Learning to Read in Chinese Elementary Schools -- Need Help

[gfross]

Japanese children learn a certain number of kanji (hanzi) at each grade level. Is this true also of children in Taiwan and the PRC?

If so, is there a list available online (or in available printed form) of the hanzi required for each grade level?

[yonglan]

Good question. Wish I had a good answer. I've read things that claim that in Taiwan there is at least a list for all of grade school and maybe a grade by grade list. I have known a number of Taiwanese elementary school teachers, though, and no matter how I much I tortured them they claimed there's no list and even if there was they wouldn't follow it. Hopefully someone else can help.

Why do you ask?

[gfross]

I ask for three reasons.

1. The LexiKAN software I am using to learn to read and write kanji includes the jouyou lists by grade level. Grade one students have to learn 80 kanji. I've been using the flashcard feature of LexiKAN to learn to read and write the correct stroke order of these kanji. I'd like to do the same in Chinese using Wenli, but unlike LexiKAN, the Wenli software does not include a grouping of hanzi according to grade level, so I thought I would make the groups myself. However, in order to do that, I need to know if there is an official "educational hanzi" list like the Japanese official "educational kanji" list. I have books designed for learners of Japanese that give the kanji according to grade level, but I haven't been able to find any such books for English-speaking students of Chinese.

2. Since my primary goal in both Chinese and Japanese is to learn to read the language, I need as much easy reading material as possible. I imagine that by the time children are in the second grade they are required to read simple stories that feature the kanji/hanzi that they have already learned. So if I know those characters and the common compounds that they form, I should be able to read those stories, too. So I could order those children's books through our local (San Francisco) "Chinese Books and Periodicals" store or even go to the Chinese branch of the San Francisco library for additional elementary reading material. As De Francis has said in his _Beginning Chinese Reader_, to learn to read Chinese one must "READ! READ! READ!"

3. A less important reason is that I'm simply curious to compare what characters Chinese children need to know at each elementary grade level (from grade one to grade six) to what characters Japanese children need to know.

I was surprised to read that Taiwan elementary school teachers (at least, the ones you know) are not required by the Taiwanese government to teach a certain group of characters at each grade level -- and even more surprised to hear that they would refuse to adhere to such a list even if one did exist.

How do school publishers in Taiwan know what readers to prepare for each grade level if there is no standardized list of characters?

How do teachers know how many characters (and which compound words) to teach in each grade?

Is there no public oversight of educational standards for reading in the Taiwanese public schools?

I'm not asking you to answer the last three questions. They are simply questions that came to mind as I thought about what you had said. Forgive my ignorance; I know nothing about the Taiwanese educational system (as you can see).

[yonglan]

Well, let me reiterate that what I relayed to you is what elementary school teachers have told me. I am not saying it is an absolute fact.

As for their attitude toward a hypothetical mandate, that's true all over the world, I think. I've taught in four countries, including my own, and most teachers pay lip service as much as they can get away with to a lot of rules. They have to be there with the kids all day, not the politicians, and most teachers feel that they know what's best for kids. I'm not saying they're right . . .

As for Japanese, you may wish to take a look at the kanji frequency list at the back of Jack Halpern's _Kodansha's Kanji Learners Guide_. The school year lists are fun, but may not be the most efficient use of your time.

Back to Taiwan, I think part of this is that Chinese uses a lot more characters than Japanese. While a university educated Japanese probably knows a little more than 2,000 kanji, a university educated Taiwanese knows in excess of 5,000 (or so it is claimed and I believe it).

If what you would like is to know the most common Chinese characters first, then there is some good news, though that good news does not come with English definitions. Two free places to look are

http://lingua.mtsu.edu/chinese-computing/statistics/

and

http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/chifreq/

If you don't mind spending a few sheckles or like having things on paper you can look for James Erwin Dew's _6,000 Chinese Words_ (I forget the subtitle). You can easily find it in Taiwan. In the US maybe the only way to get it is through http://www.cheng-tsui.com, but you could check Amazon (they used to not have it).

Kids books: Taiwan has got loads of great kids books for elementary school students with 注音符號 for each and every character. The best way to learn in my opinion.

But you want graduated readers? They sort of exist, but they're not as graduated as those for Japanese kids, for two reasons: 1) as menitoned above a Chinese speaker has to learn so many characters that they just need to get moving, and 2) all the boooks for elementary school aged kids, including all outside reading, has 注音符號 for each and every character. In fact, that was the answer I always eventually ended up with when I asked the elementary school teachers: kids learn characters by reading (because they have Zhuyin).

I did see something once that was designed to teach characters by grade level, but only once. 2,000 by the end of elementary school.

You can also get Chinese textbooks for each grade. There are also graded readers for early, middle, and later elementary school students, but even the early ones expect a considerable number of characters. Again though, with Zhuyin for every one, so you can just read along or it makes it easy to look up ones you don't know.

There are also books such as _300 Character Stories_ and 500, etc, but those refer to the total number of characters in the story, not a vocabulary level. However, the lower the total number of characters, the more likely they'll be at a lower level.

If you can get to Taiwan or know someone who can, there's a great supply of books.

I almost forgot, Fred Wang's _The Lady in the Painting_ is available on Amazon and is awesome once you know the 300 characters in _Read Chinese, book one_

[Claw]

I almost forgot, Fred Wang's _The Lady in the Painting_ is available on Amazon and is awesome once you know the 300 characters in _Read Chinese, book one_

I agree... The Lady in the Painting is a very good book for beginning readers. The only thing I don't like about it is that it uses 作 when it really should be 做.

[yonglan]

做 is just a newer form of 作 though they then of course split their uses. I think he explains that either in Lady or in Read, I forget which. Fred was educated in the OLD days in the classical way from what I can gather.

[Claw]

做 is just a newer form of 作 though they then of course split their uses. I think he explains that either in Lady or in Read, I forget which. Fred was educated in the OLD days in the classical way from what I can gather.

Oh really... I thought they were always different words to begin with because they're pronounced differently in Cantonese (作 = zok, 做 = zou).

[yonglan]

You're right! I went and checked 形音義 (my favoritest book) and though 做 is originally a variant form, it's not 'new'. Sorry

But I should say that I have come across the use of 作 for what would now use 做 in other stuff written a few generations ago. Maybe it was still considered 俗寫 until recently?

Remembering the fact that _Read, book one_ lists it as a variant form and uses 作 for things that one would normally see 做 for now, a couple of years ago I had asked my dumb teachers from Shida and been told it was new -- as in 20th century. I am not usually so gullible, but it got fossilized somehow.

[gfross]

Thanks, Yonglan!

What is "zhuyin"? How is it different from pinyin? I copied the phrase and pasted it into Clavis Sinica, but the CS Chinese-English dictionary evidently does not have "zhuyin" listed as a compound.

I found the statistics interesting for "imaginative literature": knowing the first 150 characters (and, no doubt, combinations thereof) in that list allows one to read with about 50% understanding. I wonder if those characters would allow most of the syntactical constructions necessary to create the sentences used in simple stories. Knowing 300 characters (and combinations thereof) brings about 65% understanding.

It seems to me that it would be very easy to write graduated readers using that list as a guide, with a few extra added characters (and combinations) needed for any particular story, e.g., 老虎 lao3hu3 (tiger).

I used to simplify books for overseas EFL readers, so I have an interest in this type of activity.

But I guess since zhuyin are used (just as furigana as used in Japan) to help children read, graduated readers would be of more use to learners of Chinese as a foreign language than to native Chinese children.

Thank you for the Cheng-Tsui link! I took a look at the "grades 1-3" books for children. I could OCR some of those into Wenli and try to read them that way.

And _The Lady in the Painting_ sounds very interesting! That's a must!

Thanks again for your help!

[yonglan]

Zhuyin (注音符號 Zhuyin Fuhao) is furigana, except that it's on the right side of characters. There are 37 leters in the Zhuyin alphabet, seen in minature as my avatar. I dare say that among those who learn the alphabet there is universal agreement that it's better for their pronunciation (ie better than any form of romanization). It's only used in Taiwan, though it was invented in China about 1920 or so (I forget the exact year). Any Taiwanese can teach you Zhuyin.

There is a very old series of graded readers from Yale of which Lady is the first. The others are for about the 600, 800, 1000, and 1200 character levels. There are about a dozen in all and they go along with Read Chinese vols. 1-3 (which take you to 1000). Most of them are out print as far as I know, but most of them can still be found lurking around a uni library here or there. Try http://www.yale.edu/fep (I hope that's the right URL). They should have some of them or just email them and ask if they can give you a list of even the out of print ones. I was going to make a list at some point but never did. I used a couple of these. Lady was the best.

From the above I was able to find these on Amazon: _Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio_ (600 character level?) and _Sketch of Chinese History_ (1,200 character level?). Maybe Amazon has others, but some titles they didn't have.

There's _Advanced Chinese Reader_ by Richard Chang and someone else that came out in the 1990s designed to take you from Read 3 at the 1000 character level using unedited, genuine Chinese writing from throughout the 20th century. It's a good book but you have to learn a lot of characters for each reading selection and learn them well as they are not reglossed (ie the book is cumulative).

There's also a different series of four(?) books, made in the 1990s I believe, of which _Life in Beijing_ is one. They claim to be at the 500 character level, but when I tried it back then I found it too difficult even though I knew more than 500 characters, so I wouldn't recommend that series.

[gfross]

Thanks, yonglan! That's very helpful information.

[yonglan]

gfross, and for the archive, I dug this out of my files. I'm not sure if it's complete, but it might be. May even be accurate

Read Chinese (Book I) by Fang-yu Wang; ed. by Pao-ch'en Lee

300 charcters introduced

The Lady in the Painting by Fang-yu Wang

300 plus a few new

Read Chinese Book II by Richard F. Chang

300 new characters for a total of 600

Read About China by Pao-ch'en Lee

300 new characters for a total of 600 (alternative to the above)

Ch'i Pai-shih: China's Picasso, His Life and Works by Charles Chu

600 level

Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio by Lindia Hsia and Roger Yue

600 level

Stories from Ancient China edited by Mary Rouse and George A. Kennedy

Maybe around the 600 character level.

My Mother's Betrothal by Hu Shih (edited by Mary Rouse)

Maybe around the 600+ character level.

Read Chinese Book III by Fang-yu Wang and Richard Chang

400 new characters for a total of 1000

The Magic Ark: The Adventures of Tiny Wang by Peggy Wang

700 character level

Chinese Mythical Stories retold by Richard F. Chang

600-1000 level (somewhere in there)

A Sketch of Chinese Geography

800 level

A Sketch of Chinese History by Henry C. Fenn

1000 level

Readings on Chinese Culture

1000+ level

Twenty Lectures on Chinese Culture by Parker Po-fei Huang

?

A Primer of Newspaper Chinese by Yu-ju Chih (with John S. Montanaro) [original and revised editions]

800 - 1000+ (building to 1200)

Advanced Chinese Newspaper Readings by Yu-ju Chih

1500+

[gfross]

Thanks, Yonglan!

I've printed out your helpful list. I just ordered the three-volume _Read Chinese_ series (used copies) and a few of the accompanying readers (_Lady_, etc.), so that should keep me busy for awhile.

I'm still making my way through the DeFrancis _Beginning Chinese_ materials (with audio tapes). Am up to Lesson Eleven and can now recognize about 200 characters. After finishing _BC_ I will go directly to his _Advanced Chinese_, _Character Text for Advanced Chinese_, and the _Intermediate Chinese Reader_ and then the _Advanced Chinese Reader_ since my primary goal is to learn to read. The _Advanced Chinese_ grammar is an alternate to the _Intermediate Chinese_ grammar. The AC grammar focuses on "academic" Chinese whereas the IC grammar focuses on "everyday" conversational Chinese. The IC READER is designed to be used with the AC grammar, not the IC grammar -- a bit confusing at first, but I finally understood his course design:

For everybody: BC and BC Reader (and BC Character Text)

Next, for those interested in conversation: IC, but for those interested in mastering modern written Chinese: AC, AC Character Text, IC Reader, and AC Reader.

De Francis says that one should be able to read modern written Chinese after finishing the AC and AC Reader.

I hope eventually to learn to read the famous novels of China -- _Dream of the Red Mansion_, etc., but that's a year or two off yet.

What I'd like to know is when the literature in the classical writing style 文言文 changed to literature in the modern writing style 白話文. Is _Dream of the Red Mansion_ classical or modern? Do you happen to know of a book that discusses (in English) the history of Chinese literature? Thanks!

[yonglan]

gfross, I don't know a book in English that discusses the history of Chinese literature, but I'm sure there must be a bunch of them.

Keep that optimistic attitude, even if you find 《紅樓夢》 more than a year or two off

What I'd like to know is when the literature in the classical writing style 文言文 changed to literature in the modern writing style 白話文.

Not something I am at all expert in, but the literary/classical language itself is not monolithic over time or even necessarily in one time. Colloquial writing is not 100% a 20th century phenomenon. But it wasn't widley accepted or used until the 20th century. People tend to date the beginnings of modern written Chinese to the years leading up to 1920.

[gfross]

Thanks, Yonglan.

I discovered that what looks like the best history of Chinese literature (in English, anyway) is the recently published _Columbia History of Chinese Literature_.

I've also discovered that although I can recognize characters in context, I have great difficulty recognizing many of the same characters in isolation (on flash cards). For example, if I see 容易 I'll recognize the meaning, but if I see only 容 I have much more difficulty in remembering its pronunciation and its meaning.

I also have difficulty recognizing the same character in different sizes and type faces: if I've learned it in small size, I don't recognize it in large size (and vice versa). 很奇怪！

[XiaoMa]

I recently read about the

"READ CHINESE, BOOK ONE

(revised edition)*

Fred Fangyu Wang"

It is told:

The basic beginning reader which covers the first three hundred characters, in both complex and traditional forms. Primarily in Yale romanization, where romanization is required, but also in pinyin romanization as well. Includes writing and stroke order charts.

ISBN 0-88710-064-3

I knew 'simplified' and 'traditional' characters. But what are complex characters?

88

xiaoma

[yonglan]

"complex" means "traditional". Same thing.

[markalexander100]

Slight aside: while comparing zhuyin and furigana, I learned an interesting new term: Ruby characters.