The Chinese Character Writing Manual, written in accordance with the “List of Chinese Characters for Handwriting” in Chinese Proficiency Grading Standards for International Chinese Language Education co-released by China’s Ministry of Education and State Language Commission, is a practical Chinese character learning, writing and practice book for Chinese language learners. Following the new orientation towards “the appropriate separation between Chinese character reading and writing, and the gradual progress in the number of Chinese characters for handwriting” specified in The Standards, the Chinese Character Writing Manual aims at improving learners’ Chinese character writing skills, increasing their Chinese character learning efficiency, and making Chinese character learning more to the point.

The Chinese Character Writing Manual is composed of three volumes – elementary, intermediate, and advanced, respectively including 300, 400, and 500 of the Chinese characters for handwriting listed in The Standards, i.e., 1,200 in total. Within each volume, every 20 Chinese characters form one unit, which learners can finish learning and practicing in one day; at the end of each unit is a test to check mastery of the Chinese characters in this unit. To help learners better learn, understand and use Chinese characters, the Chinese characters in the Chinese Character Writing Manual are arranged in ascending order of number of strokes and difficulty to write and are introduced from the aspects of “pronunciation”, “English definition”,“level”, “example word of the same level”, “strokes and stroke order”, “other pronunciations”, etc. Grids are provided for learners to copy Chinese characters so as to synchronize “recognizing”,“writing” and “memorizing”.

As “Chinese characters” are an important part of the “four-dimension benchmarks”, this book caters to learners’ practical Chinese character writing needs and uses The Standards as a guideline in the hope that learners can master the method of writing Chinese characters efficiently and concretely, improve their Chinese character writing skills, and strengthen their proficiency at Chinese characters.