A better way to learn Chinese? That’s the title of an awesome article I just read about. It discusses –

a) the frustrations of current language teaching methods in China, and

b) one team’s research into finding a mathematical answer to the problem

The fact that even Chinese people forget some of the basic 3,500 characters needed to communicate effectively in the language had me nodding my head in embarrassed agreement, as I read this link.

However, a Beijing-based professor and his team have been working on a mathematical approach, focusing on the order in which characters are learnt, which may make learning Chinese characters a lot simpler than previously thought/taught.

Note to self: contact the professor and find out what plan is in place to exploit this new found knowledge.