It is recommended that students of Chinese as a second language be introduced to characters corresponding to new vocabulary, rather than be taught to recognize characters after the words themselves are learned. An approach that breaks each character into its smallest meaningful units, then reassembles them into proper position to form characters, is described. It is also proposed that the teacher incorporate cultural meanings into the instructional content, encouraging students to make associations among character elements, whole characters, and cultural connotations. Games seen as useful for reinforcing and testing listening comprehension, character recognition, and writing include pictionary, bingo, and exercises in de-construction and reconstruction of characters. A brief bibliography is included. (MSE)