Easy everyday reading needed

[renzhe]

A bit of background. Having done a few mockup HSK intermediate tests, I found that my Zonghe score was criminal, and that my reading was not where I expected it to be. So I guess I need lots of reading.

I've been doing lots of reading, but I have a feeling that I've been reading the wrong things. The problem with the reading section is not understanding what's written, or answering correctly -- this is really easy. The problem is running out of time. Basically, I need to improve the reading speed for relatively simple tests. Reading Jin Yong and Xiao Hong apparently doesn't really help there.

What I'm looking for are relatively easy articles/texts using modern language, that I can blaze through every day for 15-20 minutes, ideally online. Does anyone have any recommendations?

[muyongshi]

Honestly, it's probably best to just get the practice books and do that reading. It's gonna be the closest to what's on the test and from what I remember I never have read anything in daily life that is REALLY close to their stuff.

[renzhe]

You're probably right, but that doesn't provide much volume. I have an HSK preparation book and (under test conditions), it gives you 5x1 hour of reading material, 2 hours of which I've already read.

Is there a good HSK preparation book that focuses especially on reading and/or zonghe that you can recommend? Otherwise, I'm afraid I'll need some kind of surrogate. Jin Yong, Lu Xun and Ba Jin are great reading, but it doesn't make me read easy stuff faster.

I'm thinking that if I read an easy article or essay for 30 minutes every day for a year, then my speed is bound to improve.

[skylee]

I find these interesting ->

Older blog - http://gb.weather.gov.hk/blog/b5/archives/

Recent blog - http://gb.weather.gov.hk/blog/b5/index.htm

[roddy]

I would get yourself a bunch of RSS feeds - off the top of my head, get the Chinese language news feeds from the BBC, some blogs (was going to suggest bullog.cn but it's been harmonized, maybe http://bullog.org/ will be helpful), whatever looks interesting from an RSS site like http://www.cn-rss.com/

Stick those together and you've got ten minutes of scanning the headlines to figure out what's actually worth reading and twenty minutes of the actual reading, easily.

[muyongshi]

Stick those together and you've got ten minutes of scanning the headlines to figure out what's actually worth reading and twenty minutes of the actual reading, easily.

Ooohhh smart...speed skimming and speed reading!!!!

[wushijiao]

I think what really helped me for this skill was subscribing to a newspaper. I basically read Shanghai's 晨報 every morning. That was basically a simple, 大眾化的 newspaper, with plenty of articles the were just a few paragraphs long. I think the HSK tests the quickly skimming abilities to a high degree, and so that's kind of what you need to re-create.

Another idea, might be to join a Chinese language forum. That way, you can practice the same skills (quickly reading, skipping over un-interesting posts, reading certain section more in depth and for detail, responding...etc).

Another thing that worked for me was, at the end of a book (say Ba Jin) start to give yourself targets for how many pages you can read per hour, and only underline vocab that you want to go back to look up (of course you can always look up stuff that is crucial to understanding at the time). I did this for some books, going from a few pages per hour at the beginning, towards 10-15 pages per hour at the end. It sounds nerdy, and it is, but if you say, "I will read 15 pages in the next hour" (or it might be 20, whatever is slightly out of your comfort range) and get out a stopwatch to time yourself, I think you'll start to get more into the flow of HSK reading than more detailed reading that you might be used to when your reading at your own pace.

[roddy]

Also, read through the Baidu Wiki This day in history articles every day.

[imron]

The Beijing News. The letters page is also good.

[renzhe]

Some really good recommendations, thanks everyone.

I did the timing thing with the Condor Heroes and got to about 7-8 pages an hour in the end, which is probably a plateau for me at this point for language of that difficulty level. The problem is that Jin Yong is far more complex than anything in the HSK intermediate, and getting a decent speed in reading that doesn't automatically translate to blazing speed on simpler materials -- as I've learned the hard way.

[Scoobyqueen]

I think this site is really good. Their 600 texts cover a range of topics and tests your reading speed and accuracy and provides you with a score. They also tests your vocabulary levels and resembles the zonghe part in some parts. I have used it to test my reading skills and it does offer you a reflection on your improvement. Moreover, I think they were inspired by the HSK approach.

[wushijiao]

I did the timing thing with the Condor Heroes and got to about 7-8 pages an hour in the end, which is probably a plateau for me at this point for language of that difficulty level. The problem is that Jin Yong is far more complex than anything in the HSK intermediate, and getting a decent speed in reading that doesn't automatically translate to blazing speed on simpler materials -- as I've learned the hard way

That is pretty good. I read a 30 or so pages of a Jin Yong novel once, and read it much slower than that. I think his novels are fairly dense, for non-native speakers at least. But you could always try the same approach with other slightly easier novels.

[renzhe]

A quick update.

I have received 巴金's Torrents trilogy recently, and I'm trying to finish it, so I haven't delved deeply into all the useful links in this thread. Still, I'm seeing an improvement.

Recently, I've managed to go into a speed-reading mode, where I read much faster, without concentrating on the detail. It's a bit like watching those 3d images where you have to cross your eyes. You have to make a special effort to get into "the zone", and then you have to concentrate to keep the image in front of you, or it disappears and you have to start again. Same here, if I stop to think about a character for a split second, the magic is gone, and I'm back to regular speed. Still, I've been working on keeping the speed without dropping out to regular reading speed, and I've managed to sustain it for longer periods of time.

Last night, I went through 20 pages of 春 in an hour. These pages are less dense and use simpler language than 金庸, but it's still about 2x the speed. When I started this thread, I think I could manage 12 pages of 巴金 at the most, and I did time it many times.

I guess all that reading is starting to pay off.

[wushijiao]

I wrote:

Another thing that worked for me was, at the end of a book (say Ba Jin) start to give yourself targets for how many pages you can read per hour, and only underline vocab that you want to go back to look up (of course you can always look up stuff that is crucial to understanding at the time). I did this for some books, going from a few pages per hour at the beginning, towards 10-15 pages per hour at the end. It sounds nerdy, and it is, but if you say, "I will read 15 pages in the next hour" (or it might be 20, whatever is slightly out of your comfort range) and get out a stopwatch to time yourself, I think you'll start to get more into the flow of HSK reading than more detailed reading that you might be used to when your reading at your own pace.

Renzhe wrote:

Last night, I went through 20 pages of 春 in an hour. These pages are less dense and use simpler language than 金庸, but it's still about 2x the speed. When I started this thread, I think I could manage 12 pages of 巴金 at the most, and I did time it many times.

Great! It looks like your beating me at my own game!

[Meng Lelan]

I think this site is really good. Their 600 texts cover a range of topics and tests your reading speed and accuracy and provides you with a score.

wow, scoobyqueen, good site you recommended. I just looked through it. University of Iowa has an amazing Chinese program but I didn't know about this site they did. you are amazing to have found this, 谢谢.

[Scoobyqueen]

wow, scoobyqueen, good site you recommended

In fact it is Chinese Forums we should thank. I originally found the site here which has been recommended by various sources. I found it so good that I wrote to the University of Iowa thanking them for making it available. It would be a pity if they all of a sudden decided to take it down. Feel free anyone to jot down a note of thanks to them, perhaps it may result in further funding for another similar project.

Well done renzhe for finding a method that is bearing fruit and in a relatively short space of time. I am still trying to find the zone. I tend to get hung up by the compulsory dictionary look-up disorder as I think Yersi termed it.