Practical Cursive Flashcard Deck

$29.99

⚠️ Warning: This deck uses videos to display stroke order animations, which isn’t an officially supported Anki feature. Make sure you download and test the demo to confirm it works on your system before purchasing the deck. There is a version available with animated GIFs that should work on almost any system (see demo below), but at the cost of lower-quality video and greater storage requirements (1.4 GB versus ~0.8 GB). Some customers have had problems downloading large files from my hosting provider; one of the files available after purchasing this product is a text file with mega.nz download links for everything, including the animated GIF and iOS versions of this deck.

Learn the cursive writing style you’ll never see in Chinese class. Contains stroke order animations for 3,000 characters written by a professional calligrapher.

25 common characters: 六 书 使 医 路、支 生 些 每 较 、分 片 米 距 数、区 远 制 家 舞、兄 证 宴 城 赢
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Description

30% of all proceeds from selling this product will be donated to UNICEF.

product features

  • Animations for all 3,000 characters on the new HSK 3.0 standards, written in an abbreviated yet beautiful cursive 行书 style. A 1,200-character subset of the deck has an additional animation written by another calligrapher, sourced from the original iteration of this product.
  • Each flashcard shows the printed character, a high-resolution scan of the written form, and a stroke order animation.
  • Model characters written by a professional calligrapher.
  • 200 pages of printable character tracing 临摹 practice sheets.
  • No DRM or subscription fees! Buy it once and study it forever. (I only ask that you don’t share these flashcards with others because that directly reduces the amount of money this project is able to donate to UNICEF.)
  • Powered by Anki, the free and open-source spaced repetition flashcard program. Purchasing this product will immediately enable the download of an approximately 0.8 GB Anki .apkg file containing the flashcards. You will need to download and install Anki onto your computer to start studying them. Apps for Android and iOS are available, but they work best if used in tandem with the desktop program.

free demo

Download a free 40-card demo here:

Check out an example tracing practice page here.

learn how to write like an adult

When young Chinese first start learning to write, they are exclusively taught to use a 楷书 (kǎishū, or “regular script”) writing style. Once they get older, however,  their high school teachers and college professors expect them to understand cursive writing forms drawn from a 1500-year-old calligraphic tradition. The teaching methods you’ll encounter in Chinese class have been heavily influenced by early childhood education, which means your teacher will drill you endlessly on 楷书 stroke order but you’ll be stumped the first time your Chinese coworker hands you a handwritten note!

Flattery is a national sport in China. Your Chinese friends may coo over your scrawled characters like a newborn babe, but the sad fact is that most Chinese-learners have the handwriting of an eight-year-old.

You may be able to read 垃圾桶 on the board to the left, but how many characters can you recognize from the geometry lesson for older students? (photographs by Anthony Albright, CC BY-SA 2.0)

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