How I learn(ed) to read Chinese

[sthubbar]

There are other posts about how to learn Chinese in general. This thread is to share specific stories about how you went, or are going, about learning to read Chinese.

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I have gone through 3 different stages of learning to read Chinese

Stage 0 - I refuse to learn how to read - Year 0

My first entry to Chinese was Pimsleur and I fully embraced their audio only method. I refused to look at, write or even think about the idea of learning characters.

Stage 1 - Ok fine, I'll do it - Year 1

After one year I was worn down and decided I would learn a little. I started with John DeFrancis' Beginning Chinese Reader. These books are awesome.

Stage 2 - I gotta learn these darned things faster - Year 2

After about 1 year of the DeFrancis books, I realized that my speed of learning was too slow, so I enrolled here.

Stage 2.5 - Use an SRS - Year 2

I had known about SRSs for a long time, though I finally started using Pleco's flashcards configured as an SRS because I was forgetting characters. At this stage I was adding characters and some words. I was basing my selection from my class characters as well as frequency lists like Junda's.

Stage 3 - Sentences and reading - Year 3

Still being frustrated with forgetting characters and not knowing the meanings. I have currently switched to only studying sentences. I still have quite a few legacy words that are still in my SRS, though I have replaced all of my single characters with sentences. If I want to learn a new character, I must put it in a sentence. I am also doing reading of very elementary books. Things like "Run spot, run".

So, I'm in my third year of studying chinese charactes. I probably recognize about 2500 characters, though I still can't read and I still have a huge dislike for them. It is a stuggle for me every single day.

BTW, I still do zero writing of characters. Besides my name, I don't write characters.

Who else would like to share?

Edited September 11, 2008 at 06:17 AM by sthubbar

[roddy]

Reminds me of this post I wrote up four years or so ago. Theoretically I should have gone through some more stages since then I suppose . . .

[calibre2001]

I actually handwrite the words/characters I learnt and must say it consolidates my memory of the characters despite it being extremely time consuming. The downside is I do forget how to write it after a while but still recognise it.

The thing is to use material that interests you to motivate you to make sure the words sink into your mind.

My recomendation: chinese pop culture material i.e. song lyrics, tv show subtitles, teeny bopper gossip magazines

[Scoobyqueen]

Like Calibre, I also write the characters as it helps retain them. Additionally in my job, I have to be able to quote people verbatim.

The method is through dictation. I listen to a text that is about 2-3 minutes long breaking it down into 2-3 sentences at time. Then write them down and check the result afterwards. The frustration element is a great enhancer for learning.

After a while it gets a lot quicker to write whole sentences and the writing also looks smoother. About 1-2 hours a week.

Ohh by the way, I also end up with a closer relationship with some of the characters.

[sthubbar]

@calibre2001 and Scoobyqueen: Would you be willing to provide more of a timeline of how you have progressed in your learning methods. How did you start? How long have you been learning? What different stages/methods have you gone through? What is your assessment of your current level?

@roddy: I envy you. 3 years of irregular study and you can read. I'm approaching that mark, with regular study, and I'm no where near being able to read.

[renzhe]

When it comes to reading, my study went roughly like this:

1) "I will pick up the characters with some exposure, and through the weekly lessons, I have good memory and lots of talent". Duration: 5 years, result: about 200 characters.

2) Brute force 3000 characters (6000 words) in 2 years.

3) Read "Legend of the Condor Heroes".

There are many systems which claim to help you learn characters faster, and I find that most of them offer valuable insight. But at the end of the day, you need to get brutal and simply do it, regardless of the method. I simply brute forced it with an SRS until things clicked.

I find that the most important period is when you are between 2000 and 3000 characters, as you will have covered most of the stuff you will run into. At this time, you need a lot of reading in order to consolidate the knowledge (copious amounts of comics helped me here -- thousands of pages, literally).

I also found that it gets easier around this point, because this is when most of the radicals and phonetic components sort of start clicking and fitting into their own place, so I found learning characters easier all of a sudden.

Note -- I can't really write. I can write fine, if I can remember exactly which components a character is composed of, but this is only true for a part of the characters. I'm mostly interested in reading, writing is a distant consideration.

[Scoobyqueen]

I have been writing characters for 1.5 years (learning nearly two) and have been complementing that with reading and the use of flashcards also (quizlet).

I thought the progress for writing characters was very slow at first and only after about one year did I feel a sudden (exponential) improvement:

The radicals and the composition of characters seemed to fall in place and that helped the reading especially for characters that looked alike. But I had to stick at it to achieve this level (it has often been boring and very frustrating). I can probably write the first 700-1000 most used characters from memory and recognise 2000-2500.

I can now get the gist of headlines and for newspaper reading use a dictionary (and like Roddy did or does, coffee). For technical texts, I am able to distinguish relatively quickly what are technical terms and names of people and organisations (latter goes for newspapers too). For reading, I use a lot of the intermediate HSK texts (reading section 3) since they seem to use a range of characters. You just have to plug on and on and all of a sudden you will see an improvement. The brain needs time to understand patterns and it organises things partly through having made errors.

[gato]

If I want to learn a new character, I must put it in a sentence. I am also doing reading of very elementary books. Things like "Run spot, run".

So, I'm in my third year of studying chinese charactes. I probably recognize about 2500 characters, though I still can't read and I still have a huge dislike for them. It is a stuggle for me every single day.

It seems that you might be spending too much time on memorizing characters and not enough time on words or practicing reading. 2500 characters should be enough to read most newspapers, as long as you recognize the words.

How about dedicating yourself to reading one newspaper article a day no matter how many new words (as opposed to characters) from now on? You can read it online using Firefox (with the Chinese Perakun plug-in), which makes it easy for dictionary lookup and building a vocab list.

[calibre2001]

I've been actively writing chinese for 1.5 years now. Still can't say I'm consistent in my reading though. I don't write sentences/essays as that isn't my objective at this point of time.

I started off with karaoke songs, tv serial drama subtitles as I wanted to make I understand contemporary mandarin and modern slangs. I used to print out the lyrics and dissect words out of them. I would even pause every single subtitle sentence that popped out. Admittedly it was very tiring at first and I still remember then I could decipher rather than read the words. Thank goodness I now read it instead of interpreting it like an archaeologist would with hieroglyphics. I can read subtitles much faster then when I first started (but still not like light speed as with English subtitles)

Then I progressed on to news articles (BBC chinese is a good website as the chinese level is comparatively low to say Taiwanese newspapers) ,chinese TV guide magazines, chinese teeny bopper magazines and chinese forums. Again I dissect the articles for useful words as above.

When I dissect words, I would write them down on paper, circle it and practice it a few times and move on to other words. Time to time I would actually review the new vocab.

One thing that I've learnt is that chinese vocab is very huge and can be reexpressed in more high-styled language. An example would be '他在睡覺的時候，我應該出來了‘could alternatively be expressed as '他睡之際，你該逃出'. There are plenty of synonyms too i.e. 具有/尚有/有 and 則是/就是. Probably no surprise for the experts here but this kind of things about the language still shock me. There're also plenty of proverbs that writers tend to throw into articles and dialect phrases that are used mostly for writing rather than for speaking.

All in all, I prefer to engage with real life stuff immediately 'cause that was my intended purpose anyway - to engage in the chinese literature world. Plus, it's more fun and lets you know how long more you have to go.

Remember, set an objective and make sure your efforts are geared towards that. For example, if you want to learn the names chinese food dishes and cooking techniques, then focus on that. It gets you to your target sooner and it will motivate you even more.

Right now I realise the problem with my strategy is lack of direction and structure. That's why I'm beginning to wonder whether using HSK material will give some help here.

I honestly do not know how many characters I know but I go for words/phrases/proverbs instead. Leaving out grammatical patterns is something I need to learn up on now.

[querido]

1. Study the "How to learn Chinese" problem

Orient to online coverage of the vast Chinese-learning world, gradually resolving basic technical problems such as fonts, encodings, IME, etc., while always searching for the answer to this question: "Where is the heart of the problem? Where is the bedrock?" For me, the answer is "characters".

Learn pinyin and pronunciation with the attitude that it is, above all, a way to ensure that I learn the characters right.

Study the best book I found locally. (Modern Chinese, A Basic Course "by the faculty of Peking University", Dover 1971, from materials originally published in 1958, with audio. This is still a great book.)

2. Study the "What are the best study materials" problem

My choices:

software- Wenlin, Mnemosyne, Audacity, etc.

books- Cracking the Chinese Puzzles, New Concept Chinese for Children series w/audio, Routledge grammar.

Study mostly New Concept Chinese for Children, characters and audio.

It has been about three years. I believe in my chosen path and I'm happy with my modest progress in my children's-language world. "Growing up" will happen in time, as I am now confident that there is no fundamental obstacle.

我有一双小小手，

一只左来一只右。

小小手， 小小手，

一共十个手指头。

[FadedStardust]

Reading Chinese Characters, for me, came right from the beginning. The reason I started trying to learn the language was because I started watching dramas online and found myself picking up some of the more common phrases/words naturally, just by piecing together what the people said with the English subtitles and the Chinese ones right beneath them.

When I decided I was going to start learning the language earnestly I went with one of the craziest methods a newbie can; that is, I got myself a QQ account, Sogou Pinyin, and StarDict dictionary program and jumped right into clumsy conversation attempts. At first, I would litterally have to copy/paste entire sentences and piece them together word-by-word and then, when I *finally* figured out what the other person had said, I would have to use the dictionary to try to find the right words to express what I wanted to say in my reply.

All of this though, was in addition to watching my beloved dramas, listening to podcasts such as ChinesePod, CLO and iMandarinPod, and one - yes, that's right, ONE - teeny tiny grammar book I bought on Amazon.com entitled "Basic Chinese Grammar and Sentence Patterns - 中文基本文法."

I have no idea how many individual characters I know... I focus more on whole words, because I focus on communication and watching dramas; and even if I could recognize 10,000 single characters (not that I ever expect to ever know NEARLY that many, lol), but not know how to put ANY two into combination to form even one word, knowing those 10,000 characters would do me absolutely not one bit of good.

Unfortunately, one of the results of my willy-nilly approach is that there are plenty of "basic" words that even most newbs know that I don't - simply because I haven't encountered them. Though, on the other hand, there are some more advanced things that I DO know and use quite often, simply because my Chinese friends on QQ use them and have taught them to me.

I don't recommend my approach to anyone unless they are certifiably insane and have a LOT of free time and patience... though I can now read Chinese as fast - or FASTER! - then I can read English, which is my native language, and express myself well enough that I once had to argue with someone I met on QQ who simply refused to believe that I'm not actually Chinese and that I've only been studying the language about a year, lol!

@calibre2001 I'm facing the same lack of structure/direction problem and also have been wondering if I shouldn't focus more on the HSK material... It does seem to be a good idea; I just don't know where to start trying to study it!

[renzhe]

@calibre2001 I'm facing the same lack of structure/direction problem and also have been wondering if I shouldn't focus more on the HSK material... It does seem to be a good idea; I just don't know where to start trying to study it!

Getting an HSK exam preparation book and going through a few of the sample exams should give you a good indication of where you're strong and where you're lacking.

You could take it from there.

[anon6969]

I know iMandarinPod and Chineespod, but what is CLO?

[FadedStardust]

Getting an HSK exam preparation book and going through a few of the sample exams should give you a good indication of where you're strong and where you're lacking.

You could take it from there.

Thanks for the advice! Searching amazon.com gives plenty of results for HSK prep material, now I've just got to wait until I can afford one! (September is the worst month to decide to want/need in the middle of the month for pooooooor college students on very fixed budgets, lol)

.......what is CLO?

ChineseLearnOnline.com is a very good structured podcast course. Unlike CPod and the rest though, it assumes you've started at the beginning and worked your way through the course. Once you get to the higher levels they don't, or rarely do, explian material that has already been covered in the course.