How do Native Chinese Speakers Learn Characters

Native Chinese speakers tend to learn characters by writing them over and over again (for example, a school kid about 8 years old write the character "鹜"(wù, wild duck) for 20 times whenever they made a mistake to write a "马" for the lower part of it instead of a "鸟"). Though it is boring, but it really works.

Chinese pupils also consider the characters as images to remember them. For instance, they say "踏"(tà, to step on) has a"⻊",which is a variation form of"足"（zú, foot) along with "水"(shuǐ, water) and "日"(rì, sun) piled on the right side. Together, they form a scene: In the spring, someone stepped his feet by a pond or a lake which shines with the illumination of the sun. This scene originated from "踏青"(tà qīng), a word referring to the tradition that when the spring comes and the grass turns green, Chinese people go out to enjoy the beauty of nature after a long, dull winter.

The key to memorise is to use imagination. When the pupils try to learn "座"(zuò, a seat) , they make up their own rhyme: "一点一横长，(yī diǎn yī héng cháng, a dot and a long horizontal) 一撇到南洋，(yī piě daò nán yáng, a thrown-away which is so long that it reaches South Sea）两个小人坐在土堆上(liǎng gè xiǎo rén zuò zài tǔ duī shàng, two little people sit on a mound of earth）. When they came to the end of the first two lines of their rhyme, they would finish writing "广". And they write two"人" when they say "two little people...." Finally, the character was completed when they say"... sit on a mound of earth" and write a"土" under the two "人" they've just written. This rhyme not only illustrates how the character was written, but also indicate that "座" is related to the word"坐"(zuò, to sit).