36 Language Learning
How to Study Chinese Characters
H
anja (한자, 漢字), Chinese characters are the basic building blocks of many Korean words. Each hanja is a kind of pictograph, or picture with its own specific meaning. For example, the hanja 火 has the meaning 불, or fire. The pronunciation of this hanja is 화. This is the 화 in 소화기 (so-hwa-gi), which means fire extinguisher. 소 means to put out, and 기 is a machine. All three syllables of 소화기 are from hanja. Although 소화기 is a common enough word that you may know it without learning hanja, there are many words you will encounter as a Korean language learner that you will not be familiar with and are best approached by tearing them down into their component parts. Doing this will help you understand a word much better than simply looking it up in the dictionary, assuming it is even listed, which in some cases it is not.
www.gwangjunewsgic.com
December 2021
TEACHING & LEARNING
By Stephen Kagarise
▲ So-hwa-gi (소화기), or 消火器 in hanja, consists of characters 消 meaning to put out, 火 meaning fire, and 器 meaning tool or machine.
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To study hanja, you need a hanja dictionary and a specially designed hanja notebook, which are both available at most bookstores with a stationery section. The dictionary will probably have the hanja arranged by level. There are eight levels, plus two special levels. The lowest level is Level 8, which has 50 of the most basic and common hanja, like 火. This is where you will start. The notebook has 100 rectangular boxes on each page. Each box has a horizontal line dividing the large upper part from the small lower part. The upper part is where you draw the hanja. The lower part is where you write the meaning and pronunciation, both in Korean. To learn hanja as fully as possible, you want to practice going from the picture to the meaning and pronunciation, and then back again from the meaning and pronunciation to the picture. This means you will be able to both read and write hanja. You may think there is no way you can remember how to draw each of the hanja, especially if you learn 2000 of them. Actually, it is not too difficult. It just takes review. The trick is figuring out the most efficient way to conduct your review. The purpose of this article is to show the method I used to learn about 1800 hanja in a year and a half. Like learning Korean, all it takes is some faith in yourself and dedication. I think that learning hanja is key for anyone who wants to pass the TOPIK Level 6. Filling in one page a day of your hanja notebook is enough. This is 100 boxes. If you have spent a few weeks studying Level 8, you can review all 50 hanja every day. In fact, you can review them all twice. But what if you have also studied Level 7, and now need to review 150 hanja? The trick is to allocate a certain number of boxes to each level, based on their percentage of the total. You would allocate 100/150, or 2/3 of the boxes to Level 7, and 50/150, or 1/3 of the boxes to Level 8. In other words, 70 boxes to Level 7, and 30 boxes to Level 8. In this way you would be able to cycle through the hanja in both
2021-11-26 �� 2:47:36
