Radicals 部首 bu(4)shou(3)

When I was teaching ESL, I discovered a very common and fundamental problem among many ESL learners--spelling & pronunciations；many ESL learners don't have the concept of "phonics" and "spelling rules" in American English. Either no teachers had ever taught them these concepts, or the teachers tried to (and had to) finish all 45 "K.K. spelling symbols" within one week right after the English beginners just being taught 26 alphabets (or phonics).

The result? Big confusion! The ESL learners would never get to spell a word properly when they hear it, or pronounce a word when they see it.

How about in Mandarin Chinese learning? "Pin-Yin" spelling rules and the concept of "radicals" are the basic tools for any CFL (Chinese as a Foreign Language)learners to acquire Chinese characters.

However, when my cousin T asked me to tutor her for her advanced Chinese homework in college the other day, I was surprised to learn that she doesn't have some basic concepts of radicals even after learning Mandarin for 3 years (and she just returned from China after being an exchanged student there for 1 year, not mention using the radicals to look up a word in the dictionary). Cousin T was totally surprised to know that there are actually some easy and fun ways to remember characters!

Anyways, if you're going to teach or learn Mandarin, I highly recommend you to teach/learn the 214 radicals (yeah, I know it sounds a lot... but it definitely helps! Learn at least 50 of them) right from the beginning. What I like to do is, when I start teaching the initials (consonants in English) of Pin-Yin, I'll use the radicals as the example words for these sounds (or you can use words that are going to show up in the first 3 lessons as examples):

• t: 土 tu(3) earth, soil, ground, dirt.

土tu(3) is the radical for "在" (preposition: in, on, at) ,"地"(ground), "坐"(to sit) that students are going to learn soon in the beginning level.

• r: 人ren(2) a person.

人ren(2) is the radical for "你"（you)，"他"(male he/him/his)，"休" (to rest)， which all contains some "human" actions.

• k: 口 kou(3) mouth, opening, sounding

口(3) is the radical for “呢”"吗“(both question markers), "吃”(eat)

Or you can simply google "Chinese radicals", you can find all the info you need.

One interesting thing happened in my tutoring class yesterday. When my student P was learning a new word "消炎药" in the "Going to a Doctor" lesson, after he saw the pin-yin, he first pronounced the word correctly, then I asked him not to peek at the English meaning, tried to make a wild guess first.

He located the first character with a vertial "water" radical on the left, the 2nd character with 2 "fire" radicals, then the 3rd character has a "herbal, grass,plant" radical on the top... So, he guessed this must be some kind of "antibiotics", because it looks like some sort of "herbs" you can use as the "water" to put out 2 big "fire" in your body?

Bingo!

The beauty of radicals...

It might seem hideously slow at the beginning when you try to incorporate radicals into teaching each word (sure I'll skip some tricky words without even mention their radicals in the beginning level). Well, just like any English speakers who want to achieve a higher level of proficiency or enter the "spelling bee" contests, you have to take Latin lessons to learn all those prefix, suffix and etymology; so does in learning Chinese.