你好！I'm a new student here. Just want to ask, should I practice writing while learning to listen, speak and read in Chinese? Or do I have to focus on the last 3 first? How do you guys incorporate your learning session in writing? Thank you :)

你好 just continue learning

你好 Naufal, I don't write every word into a notebook that is divided into A-Z pages. I write words of importance (my importance) with a couple of sentence examples to help me remember things such as a grammar point, or a complicated character.

Writing can be very useful for kinaesthetic and visual learners, as it provides another stimulus to get language into long-term memory. As you use your own handwriting, it might help you to recognise other writing not written with clear computer fonts.

Thank you so much Lee for the tips. Really appreciate it!

Try Skritter you can write them as you learn them

Skritter is your friend indeed.

Thank you!

In my experience, it's rare for anyone to write Chinese. Think of yourself right now. How often do you actually pull out a pen and paper to write something? Now, how often do you type something on your phone or computer? I'm guessing the second one with far outnumber the first many times over. For me, I go for days or weeks without hand writing anything.

My recommendation is to practice recognizing characters, but don't waste too much time actually remembering all the strokes. Likely, the majority of your interactions in Chinese will be in WeChat, online, signs, or printed documents. Even if you come across handwritten Chinese, practicing writing on your own won't necessarily help with that since many people use some kind of shorthand, and it can be very sloppy. Sometimes, even my wife (native Chinese) can't read a person's writing.

I can read and write all kinds of Chinese characters using my phone or computer, but I couldn't hand write them all to save my life. Yet, it's almost never stopped me from communicating. After 4 years of living in China, the only times I've needed to hand write something was my name or address for official documents.

Therefore, use hand writing Chinese as a memory tool, but do not focus too much on it. Don't let a few poorly written characters stop you from moving to the next lesson. Recognition is going to get you communicating much faster. That goes for both reading and typing (since typing in Chinese is simply using pinyin then clicking the correct character).

Good luck on your journey!

Joshua thank you for your explaination. This is what I am looking for. It feels kinda drawback when I put too much effort on the writing. But writing helps me recognize the character. I just need to not over do it that is all I guess. Thanks again, really appreciate it!