Essays
Chinese Character Drawing Apps, Honestly Assessed
Drawing is the right instinct and tracing is the wrong implementation. What a drawing app can do that paper cannot, and the five checks that separate the two kinds.
Lawrence Arya··10 min
Essays
Character Amnesia: Why Writing Fades First
Knowing a word and being unable to write it has a name, a mechanism and a fix. Why typing causes it, why native speakers get it too, and what reverses it.
Lawrence Arya··10 min
Research
Spaced Repetition for Hanzi Writing
Spacing works for character writing with one change: the item must ask you to produce, not recognise. Intervals, grading rules, and the load that ends most systems.
Lawrence Arya··10 min
Research
Does Tracing Help You Learn Chinese Characters?
Tracing helps once per character and stops helping after. What it genuinely teaches, why repetition disappoints, and the one-trace rule that keeps the benefit.
Lawrence Arya··10 min
Playbooks
Coming Back to Chinese After a Long Break
The predictable failure is opening the old review backlog. The workable route is a cold test, fifty chosen characters, ten minutes a day, and nothing new for a week.
Lawrence Arya··10 min
Playbooks
Practising Hanzi From Memory: The Whole Method
Recall practice is the one method that rehearses writing rather than recognising. The four-step loop, why it works, how to set it up, and the three ways it fails.
Lawrence Arya··10 min
Essays
Shatter the Character on a Stroke-Order Slip? Feedback Design
A character that shatters when you draw out of order is more fun than a red X, but good error feedback has to inform, not just punish. Here is what makes stroke-order feedback actually work.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Playbooks
An Apple Watch App to Trace a Quick Character?
An Apple Watch nudge to trace a character sounds handy, but the screen is tiny. Here is what a watch is good for in Chinese practice and what it is not.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Essays
Why Drawing From a Blank Screen Is the Right Way to Practice
Want an app that makes you draw the character from a blank screen, no tracing? That is exactly right: the blank screen forces recall, which is what builds writing.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Essays
Room-Scale Arm-Tracking to Trace Characters: Wrong Scale
Tracing characters with big arm movements in a room-scale VR space trains gross motor, while handwriting is fine motor. It can have value for exercise or rehab, but it won't build the hand for writing.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Essays
Grown-Up Heritage Writing Apps, No Pandas
Heritage adults deserve a serious Chinese writing tool, not pandas and balloons. Here is why adult-appropriate, from-memory practice fits relearning better.
Lawrence Arya··4 min
Essays
A Trace-to-Unlock Daily Hanzi Lock Screen: Good Idea?
A lock screen that makes you trace a daily character before unlocking is a clever habit nudge, but tracing to unlock is recognition, and it gets gamed. A from-memory prompt works better.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Essays
Discord Study Accountability for Writing: What Actually Helps
A Discord bot posting your study time to a leaderboard can boost accountability, but tracking tracing minutes rewards time-spent, not recall, and the timer pressure works against focus. Here is the better setup.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Essays
Drawing a Hanzi From the Dynamic Island?
A Dynamic Island prompt to draw a character sounds slick, but the integration is the easy part. Here is what would actually make a daily writing nudge work.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Research
Dual-Coding and Hiding Pinyin: Training Character Retrieval
Dual-coding theory says we remember things coded both visually and verbally better. For writing recall, that means producing the character's visual form by hand, and hiding pinyin so you retrieve the character, not the sound.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Playbooks
Does E-Ink Refresh Rate Matter for Writing Practice?
E-ink's slow refresh causes lag and ghosting that hurt fast tracing animations, but it matters far less for from-memory writing, where the value is producing the character, not smooth playback.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Essays
Tracking Hanzi, Kanji, and Thai on One Dashboard? Mind the Gaps
A unified retention dashboard across Hanzi, Kanji, and Thai looks impressive, but the scripts are too different to share a meaningful metric, and tracking builds none of them. Here is the honest take.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Essays
Hyperlapse Videos of Your Writing: Aesthetic, Not Learning
A satisfying timelapse of your character writing makes great study content, and it can motivate. But recording pretty videos is a byproduct of practice, not the practice, and it can become a distraction.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Playbooks
Making Your Chinese Handwriting Look Mature, Not Childish
Mature-looking handwriting reads as fluent and confident, not careful and labored. You can't trace your way to it, because tracing looks effortful. Fluency from memory is what looks grown-up.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Essays
A Tamagotchi-Style Pet That Dies If You Skip? On ADHD Motivation
A virtual pet that suffers when you skip practice can motivate through loss aversion, but pet-death punishment risks shame and backfire, especially for ADHD. Reward production, not a tracing streak.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Research
Do Pressure Curves Affect Retention? The Honest Answer
Stylus pressure data is interesting telemetry, but it doesn't drive retention, and offloading memory to a device is the opposite of learning. Retention comes from retrieval, not from measuring strokes.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Essays
What Should a Writing App Validate? Offline and On-Device
Useful validation checks that you produced the character correctly from memory, stroke order and structure, not that you traced a nice shape. And it can do that on-device, offline.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Essays
Could a 1v1 Writing Battle Actually Teach? Design Matters
Real-time 1v1 character battles are technically feasible, but whether they teach depends entirely on one design choice: are players racing to trace, or producing from memory? Only the second builds writing.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Essays
A Multiplayer Hanzi Racing Game: Fun, but Does It Teach?
A real-time racing game where players speed-trace characters is genuinely fun, but it rewards fast tracing, which is recognition and rushing, the opposite of careful from-memory production.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Essays
A Skritter Alternative: Beyond the Guitar Hero Problem
Tracing prompts on Skritter can feel like Guitar Hero: you hit the cues, but that's not playing the song from memory. Here is why, and what a from-memory alternative looks like.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Research
Component-Explosion Animations: A Great Scaffold, Not the Lesson
An animation that explodes a character into its components and rebuilds it in order is a superb way to understand structure. But watching it is recognition, so the learning still needs you to produce.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Essays
A Synced Digital Notebook Won't Recover Your Amnesia
Syncing your handwriting notebook across devices is convenient, but a synced archive still captures ink without testing recall. Character amnesia recovery needs from-memory production, not sync.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Essays
When the Character Evaporates Mid-Stroke
You start writing a character and it vanishes halfway. Here is what to do in the moment, and how to stop it happening, by anchoring to components.
Lawrence Arya··5 min
Playbooks
Writing Mahjong Tile Characters From Memory
Mahjong tiles use a small, fixed set of traditional characters. Here is the whole set, why it is perfect to learn from memory, and how to write each correctly.
Lawrence Arya··4 min
Essays
What Is Blind Drawing for Chinese Characters?
Blind drawing means writing a character from memory with the prompt hidden. It is the single most effective way to practise Hanzi, and it is the core of how Hanzi Write Practice works.
Lawrence Arya··5 min