How to use this course

Learning ancient Chinese isn't so easy. You've got to remember a lot of characters and puzzle over some difficult texts. But don't worry, it's also not so difficult. Unlike Latin or Greek, it doesn't have conjugations and inflections to worry about. Nor does it have grammatical genders, tenses, or moods - at least not in the same way!

Before you get cracking, try to get some background knowledge about:

• pinyin vs. Wade-Giles romanization (this site uses pinyin)
• Chinese character evolution
• radicals (the system by which Characters are indexed)
• stroke order (how to write Characters correctly

Try searching for each of these things on the internet - there are many sites that will explain them to you better than I can.

NOTE: I'm leaving out explicit examples on how to write and pronounce the Chinese characters you will come across, because this information is easily available on other websites - all you have to do is cut and paste to find out the stroke order and more information...



Now you have some general knowledge, here's a plan for each lesson

1. Practise writing out the 'new vocabulary' characters
2. Test yourself on the meanings
3. Try to work out what the phrases / sentences in the 'Study' section mean without looking at the translation (whited out so you can't see by accident)
4. Now copy them down in Chinese and English
5. Have a cup of tea. You've worked very hard for today.

On the next day:

1. Look at what you wrote yesterday. Can you remember what everything means?
2. Write out all the new characters again. Can you write them from memory?
3. Now review the 'Study section'
4. Now the big test - try to do the Practice section without looking at the vocabulary. If you've internalized it all, this should be easy.
5. Well done. You're ready for the next lesson!

OK - that's just my idea. Of course you can study however you like!

On to lesson 1!