It should come as no surprise that I don’t agree, but let’s see if I can explain why! First, writing Chinese by hand is not a binary skill as you imply. There’s a whole range of possible states from “barely being able to communicate basic things in writing” to “Chinese native speaker who just finished high school”. As a teacher, I’m happy if I can recall 95% of the 5000 most common characters or so, even if it takes some time to recall. After finishing my master’s program, no-one has required me to write a lot. I still could, but it would be slow. I think this is acceptable and it’s not about hoodwinking anyone, this is how I study myself. If I aspired to write as quickly as someone who just finished high school, I would need to spend several hours per day on just handwriting and would still fall short. This is why this is a minimum approach.

I also think that learning to write let’s say 500-1000 characters by hand is good for character understanding and vocabulary retention, even if reading is your ultimate goal rather than handwriting. So I (almost) never recommend students to skip handwriting altogether. In general, there are many different ways of learning and maintaining the ability to write by hand in Chinese and this article presents my own way of reaching my goals while spending as little time as possible. It might not be the right for you, of course, especially if you don’t share the same goals as I do!

Alright. Firstly, is there a such thing as a minimum approach to writing? You either learn it or you don’t. The first stipulation suffices. But the second doesn’t. If you are having to bust your brain just to write down a sentence, it will be used as proof that you are not proficient in the language you are writing. You may “prove” that you can write, but it will be like that illiterate person who just learned the alphabet, and has to jog his brain just to write down a simple collection of words.

If you wan’t a minimal approach to writing, then don’t even bother to learn it. That’s the only realistic minimal approach that exists. Otherwise it is a full out effort. Don’t hoodwink learners of this language. Speed is definitely important. You aren’t going to do anything useful with writing if you are writing at a snails speed. You’ll have forgotten everything you were writing by the time you finish the first sentence.

Thanks for sharing! I think real-world based learning is excellent and should be used whenever possible. Just downloading a list of language commonly found on signs just isn’t the same as doing what you describe here. By the way, I actually found a list with street sign Chinese: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~dporter/sampler/allsigns.html

I often see signs or texts I can’t quite read. So I take a picture to decipher them later. I create a note on Evernote, insert the photo, and write what I see.

Pleco is the easy way to write as it’s forgiving with stroke order and time, but my phone’s Chinese writing input tool is more challenging. On Android I use Google Pinyin, which (as its name doesn’t say) allows drawing input. It’s faster and puts more pressure on me, since I have to write fast and more like a native writer.

Later I look up the words on Pleco or input the text into Google Translation or whatever, but I’m finding it’s good practice to write what I see in this way. Futzing with OCR often doesn’t work well for me anyway. Copying bits of text also lets me practice writing in context, unlike SRS systems characters or words are practiced in isolation.

As a simple example, here are two signs in a coffee shop I wanted to make sure I understood this morning:
http://www.evernote.com/l/AIwU1kYk7kxP1KMqjB23Cd8yco2YpFLMlmE/
[Translation: Put away the tray and don’t hog the space — OK I knew that already :D]