Chinese Handwriting & Composition 🖋 What Works and Doesn't Work

[kirchara]

Six-year-old's Handwriting		Eleven-year-old's Handwriting
What works for Brooks:	What doesn't work for Brooks:	What works for River:	What doesn't work for River:
- Tracing characters on paper with finger	- Tracing characters on paper with pencil	- Tracing characters on paper with finger AND pencil	-
- Writing small AND big characters	- Writing complicated characters in a small space	- Writing small characters	-
- Free-writing with a pencil/pen/marker	- Free-writing with an inkbrush not preferred	- Free-writing with an inkbrush	- Free-writing with pencil doesn't work as well as with inkbrush
- Providing a beautiful model to copy	-	Somewhat works: - Providing a beautiful model to copy	-
- Pointing out the ratio of the character components	-	- Pointing out the ratio of the character components	-
- Pointing out radicals and character components	-	- Pointing out radicals and character components	-

Six-year-old's Composition/Writing Skills		Eleven-year-old's Composition/Writing Skills
What works for Brooks:	What doesn't work for Brooks:	What works for River:	What doesn't work for River:
- Telling me what he wants to say, and I write it down for him	-	- Telling me what he wants to say, and I write it down for him	-
- Substituting pinyin for characters that he doesn't know	-	-	-
- Changing the words in sentences from books and songs to fit his life story	-	- Reading Chinese books and singing songs	-
-	-	- Coming up with fantastical/outlandish sentences and questions	-
- Circling	- He seems to need more input before coming up with his own questions.	- Asking him to come up with his own questions at the end of a TPRS Circling session	-

Comments

Added an image link

[kirchara]

http://downloads.kirchara.com/Chinese/yan2liu2_Brooks.jpg

What works for my six-year-old: Provide a beautiful model to copy.

Tuesday evening Brooks asked me what "lava" is in Chinese*, and copied it from the Written Chinese dictionary app on my phone (https://dictionary.writtenchinese.com/worddetail/yanliu/28779/2/1)

He has never written 岩 or 流 before. Yes, that is his handwriting. He does know how to write 山 and 石.

FYI 岩流 Trad. 巖流 (yán liú) is actually rock flow, according to Pleco dictionary. 熔岩 (róng yán) is lava and 熔岩流 (róng yán liú) is lava flow.

* Nope, I didn't know what it was!