[wintertime]

An excellent memory (in addition to vast amounts of time) is also required to be able to read Mandarin at a literary level. Most people would be surprised to discover how few ideographs the average Chinese knows (1000 characters (words) is all that is needed to understand over 90% of Chinese publications, and even the average university graduate only knows about 6,000 characters). .....achilles2000/p>

The pictographs, being a high stylized "picture", does help clue the reader to the meaning of the word. This unlike whole word English where the jumble of letters give no clue whatsoever.

knowing that I don't have the perfect system that will always deliver 100% reading skill for every child all the time.....FateAmenableToChange/p>

From this sentence am I to conclude that you **are* government teacher on one of our nation's socialist-entitlement K-12 schools?

Where are the studies that separate out what is learned in the classroom ( due to the teacher's efforts) and what is learned well before the child enters school due private or home pre-schooling, or outside of school due to afterschooling by the parents and tutors.

Without careful studies, although you may be working very hard, It could be that you are teaching nothing at all.

[BobL]

Thanks for outing him. I guess to survive in that environment you really have to believe all that crap. The ones that don’t - leave.

[achilles2000]

“The pictographs, being a high stylized “picture”, does help clue the reader to the meaning of the word.”

Only slightly, and not in many instances. Of course, teachers do try to connect the characters’ shapes with some sort of “story” relating to what they mean. But those connections are more a matter of imagination than any real resemblance.