Learning about the characters was very useful for me. It helped me to understand the connections between similar characters and also taught me a few new vocabulary words. I also feel that I gained an understanding in the thinking of Chinese people and culture by learning about these characters. Distinguishing between the strokes also helped me to recognize the differences between similar characters. I love the lack of English used in this course as well.

One major con for this course is that the tests require that students have some intermediate understanding of Chinese grammar. If this course is truly for beginners, then either those grammar aspects should be explained in the course or the fill in the blank sentences should be altered in some way that allows students to answer with limited knowledge of grammar. The good thing is that there's usually only one or two questions like that on each test. Also, some of the slides in the middle of the course also got messed up in some way where they skip over characters or repeat characters multiple times. That was confusing, but not impossible to understand. It needs to be fixed though.

Thanks to everyone who put this course together. I appreciate your hard work. 谢谢您们。

A very wise native Chinese once told me, when I first began thinking about learning Chinese, that learning to write and read Chinese characters is paramount to learning Chinese language and culture. These days, there's far too little emphasis on learning to read and write Chinese. The focus is on speaking only at the simplest conversation level, often excluding listening in many cases. This course will get you on the right path toward learning Chinese properly, especially if you want to advance. The course is very well designed. You won't be disappointed in the long run. Learning to read and write Chinese is a long and sometimes difficult process which leads to insight. I wish there were more courses like this one!

The Good.

I appreciate the video transcription. Rather than watch the videos, I rely on the transcription to populate my SRS (spaced repetition system) tool.

I value image use within quiz questions. Although I don't watch videos, I am able to open a quiz and retrieve images to use with my SRS.

The Bad.

Errors. Errors found by students and captured in forum posts remain unresolved.

Feedback. Quizzes fail to evaluate progress. Slides systematically focus on stroke type, stroke order, and vocabulary introduction. Some quiz questions evaluate a students vocabulary knowledge. However, quiz questions do not qualify stroke type or order. Furthermore, after only a few lessons a third of the quiz questions evaluate grammar through sentence based prompts. Since the facilitator failed to provide grammar guidance within class videos and quiz questions do not qualify stroke type or order, quizzes fail to evaluate the student's comprehension of the course material. Please ensure every quiz question may be answered through content presented in the videos.

Partial Compromise.

iPhone and Memrise, the touch screen driven SRS. I used the syllabus, transcripts, Pleco app. and memrise.com to create my own training material and quiz questions. iPhone's "Chinese (Simplified) - Handwriting" keyboard allows me to practice stroke type and order. Memrise.com allows me to enter answers from with the Handwriting keyboard. In instances I forget the meaning of a character, I use the Handwriting keyboard to feed the Pleco app. and look up the meaning.

Grammar - The Gap.

I did not find an online grammar reference that followed the syllabus and offered guidance as well as reading material. To answer grammar dependent quiz questions I guessed. When I guessed wrong, I relied on Google Translate to do a better job at guessing.

Hard, but so well worth the effort. After finishing the class, I am not intimidated to writing in Mandarin Chinese any more. The pace is quite sustained, so do not skip, as the lessons are carefully strung together so as to make the building blocks of the foundation of the written language more understandable, like a building code. 15-stroke words? Fine! I now can decipher their components AND I remember the vocabulary a lot better, because it is anchored as a visual marker as well. Good luck! Keep practicing! I loved every moment of my class and cannot recommend it highly enough.

The course is very useful for learning stroke order, although it doesn't say why stroke order is important.

A few things in the tests I had to look up in an online Chinese dictionary. Also I used this dictionary for further definitions when I paused the videos to write the additional vocabulary: https://chinese.yabla.com/chinese-english-pinyin-dictionary.php?

Overall this course is a very useful introduction to Simplified Chinese and I really enjoyed learning the characters. I find writing Chinese characters very relaxing. This course gradually introduces more and more characters and I feel like I have learned a lot.

No English subtitles. No teacher explaining lessons. No nothing

Well Worth the Effort!

Having just completed the HSK Prep Certification Course, I knew I needed to focus on recognizing and understanding basic Chinese Characters. Completing this course has required me to continue daily contact with the Mandarin language skills from the HSK course and improve (somewhat), the vital reading and (to some extent) writing skills necessary to fully develop facility with this language.

I recommend this course of study specifically for those who've had an introduction to Mandarin, since the material here is (in my opinion) contextual and (of course) grounded in the grammatical structures of Mandarin, without a prior introduction this course material may appear abstract and self-referential.

I found the course to be a reinforcement of the lessons learned and not-quite learned during my HSK Prep course. Thank you for the well structured opportunity to continue my growth.

Very good course! Some of the exercises are a bit hard, but all in all I'm just grateful that it's free and that it teaches well!

Thank you for letting me study with you through this course. I can't afford a Mandarin course at the moment so thank you so much!

I want to recommend this is the best course for all beginners, all lessons are very clear to understand and perfect explanation

Gracias por permitirme introducir en el maravilloso universo de los caracteres chinos.

A helpful and insightful course when learning Chinese characters. Just keep in mind, it's better to know some basics of Chinese before starting this course.

The video lectures/presentations quality could have been better, they look quite messy at times.

The lesson is good, but the audio is very bad. The voice is hard to listen to, need to adjust it to very high. Please fix the audio.

"Chinese Characters for Beginners" (汉字) provided by Peking University is an exceptional course that introduces learners to the fascinating world of Chinese characters. The course takes a step-by-step approach, making the complexities of character writing and recognition accessible to beginners. With Peking University's renowned expertise, the course offers comprehensive learning resources and engaging lessons. Whether it's understanding stroke order or grasping character meanings, this course excels in delivering a solid foundation in Chinese characters. Highly recommended for anyone venturing into the captivating realm of written Chinese.

Hermoso curso gracias terminé con buenas calificaciones. Sugerencia deberían dar un diploma de reconocimiento como insentivo donde de diga que terminó la cursada con éxito pq para muchos que trabajamos y estudiamos se nos hace pesada el proyecto que uno realiza para tener un mayor conocimiento. Tengo 60 años enseño a niños y adolecente y siempre los estoy animando a seguir. Por eso pienso que un reconocimiento sería bueno para aquellos que quizás les he difícil certificarse. Gracias Coursera por la posibilidad de aprender.Por favor considerenlo

I enjoyed my learning experience in this class and would continue on learning. I would like to take the next level Chinese characters for beginners 2. The instructor is very knowledgeable and I enjoy her teaching. Thank you very much. I also suggest to those that would like to learn the Chinese language to take the Chinese Characters for beginners first to build the foundation in learning how to read and write and understand the language. Again thank you. I took Chinese 101 in college as my electives and would like to learn more.

Мне понравился курс. Задания тестов бывают трудными, поскольку там присутствует грамматика, которой в видео-уроках нет, но со словарями это можно преодолеть - все-таки это самообучение. Информации много, подана она достаточно логично. Конечно, требуется много самостоятельной работы (о чем было сказано еще в начале курса) - отрабатывать написание иероглифов каждый день. Будьте готовы к интенсивному обучению. И отличная графика, музыка - умиротворяет и настраивает на рабочий лад. Спасибо за курс!

Hello Dear

I have pass through by learnt a lot of knowledge from this course about Chinese Character for Beginner and it well prepared due to how is organised and it is not easy to pass through it because require high attention to understand different character

I really enjoy for this course and i hope that i have same basic about Chinese language which can help for the communication Purpose.

Thank you Coursera Team with Peking University to give me the chance of study this Course.

I like that this course taught us chinese character that has the same radical together, it makes reference much more easier. In the beginning of lesson the course use antonym to teach which again makes learning interesting. In the practice questions, some words were not taught so can be quite frustating thinking that i have forgotten about the words BUT nothing can't be learn with google translator! Will definitely go for course 2 after i have mastered the existing charaters.

Was an easy to follow, understand, learn and write short course. I am able to read more Chinese characters now and I am really happy about the progress. Learning how a word is connected to its base character was explained well, hence, makes it easier to remember how to read and write a complete word in Chinese. Moving on to the next level! Thank you..