听写 Practice at Home: A Week Plan That Works Even If You Can't Read Chinese

The short version: 10 minutes a day from Monday to Thursday, and every minute spent writing words from memory, never copying. Check by comparing shapes with the list, practise only the words that went wrong, and bring the whole list back a few days after the test.

You can run all of it without reading Chinese. The week plan is below, then how to check a page of characters you can't read.

The list comes home on Monday. Thursday night is 45 minutes of copying each word five times, someone ends up in tears, and Friday's 听写 goes fine. Two weeks later, most of the words are gone.

I'm Joshua. We speak English at home, and I couldn't read my daughter's word list either. When she started Primary 1, worksheets weren't sticking and homework sessions were turning into arguments.

The fix is less practice, done differently. Here's a week that works.

Try the deck free

Pick your child's level and I'll email you lessons 1 to 3 of it as an Anki deck. The full level is SGD 199, all six levels SGD 599, with a 60-day money-back guarantee. More about the deck

What's in the sample

Lessons 1 to 3 of your child's level, Standard Chinese, as an Anki deck: 2024 syllabus for P1 to P3, old syllabus for P4 to P6.
Each full level has Standard and Higher Chinese. P1 to P3 come in both the old and the 2024 syllabus.
Open it in Anki on your phone, tablet or computer. Anki is free on Android, Mac and Windows.

The week plan

Day	What to do	Time
Monday	Go through the list: what each word means, how it sounds. Play each one and have your child say it back.	10 min
Tuesday	Play each word; your child writes it from memory. Compare with the list and circle what's wrong.	10 min
Wednesday	Test the whole list again from memory. Rewrite the circled words, then test those once more.	10 min
Thursday	One full test, like Friday's. Practise only what's still wrong. Early night.	10 min
Friday	听写
After the test	Test the same list again 3 days later, then a week later, then 3 weeks later.	5 min each

The two rules that matter: test from memory, and spread it out. Copying a word five times feels like work, but your child is reading it off the page each time, never recalling it.

Testing is what builds memory. In a 2006 study, students who tested themselves on a passage remembered 56% of it a week later; students who re-read it remembered 42%. And four short sessions beat one long one: in 1885 Hermann Ebbinghaus found that 38 repetitions spread over three days worked as well as 68 crammed into one day.

The Thursday-night marathon was the problem. Copying a word over and over keeps it on the page in front of your child, so nothing has to come out of memory, and one long session is about the least efficient way to spend 45 minutes.

Two findings explain why. In a 2006 study, students who tested themselves on a passage remembered 56% of it a week later; students who re-read it remembered 42%. And in 1885 Hermann Ebbinghaus found that 38 repetitions spread over three days worked as well as 68 crammed into one day.

How to check when you can't read the characters

Checking a 听写 is matching shapes, which anyone can do. Put your child's page beside the list and compare each character stroke by stroke:

Count the parts. Most characters are built from smaller pieces. 他 and 她 share the right-hand part (也) and differ only on the left.
Look for the one-stroke slips. 木 and 本 differ by a single short stroke. A missing dot or a stroke that doesn't cross is the most common mistake.
Circle, don't correct. Your child finds and rewrites the mistake. Seeing it themselves is part of the practice.

For the sound, play a recording rather than reading the pinyin aloud yourself, so your child hears the tones right. Writing on squared paper (田字格, a box per character) makes the shapes easier to compare.

After Friday

The week plan gets the words through the test. What keeps them is the last row: bringing each list back a few days later, then a week later, then three weeks later. A word that comes back just before it would be forgotten lasts longer each time.

Doing that for every list, all year, is a lot to track on paper. Which words from three lists ago are due this week? Why spaced repetition beats cramming has more on how the timing works.

Where the deck fits

The MOE Chinese Anki Deck does the tracking. Anki brings each word back just before it would be forgotten, so the lists from earlier in the year keep coming back without you scheduling anything.

Every word in the MOE syllabus, P1 to P6, lesson by lesson to match school, Standard and Higher Chinese.
Writing cards for every character your child must write, with stroke order: your child writes it, then checks it against the card.
Natural Mandarin audio, pinyin and English on every card, so you can follow along even if you don't read Chinese.
10-15 minutes a day. Within 4 months, my daughter could read and recognise every P1 word.
The free sample is lessons 1 to 3 of your child's level, Standard Chinese. A full level is SGD 199 (all six SGD 599), with a 60-day money-back guarantee.

More for parents: How to help your child with Chinese · Chinese in an English-speaking family · Child struggling with Chinese? · How to remember Chinese characters

Sources

56% against 42% a week later: Roediger, H. L., & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning: taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17(3), Experiment 1. The students were university students reading prose.
38 repetitions over three days against 68 in one: Ebbinghaus, H. (1885). Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology, chapter 8, section 34 (English translation, 1913).

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听写 practice at home, even if you can't read Chinese