Extensive Reading Materials (Project)

[LemonSu]

hello all,

I am a college student in China. I will start my final year project very soon. It is about developing extensive reading materials for intermediate level learners of Chinese. My supervisor and I both think there's a lack of extensive reading materials for learners of Chinese, therefore,for this project, I aim at simplifying 5 pieces of modern Chinese literature.

I can't find enough participants since there aren't many foregin professors who can read in Chinese on campus, thus I am asking for help here.

Being the participant of this project, you'll need to answer several questionnaires ( probably 2), and then simply read the simplified materials, underline the words you are having problems with, and give some feedback.

Please let me know if you are interested!!!

PS:you are qualified as long as you consider yourself as intermediate level learners of Chinese and have time to do some reading!

sincerely,

lemon

[Daan]

Sounds interesting! I would definitely agree that extensive reading is important when learning foreign languages. Here in Taiwan, quite a few textbooks offer annotated authentic texts for intermediate learners, which range in difficulty from anywhere between fairly easy for people with two years of Mandarin under their belt to seemingly impossible without being able to read Classical Chinese fluently. I've been using them for a few months now and have been quite pleased with them.

I'm interested to see what you're going to come up with, so count me in

[calibre2001]

I am interested. Please send me a pm.

The main problem with chinese learning materials is it's mostly catered for entry level. Intermediate and advanced don't necessarily reflect Intermediate and advanced chinese. Aside novels/literature do you have plans to use non-literature stuff like well written articles, essays??

[Daan]

Oh, yes, if you need my e-mail address or anything, just send me a PM

[jbradfor]

The more reading material the better, so I'd be interested.

Just to make sure: you have already checked what material there are available, right? For example, how would this be different than, say, Chinese reading world or Chinese text sampler?

I'm not trying to discourage you, but just want to ensure you are doing something new.

[Rockford]

I would consider myself to be low-intermediate. If that's still acceptable, I'm definitely interested.

[taijidan]

It's a great idea. Sign me up.

[xianhua]

Count me in. Finding intermediate material is not always an easy task, and let's face it, most text book exercises hardly capture the imagination.

PS: Your English is superb.

[scottishlaura]

Hi, I would be interested as so far I can't find many materials at my level. Let me know what you need me to do. Thanks and good luck with your project.

[flippant]

I'd be interested in this. PM for e-mail.

[LemonSu]

HI ALL!!

I am so glad that many of you are interested in this!!! :-) I haven't developed the questionnaire yet, since I am currently busy working as a research assistant for another project in my school. Here's what I am going to do:

1. design a questionnaire to determine the reading needs for my participants;

2. based on the needs, I will choose 5 pieces of modern Chinese literature. Most probably of different genre(romance, essay,science fiction,etc.).

3. then comes the simplification stage. I have gone through Graded Chinese Reader 1, 2,and 3. edited by Shiji. Frankly, I am not a big fan of the book. Simple as it is, the articles lost its own flavor. I know I am not an expert at this, but I will try my best to keep the essence of the articles during the simplification.

4. I plan to post the questionnaire here, so that each of you can download it directly, and email it to me.

5. The plan is to have all the materials developed at the beginning of August, and I will email them to all of you.

6. Should you have any suggestions, please do let me know. :-)

you can reach me by email at lemon1989@gmail.com

a thousand thanks!

Love,

Lemon

[knadolny]

Please count me in too. Just send me a PM for my email address.

Cheers,

[jbradfor]

3. then comes the simplification stage. I have gone through Graded Chinese Reader 1, 2,and 3. edited by Shiji. Frankly, I am not a big fan of the book. Simple as it is, the articles lost its own flavor. I know I am not an expert at this, but I will try my best to keep the essence of the articles during the simplification.

You might also want to look at the Chinese Breeze series as well.

They start off pretty easy, but their plan is to develop more advanced ones.

[LemonSu]

jbradfor,

i have checked their website,as I only have the books written by Shiji,(and I borrowed them from my supervisor) I think that probably will do. It's quite difficult to find Chinese learning materials in the bookstores, don't you think?

[LemonSu]

Hello ALL,

I have sent the questionnaire to several people here. As for those who still want to participant, please feel free to download the attached the questionnaire, fill it in, and email it back to me at lemon1989@gmail.com

Should you have any questions, I would be glad to help. :-)

thank you very much!

Love,

Lemon

Develop extensive reading materials for intermediate level learners of Chinese.doc