6 Ways to Improve Your Mandarin Chinese Writing Skills

Writing is the output of the brain after full processing of the input information. We can say that good Mandarin Chinese writing skills should be the last stage of your Chinese language learning. It is a sign of fully mastering of the Chinese language.

Based on this, we can tell that the three core elements to improve Mandarin writing skills are: input, thinking, and output. Input is the prerequisite, thinking is the essence, and output is the result. If you want to learn Chinese writing and improve your writing ability, these three elements are indispensable. To successfully improve your Mandarin Chinese writing skills, you would have to follow the next steps:

Step 1. Improve the quality of INPUT

Only when we continue to get high-quality input can we store enough writing materials in our minds. Only by continuously mastering new knowledge, gaining new perspectives, and generating new thinking can the content be output in a long-term, stable, and high-quality manner in our mind.

Step 2. Train your mind to do critical thinking

Whether you can think deeply is the key to writing a great article.

Step3. Strengthen your ability the output

To achieve these three stages, I’m listing out the following six ways to help you improve your Mandarin writing skill.

Way 1. Increase the input of Chinese materials with good quality

Quantitative changes can produce qualitative changes. In the case of equivalent thinking and expression skills, a person who reads 50 books a year must write good content more consistently and with high quality than a person who reads only two or three books a year.

Reading 50 books a year may seem a little difficult at first glance, but the actual difficulty is persistence. The key to this approach is continuity and stability. You don’t have to spend three or four hours a day reading.  All you need to do is just insist on reading for 1 hour a day. It’s straightforward to set aside an hour a day. You only need to develop the habit of persisting in reading.

Way 2. Set a high screening criterion for the Chinese input materials

Don’t waste time reading junk articles or books, because reading has a cost. The cost of reading a book = the monetary cost of buying a book + the time and opportunity costs of reading. Choosing a worthless book, or a book that you cannot read, not only wastes the money to buy the book but, more importantly, wastes time because, at the same time, you can do other things that may be more meaningful. Therefore, to improve your input standards is to choose good books and good articles to read.

Besides, it is also necessary to uninstall those social media apps that are not nutritious on the mobile phone to avoid them grabbing your attention and consuming your time.

Way 3. Input in a more efficient way

If you read many Chinese books and articles, and the reading standard is not low, but you still feel that your progress is slow, then your Chinese reading is invalid.

To input more efficiently, we must remember a major premise: reading is not the goal; absorption its content is. Your reading goal shouldn’t be like I have to finish reading a few articles today, and I have to finish reading a book this week but should be reading this article to solve a problem, learn a technique, and think about a topic.

Way 4. Set up the connection between the obtained knowledge and new things and remain critical thinking.

When you’re learning a new thing, it is better to think about it first: Is this new knowledge point similar to what you have learned? This is the method of establishing knowledge connection, which allows you to understand the knowledge you have obtained more thoroughly and systematically. This way can also effectively train your critical thinking.

A critical mind can bring you unique opinions. If you want to find out different things and share with everyone in ordinary things, you need critical thinking and unique insights. We don’t have to be writers, but our writing also needs to be thoughtful. Insights and viewpoints, curiosity, and observation of things are all necessary for good Chinese writing.

Way 5. Try to write in high frequency and insist on writing

Writing is craftsmanship, and the most important thing about writing is the impulsive feeling about writing.

The generation and maintenance of the impulsive feeling about writing come from continuous writing.

You don’t have to write five thousand or ten thousand words at every turn. You can write shorter, one or two hundred words, but it’s better to write a little every day.

Way 6. Learn to write both stories and opinions

If you want to improve your Chinese writing ability, you must temper your Chinese narrative ability, that is, your ability to write stories.

People are born to love to read stories. From ancient times to the present, from children to adults, we have always been like this. A good story requires good language structure and expression. This can only be achieved if one can truly use a language proficiently.

If you want to improve your Chinese writing ability, you also need to hone your ability to express your opinions in Chinese. Your Chinese writing can only be considered successful if your views can be expressed clearly and fluently in Chinese.

It’s about time to enroll in the best Chinese learning program to temper your Chinese writing skills now! Keats School would be your best choice!