A big challenge for people living abroad to learn Chinese in a short period of time is how to master a large number of commonly used Chinese characters. I remember when I first taught students Chinese, I used the traditional method: demonstrate how to draw a character with the strokes in a particular order, then let the students practice writing the character 3 times, even 5 times in order to remember it. I found out students quite often lose interest and enthusiasm. Without the interest and enthusiasm, it is hard to succeed. In order to improve the students’ enthusiasm in learning characters, I had been pounding on my teaching method and doing research. I explored a fun method to teach the characters: making up a story for the character by looking at oracle bone script（甲骨文） which is the original form of the Chinese characters that gives us a clue how the ancient characters were created it. I show some examples as below.
人(person): shape of a person
木(tree)：shape of a tree
休(to rest): the component on the left is a person and the component on the right is a tree. So the made-up story could be a person leaning against a tree to rest.
春(spring): you will see a beautiful picture of spring, the sun shines, the grass grows and the little shoot sprouts
福(blessing): a person is holding a large jar of wine with both hands, praying for blessing, on the right side there is a worship table with a few drops of wine.
For some characters, we couldn’t find the original script and figure out how ancient people created those characters. We can create our own story for the character, for instant 体 (body) (I got this idea from an article): adding one horizontal stroke on 休 so it becomes 体, body. It sounds like a person is tired and he needs to lie down his body and get some rest.
By using this method, students get profound impression of characters. It is easier for them to remember the characters, and they remember them longer. Most importantly, a character implies the way the ancient Chinese think, the way of their lives and the social environment, which plays an important role in helping students understand Chinese culture.
Once they have the knowledge, it's amazing to see the light bulbs click when they can actually apply it. One day one of my students showed me a picture he drew for Chinese words 再见 (good bye). The character 再looks like a person waving his hand and saying goodbye. The character 見 "see" looks like a person’s eye with two legs.
There is a valuable educational quote by William Butler Yeats: Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. This is why I teach.
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