Accompanying Textbook 1 of Pep up Your Chinese series and based on the new characters in the textbook, the Workbook of Chinese Characters describes basic requirements for writing Chinese characters and provides related writing exercises centering on the basic strokes, stroke order, components and structures of Chinese characters. The purpose is to help students master the basic strokes and stroke order of Chinese characters, learn the common components and basic structures, and cultivate their abilities to correctly analyze character structure and to recognize and form words. Lesson 1 introduces basic knowledge of Chinese characters; lessons 2 to 10 provide practice of writing characters learnt in the textbook, giving priority to the practice of strokes and order of strokes, as well as the practice of related components and structures; lesson 11 to 20 focus on the practice of components and structures, with special emphasis on training students to master the association of components with characters. The writing exercises take words as the unit, with “田”-shaped squares provided for students to write characters in a convenient way. The characters are mainly those that appear in the current lesson, with some learnt in the previous ones. The reoccurrence of the characters reinforces the connection between the old and new characters and consolidates learning. The main goal of this workbook is to help students develop the ability to write Chinese characters within a short period of time. Mastery of the names of basic strokes and components is not required. The book can be used by teachers as supplementary teaching material in the classroom, or as a workbook for students’ independent practice.

All the members of compilation group are teachers teaching Chinese as foreign language in Beijing Luhe High School.