138 Chinese characters* radicals + 500 charactersThe traditional teaching method made chinese very difficult. If the teaching method is correct, Chinese system is as easy as, and maybe easier than other language systems in the world. The basic teaching unit of chinese putonghua is sentence, not word. while the basic teaching unit of the reading and writing of chinese is character. The nature of Chinese language listening and speaking is skill training and the aim is to focus on recognizing sentences: to master a certain number of sentences for communicating; while the nature of Chinese reading and writing is a kind of characters learing and the aim is to fix on recognizing characters, while means to get a mastery of 2500 common characters.
