Unlike English, Chinese characters are so-called square pictographs or ideographs. The following is shown as a comparative Chart of Chinese and English.

Chinese characters can be analyzed into one or more components 部件[bù jiàn]. The simplest case is those characters of only one component, i.e., 獨體字[dú tǐ zì] simple characters. These early-formed characters were made to represent the syllable in speech directly using the outward appearance of the things that they stand for.

Since the tradition of teaching Chinese characters using 三百千 Three, Hundred and Thousand was thrown into question, attempts were made in the fifties to break away with it.

The most traditional way to teach Chinese characters is the use of 三字經 Three Character Scripture (Three), 百家姓 Hundred Family Names (Hundred) and 千字文 A Thousand Characters (Thousand), or in short 三百千 Three, Hundred and Thousand, which had been widely in use all over China for more than a thousand years (張志公, 1999, pp. 3-42).

A more meaningful way to learn the written forms of the characters is to take advantage of the historical origin of how the characters were created as they were in ancient time (i.e., 字理識字(learning the characters by rationales)).

Children in China learn the characters in schools by learning to use them in practice. This can be clearly seen in the way that most popular school textbooks for the primary level Chinese language subject are organized.