Chinese kids struggle with characters

Educators said factors other than the expanding use of technology can be linked to the "character amnesia" phenomenon.

"Chinese students are overloaded with English and math exercises because of the exam-oriented education system," said Chen Longhai, a professor of Chinese literature at Central China Normal University.

In China, students spend a great deal of time completing repetitive exercises in order to get high scores on entrance exams. Most study math and English for long hours on school days, as well as attend classes on weekends and holidays. But few spend any time working to improve their native language skills.

"We have hundreds of Confucius Institutes overseas promoting Chinese language and culture, but our own children feel it unnecessary to study them and are losing interest in them," Chen said.

"The mother tongue is in a state of crisis," he claimed.

"Globalization and modern technology have had a massive impact on traditional Chinese culture and the exam-oriented education system just makes things worse," said Tan Banghe, an expert on high school education from the Ministry of Education. "It's time that we woke up to what's happening and do something about it."

Experts said it is imperative for colleges to join the campaign, as students are not typically required to write their homework out by hand every day upon leaving high school. In addition, many college students focus almost entirely on English in hopes of studying abroad.

"We left high school just two years ago, but my friends and I are often guilty of 'character amnesia' because the only characters we have to write by hand now are our names," said Li Beibei, a 20-year-old student at Wuhan University.

"Each time I can't remember how to write a character, I take out my cellphone and use the pinyin method to find out," she said.H Hua Qian, a politics teacher at Hubei University of Technology, said "we need calligraphy classes at college. Nowadays, we hardly ever see beautiful handwriting on students' exam papers. Instead, there are incorrectly written characters and hasty, barely decipherable scrawls."

"Every educator and school should make their students read classic books and practice calligraphy," said Zhang, "because our language and culture are treasures we can't afford to lose."