# 1.7 How to memorise and combine characters

In Chinese, some characters can look a bit like the objects they represent and so often a good way to memorise the characters is to imagine them pictorially.

For example, the character for a person ‘rén’ is 人, which looks like a person walking:

Figure 4 The character ‘rén 人’, meaning person, looks like a person walking.

To learn how to write this character, download the Chinese@OU app to your mobile device and go to Lesson 3, writing section.

A second example of how Chinese characters can be turned into an image that relates to its meaning is the word for ‘big’. Imagine a person with their arms wide open to signal something is big; the character for big, ‘dà 大, looks just like that.

Figure 5 The character ‘dà 大’ , meaning big, looks like a person standing with their arms wide open.

To learn how to write this character, download the Chinese@OU app to your mobile device and go to Lesson 6, writing section.

## Activity 5 Word combinations

Based on what you have learned so far in this course, select the correct word combination for the definitions given.

Adult/Big person (dà rén)

大 + 人
大 + 国
中 + 国
医 + 生
学 + 中 + 文
我 + 们

We (wŏ mén)

大 + 人
大 + 国
中 + 国
医 + 生
学 + 中 + 文
我 + 们

China (zhōng guó)

大 + 人
大 + 国
中 + 国
医 + 生
学 + 中 + 文
我 + 们

A power (a dominant country) (dà guó)

大 + 人
大 + 国
中 + 国
医 + 生
学 + 中 + 文
我 + 们

Doctor (yī shēng)

大 + 人
大 + 国
中 + 国
医 + 生
学 + 中 + 文
我 + 们

Study Chinese (xué zhōng wén)

大 + 人
大 + 国
中 + 国
医 + 生
学 + 中 + 文
我 + 们

OpenLearn - Beginners’ Chinese: a taster course
Except for third party materials and otherwise, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence, full copyright detail can be found in the acknowledgements section. Please see full copyright statement for details.