if you use the appropriate learning method, you will find learning characters to be a simple, rewarding experience that gives you an insight into Chinese culture.

But what is a good learning method? I have found through five years of teaching Chinese, that there are three steps to learning characters. The first step is to learn through lists of high-frequency characters, learning the most common words in a short time.

The second step, while learning high-frequency characters is to use a network learning method, comparing the similarities and differences of characters, and keeping it in a knowledge framework (characters learned in listening, speaking, reading and writing), so that students will be able to remain passionate about their study.

Third, when at the stage of learning advanced characters, we also use reading latest newspapers and magazines to improve understanding and recognition skills. Through the context of the story you will see the characters in use and their meaning. This is called the "initiative learning method," and is the best way to achieve fluency.

In the Chinese Characters Course we use Spider Learning Method, so named because students use the three steps to learn characters, creating a "web" of knowledge and linking characters from the three books, “Learning High Frequency Chinese Characters”, “Writing Chinese with Network Learning”, “Reading Chinese with Magazines and Newspapers.” Students using the Spider Method have good results.