How I Finally Taught My Kids to Write Chinese Characters From Memory
- Ka Yee Meck
- 2 hours ago
- 6 min read
For years, my children could speak Mandarin and read Simplified Chinese quite well – but writing Chinese characters from MEMORY?! That's a different story!
They could copy them, sure.
Give them a Chinese character, word or even an entire sentence and they could reproduce it on the page.
But take the original away?
Suddenly, they could barely write anything.
And to be fair, I never worried about this too much. Chinese writing is HARD, especially when you’re raising multilingual children outside a Chinese-speaking environment.
But recently, I became curious.
Could I actually teach my children to write Chinese from memory, in the same way they can write independently in English and Russian?
So I decided to experiment.
After asking ChatGPT for some initial ideas and spending around three weeks testing and tweaking different approaches with my children, I’ve finally landed on a simple system that seems to be working.
My children, now aged 8 and 9, can now use roughly 50 high-frequency Chinese characters to write some surprisingly complex little sentences entirely from memory!
And, more importantly, they actually enjoy doing it.
In this post, I’ll show you exactly what we’ve been doing.
I’ve also made a video demonstrating the method, including footage of me actually using it with my children. So if you’d rather watch than read – or you want to see what this looks like in real life – watch the video here:
What you’ll need
You really don’t need anything fancy.
If your child is starting from scratch, I’d begin with a list of around 100 high-frequency Chinese characters.
I initially asked ChatGPT to generate one for me. As a Chinese speaker myself, I then went through the list and adapted it.
And I think that’s important.
A generic frequency list might contain characters such as 之 or 军 fairly high up, but they’re not necessarily the characters my children need when they’re trying to write about their everyday lives.
Meanwhile, incredibly useful characters such as 去 (to go) might deserve to appear much earlier.
I’ve also added words that are particularly important in our family.
Like:
猫 – cat
巧克力 – chocolate
Priorities, right?🤣😺
Some characters also make much more sense when learned as part of a word. Take 以, for example. Rather than teaching it completely in isolation, I’d introduce it through useful words such as 可以 and 以为.
So don’t be afraid to adapt your list to your child and your family’s actual life.
Apart from your character list, you’ll need:
a notebook or something to write on
a pen or pencil
a few extra sheets of paper
Those extra sheets of paper are surprisingly important.
You’ll be using them to cover things up.
Because the entire point of this system is to stop your child looking at the answer!
The Three-Step Chinese Writing Method
Let’s imagine you’re doing 15 minutes of Chinese writing practice a day.
The method has three simple stages:
1. Review old characters
2. Learn 2–3 new characters
3. Finish with a mixed recall test
Here’s exactly how I do each one.
Step 1: Review old characters
I always start by asking my children to write a few characters they’ve already learned.
Three is plenty.
For example, I might ask:
怎么写“可以”？How do you write kěyǐ?
Or:
怎么写“我的家”的“的”？How do you write the de in wǒ de jiā?
Ideally, they’ll immediately remember everything.
In reality?
Of course they don’t - not every time!
When that happens, in the first instance, I don’t ask them them to simply copy it.
Instead, I show them the character for a few seconds.
Then I cover it again.
Now they have to write it from memory.
This distinction has made a huge difference for us.
For years, my children practised Chinese writing largely through copying. The problem was that copying a character doesn’t necessarily mean you can retrieve that character when it isn’t sitting directly in front of you.
So now I’m trying to make their brains do the retrieving.
Even if they only saw the answer two seconds ago, they still have to hold that visual information in their memory and recreate it themselves.
Spend about five minutes reviewing and then move on.
Step 2: Learn 2–3 new characters
This is the heart of the method.
I wouldn’t introduce more than two or three new characters during a 15-minute session.
I’d much rather my children learn two characters properly than rush through ten and forget all of them tomorrow.
Let’s use 你 as an example.
First, I write 你 while my child watches.
They write it at the same time, following the correct stroke order.
Then I ask them to copy it three times.
So far, this probably sounds like fairly traditional Chinese handwriting practice.
But here’s the important bit.
Now cover everything.
Ask your child to write 你 again – without looking.
Let them make mistakes.
Then uncover the original and let them compare the two.
If they’ve forgotten it completely, let them have another very quick peek.
Then cover it again and try once more.
The goal isn’t to prevent mistakes.
The goal is to make their brain work to retrieve the character.
Add tiny distractions between attempts
Once they’ve successfully written the character from memory, don’t immediately ask them to write it five more times.
Instead, create a tiny distraction.
For example, ask:
What does 你 mean?
Then ask them to write 你 again.
Why?
Because you’re interrupting that immediate visual and physical memory. Your child has to retrieve the shape again rather than simply repeating the hand movement they made two seconds earlier.
I aim for three successful recalls from memory, with little distractions between them.
The formula is:
TEACH → COPY → COVER + RECALL × 3
That’s the core of the entire system.
Make sentences as soon as possible
This is probably my children’s favourite part.
Instead of making every recall attempt an isolated character, I often ask them to use their new character alongside characters they’ve already learned.
For example, after learning 你:
你是大人。You are an adult.
Then later:
你和我去他的家。You and I are going to his house.
Suddenly, they’re not just writing random characters.
They’re writing Chinese in real life!!
And I’ve noticed this gives my children a huge sense of satisfaction.
Even with a surprisingly small bank of characters, they can start producing proper little sentences independently.
It also means every new character automatically becomes an opportunity to review older ones!
Step 3: The mini mixed test
Finally, I finish with a very short mixed test.
I use three layers of recall:
Layer 1: New - Ask them to recall one or more characters they learned today.
Layer 2: Recent - Choose two characters learned within the last few days.
Layer 3: 'Ancient history' -Choose two older characters – particularly ones they repeatedly forget.
In our house, 这 has been one of those characters.
This final stage is important because remembering a character immediately after learning it isn’t the same as remembering it three days – or three weeks – later.
By continually bringing older characters back into the mix, you’re gradually strengthening those memories.
And again, if your child is happy to do it, turn some of the test into sentences rather than individual characters.
It’s more interesting and much closer to the ultimate goal: being able to actually write Chinese independently.
What our 15-minute practice looks like
So, put everything together and a session might look something like this:
5 minutes – Review: Recall three previously learned characters.
7 minutes – New characters: Learn two or three characters using:
TEACH → COPY → COVER + RECALL × 3
3 minutes – Mixed test: Test today’s characters + recent characters + older troublesome characters.
And that’s it.
No hour-long handwriting sessions.
No writing the same character 50 times.
Just 15 minutes of focused recall practice.
Want to see the method in action?
It’s much easier to understand this system when you actually see it happening.
So I’ve filmed a real writing session with my children showing how I introduce characters, cover them up, prompt recall and combine old and new characters into sentences.
I highly recommend giving it a watch!
And if you’re raising bilingual or multilingual children yourself, feel free to adapt this method to suit your family.
Your children don’t need to memorise exactly the same characters as mine.
Start with the Chinese they actually want to use.
Because, apparently, in our house the road to Chinese literacy involves making sure everyone can write 猫 and 巧克力... 🐱🐱🐱
For your family, maybe it's 饺子 or something else?
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