What is your opinion on the most efficient way to learn the characters? Are there any read/write software programs available?

Zap Chinese has a link that shows you how to write the radicals, you might want to check this our.

Hi there, have a look at the Grammar and Culture lessons. Each lesson will cover a few basic words and how they are made up. Chinese characters are mostly composed of two parts, one part implies the meaning and the other tells about the pronunciation. When you come across a word, it is helpful to look at the components and to break it down to see what the parts mean and why they are there. When it comes to writing, it is good to learn the basic strokes first, then radicals. There are some good reference books for writing. "Writing Chinese Characters" is one of them. Have a look online, I'm sure you can get a used copy quite cheap. Enjoy your day!

Hi Mike, I can recommend a book titled "Reading & Writing Chinese" by William McNaughton. Publisher is Tuttle Language Library. Barryh

__http://www.nciku.com__ !!! awesome. :D

I see it is some time since this question was raised...however, if you or others are looking for assistance to write the characters, while there are many options, I can recommend... "Reading and Writing Chinese" by William McNaughton from the Tuttle Language Library.

While there is a lot of debate on this, it is hard to imagine anyone beating the speed of mnemonics based character training with rote memorization. Heising, Matthews both have the mnemonics-based training. Some students mastered around 1,000 hanzi in 4 months with one of these. Your mileage will vary. Rote memorization will take a lot longer. No way around it.