听写: how a Chinese spelling test works, and how to practise for one at home
听写 means "listen and write". The teacher says a word; the class writes it from memory. It is the weekly test most Chinese primary classrooms run, and it is the reason handwriting practice has a shape.
What happens in a 听写?
The teacher reads a word from the week's list, once or twice, and waits. Each child writes it on a squared page — usually a 米字格, the square crossed by a vertical, a horizontal and two diagonals — from memory, with nothing to copy. Then the next word. At the end the page is marked character by character: a character with a wrong or missing stroke is wrong, not nearly right.
What it tests is production, not recognition. A learner who can pick 安静 out of four options may still not be able to produce it, and 听写 is where that gap shows.
What is the 米字格 for?
The lines are reference points. A Chinese character is balanced inside its square, and the centre cross tells you where the middle is before you have drawn anything. Writing the same character on blank paper and in a 米字格 produces two different results for a beginner, and the difference is proportion.
How do you practise 听写 at home?
- Say the word, do not show it. The point is producing it from sound and meaning; a word on the table is a copying exercise.
- Write it once, in order. Stroke order is part of the answer.
- Check it character by character. A missing stroke is the thing to catch.
- Put the wrong ones aside and come back to them — the same evening, then two days later. A word written correctly twice, days apart, has been learned; a word written correctly twice in a minute has been copied.
The last step is the one that is easy to skip and the one that does the work.
What does the app do?
The 听写 tab runs the same thing on a screen: it says the word, you write it stroke by stroke on a 米字格, and it tells you which stroke went wrong rather than only whether the whole word was. Words written wrongly go to a 错词本 and come back on a schedule; words written cleanly are kept in the learner's own handwriting in the chapter's ledger.
The 汉字 tab is the same writing surface without the test around it: find any of 1,780 characters by pinyin or by pasting it, watch the strokes, then write it. Both are free, with no account.
How many characters should a week's list hold?
In this catalogue a lesson's list is the words of that lesson — usually seven, which is between eight and fifteen characters depending on their length. That is about what a week holds in a classroom, and it is short enough to be written twice.