Something that I find really difficult with Chinese is getting a way to learn the different characters. I know some, mostly because they seem to show up a lot, and so after appearing so much I just sort of came to be able to identify them. The hard part is this doesn't seem to work with all characters, because obviously not every character will show up very often. What has worked for you guys learning Chinese as a second language?
As a native speaker in Chinese, I also had hard time to memorize some characters when I was in elemetary school. Of corse, practice is always important. But finding a smart way to memorize is also important. Just like English vocabulary, many Chinese characters (especially difficult one) are combination of some simple characters. For example, 解(jie) which means solving problem(解決) or explaining(解釋) is combination of 角 刀 牛. The part 角（jiao）relate to the pronounciation of 解. The part 刀 means knife and 牛 means bull. Use a knife cut a bull into parts. Just like when we solve a problem, we have to analysis it first. That's why 解 is combination of these three characters.
Cut a character into different parts and find a story to link them together may help you to memorize them better!
Hope this suggestion can help you:)
If you have any other questions about Chinese, don't hesitate to ask me!
The Chinese characters are indeed a very difficult but significant part in Chinese learning. There are thousands of them, and they form up every sentence as the most basic elements. How to recognize them and commit them to memory is quite a difficulty. There are about 50 thousand characters in Chinese totally, however most of the Chinese can recoginze only 10% of them (don't be surprised, that's a truth). Only about 3000 of them is commoly used in daily communications. The Chinese do so, and so do you. But even to recognize and master these 3000 characters can be a big problem. Difficulties focus mainly on two aspects: pronouncation and writing. I suggest you to remember pronouncation first and then writing method. When you come across an unknown word, first refer to your dictionary or ask your teacher, find its meaning and usage in that sentence. And then note it down on your notebook both as a whole word and as single characters taken apart. Try to find what each character means, and practice their pronouncation repeatly till you remember them. It's Ok if you can't remember ways to write them when you write an entry, just leave them as pin yin, for now. Focus on the remaining words that you can write. That's what Chinese kids do in their elementary school. Also, write them with your pen, don't rely on computers too much, since that could be a great disadvantage to your learning. Try to read more articles on newspaper and websites in order to enrich your vocabulary amounts, and speak to your Chinese friends often, let them correct your grammar and pronouncation mistakes. Don't be shy if you can't organize your language well at the beginning. Only under an immersive environment can your Chinese get improved to a higher level.
I use www.memrise.com to help me learn characters because it feels like a game and less like actual study and its very repetitive. I like the character textbook called Zhang Laoshi Jiao Hanzi 张老师教汉子 as well, it was helpful to get started. Learning radicals has really helped because it breaks down the characters into components which makes things a little easier.
For me I found it really helped to write the characters, I have page after page after page where I've written some simple characters again and again - I might not be able to write them very neatly and I may have already forgotten the stroke order but it has committed them to memory for identifying them when reading!
I cannot recommend extensive reading highly enough, once you've got started learning characters. There are loads of graded readers for beginners and it's really satisfying when you read even one page! Check out Mandarin Companion and Chinsee Breeze.
It seemed a very daunting task at first bit after the first 50 characters it just got easier and easier!
Good luck :)
I am a native Chinese speaker. From my perspective, I think some Chinese characters are very fundamental and easy to remember such as 月, 木, 水, 人, 土, 的, 他, 马, etc. Others like 铁, 战, 神 are not easy to remember, because they do not show up very often. However, there are some ways to learn how these characters were created. For instance, 铁 for iron can be vertically splited into two parts. The left one means metal (金), and the right one means loss (失). Chinese class was always my nightmare when I was a child. My suggestion is staying hungry and never giving up.
sorry, meant sound and a tone
