How do you practise reading?

[HedgePig]

Most people seem to say that one should read a lot to improve one's Chinese - and this makes perfect sense.

However, although I'm beyond the absolute beginner stage, I find it difficult to practise reading because:

- if use new material, it will almost certainly contains lots of new vocbulary. Very good for vocab acquistion but I'm not really practising reading as I'm spending much more time looking and learning new words.

- if I revise material I've already used, then I find that my "reading" is really receiting because I know what comes next so I'm not really reading the characters.

So what is your strategy? Do you find it worthwhile to look at new material and not worry too much about words or characters you don't know. I find myself compelled to add every new word to my vocab list but then I spend too much time elarning rather than reading. Perhaps I shouldn't be quite so obsessed to try and memorise every new word. (Particularly as I'm not successful anyway!)

[renzhe]

I tend to read on if I understand the context (e.g., if it's some character with food radical, and it's obvious that it's food from the context, I won't necessarily look it up there and then). If a word comes up several times and seems important to the story, I look it up.

The most important thing is that the material you're reading is not too advanced for you. If it is too advanced, you will need to use a dictionary very often, which will disrupt your flow. This can also be beneficial, but it's tedious.

Two important things you obtain by reading a lot are the reading speed and comfort. Learning new vocab is important, but it is even more important to be really really good at reading simple stuff (same goes for listening). If you can understand 95% of the text effortlessly -- this is the vocab and grammar that appears all the time -- then you will find it much easier to understand the missing words from context, or to understand the words which you remember, but aren't completely confident about.

And for this, you need lots of exposure. It's the same thing as with listening, really.

The problem with new materials and new vocabulary is alleviated if you read something that is long -- like a longer novel or a long comic. After a while, you get used to the specific vocabulary (and character names) and it's easy sailing. Switching between short stories is more beneficial to people who can already read well and need to push their vocabulary and skim reading, getting the gist quickly, stuff like that.

[roddy]

I think it's actually quite important to get over making a note of everything you don't understand - simple fact of the matter is that there will always be stuff you don't understand, and often it will be obscure and irrelevant stuff that realistically you don't need to know. Making those judgment calls as you work through a text - deciding to look something up now, later, never - is a pretty important skill. Once you're out of a learning environment you may well not have the luxury of being able to look everything up.

[rezaf]

I started reading stuff after two years of studying Chinese and spent the time before that learning and memorising my textbooks. Somehow I think it was impossible for me to read anything when I was a beginner because almost everything was too advanced for me at that time and there was no point cuz I could spend the time doing more efficient stuff by learning my textbooks. Now I usually read things aloud as it makes it more challenging and more efficient.

[Gleaves]

Some really good points above. Once I let go of the need to look up everything I didn't understand, my reading became much more enjoyable and productive. When I'm reading, I highlight words I want to know. I try to wait until the end of the page to look them up. By the end of the page, I've sometimes figured out the word by context. Other times, I've decided I no longer care or need to know what it means. And of course, I sometimes still want to look it up. I try to limit my look-ups to about three words a page. For me personally, anything more than that and I feel bogged down (and should probably be reading something easier).

When I start new material, I don't mind spending much more time on look-ups for the first few pages. Renzhe makes a good point about the length of material. I have three or four different books of short stories (mostly science fiction). These are consistently very difficult for me because each story changes setting, vocabulary, characters, etc. In contrast, I have a 700 page fantasy novel that I am almost done. This book was terribly difficult at first, but I can now comfortably read it.

[Shi Tong]

A good recommendation would be some books which are simple enough to read (bar hanyufong).. I find that I think "I'll look up something I might be able to read" and end up bumping into something either highly colloquial or highly political.. it's hard to find anything else which is a page turner and isn't too challenging.

I do also find the same thing with words I cant read- not to stop there and then and look them up.. it's better to go on and look it up when you have a few things to look up (if you still need to).. this way you dont feel like you're constantly looking in the dictionary and forgetting the story or the flow of the subject.

Any recommendations on simple books?! :blink:

[xiaotao]

Get an easy enough book that can read or understand all but 5 or less characters per page. For most beginners having the pinyin or zhuyin makes look up fast and easy. I believe in looking up every character that is not understood particularly if you're working on intermediate or lower readings. It will show up again and again in the book. After you see the same phrase or character a few times, you will know it. Once you get more solid in Chinese then perhaps you only need to look up the common need to know words providing that you can tell which ones.

[David W Jackson]

Simple books: http://search.taobao.com/search?commend=all&isnew=2&q=%BA%BA%D3%EF%B7%E7&source=search1

[wushijiao]

I think you can try to use a few different reading strategies at the same time, or perhaps in the same day.

One thing I used to do was when reading a book, I'd always read with a pen. Then I'd underline and star important parts of the text, and I'd double underline any word that I'm pretty sure I had guessed right (via context/and or individual character components), while also looking up any obvious words that were crucial to plot/comprehension. Then, at the end of the reading session, or at the end of the day, I'd look up those double underlined words, and add them to flash card piles.

So, if you think of reading in a foreign language as, say, distance running, it's good to have times where you are out there running long and relatively easy - which builds aerobic capacities and capillaries in your legs. This might be compared to finding interesting materials and reading for fun, with minimal looking up of words/characters. This might be the bulk of your reading experiences.

Nonetheless, you'd be a better runner if you also incorporate speed work, anaerobic work, and tempo runs. This might be compared to doing intensive dictionary work (where you look up every single thing you don't know), speed reading (by, say, giving yourself three minutes to read a whole article/page), finding example sentences for words you looked up, flashcard work with recently discovered words, making audio out of recently read passages (perhaps with the help of a native speaker)...etc. If you do too much of this stuff, you might get burnt out. But it wouldn't be a bad idea to spend about 10-30% of your reading time of these sorts of specific activities.

[gato]

It sounds like you are having trouble finding proper material for your level. The ideal material for practicing reading should have mostly vocab you have already learned (though maybe not 100% comfortable with) and maybe up to 10-20 new vocab words per page of reading. If it has more than 20 new vocab words per page, then it's probably way above your level. You want to look at one of the textbook series that are often recommended by others on this sites, like New Practical Chinese Reader, for instance.

And I agree with wushijiao. You need to mix the aerobic with the anaerobic. I used to do a lot of hill and interval work back in the day....

[wushijiao]

And I agree with wushijiao. You need to mix the aerobic with the anaerobic. I used to do a lot of hill and interval work back in the day....

Hehe...in Lantau Island all I have is hills B)

But yes, I think gato's right in that you need to find materials that are at an appropriate level. I think slogging through a few beginner and intermediate readers (that hopefully come with audio) is a good bet. Unless you have a good core vocabulary, reading materials made for native speakers might be too taxing. I think one goal in language learning is to acquire that core vocab level as quickly and efficiently as possible.

[HedgePig]

Thanks for all the replies everyone.

Good to hear that many people agree that it's OK not look up every unknown word

I also like the suggestion of trying something longer so that even if there is a lot of new vocabulary initially, one is being repeatedly exposed to it repeatedly. (This is one of the reasons I liked the Chinese Breeze books.) As seevral people have mentioned, finding the appropriate books is going to be tricky as I definitely don't have a big enough core vocabulary.

HedgePig

[doraemon]

It's definitely necessary to increase vocabulary bit by bit everyday which benefits learning to read in blocks rather than one character at a time. Also, learn to look for key words in the text(i.e. subject, object, verb, who, what, when, where, why etc), the same as any other language.

[zening]

Well, I think it's definte. Actually, reading new materials is a way of learning. So you don't need to worry about the time spent on learning new words, it's worthy. Enough words will help your reading one day.

[dumdumdum]

get those with translation for a start. look at the chinese part, skim through and try to guess the whole storyline, then refer to the translation and see how much you got it right. then check out dictionary for the part you guessed wrong, find out why.

[skylee]

learning to read in blocks rather than one character at a time

Sometimes, when a book is very good, I would try to slow down and read it very slowly so as to savour every word, quite literally.

[renzhe]

It's really important to find interesting material that's just at the right level, but you'll have to jump into the sea sooner or later. Don't keep waiting for the perfect book, start reading something, anything, as soon as it's roughly around your level.

My first book was the Condor Heroes. Talk about getting my ass kicked! After about 100 pages of pain, it became enjoyable, and I finished the entire 1400 pages of it. The suggestion of reading something where you have the translation is a great one. This way, you avoid the frustration of not being able to follow the book after three pages. I relied on translations heavily for the first few hundred pages. I'd read 5-10 pages, then quickly go through the translation just to make sure I didn't miss anything important.

Fighting your way through something is the best way to increase your reading skill quickly. I'm not saying that you should start reading the Taoist classics tomorrow, but even if the book seems a bit rough on you, it's worth fighting through it for a while until you get used to the grammar and vocabulary, after which it becomes easier.

Like wushijiao said, reading lots and lots will make you a fast and confident reader. Reading stuff that's hard will make you a better reader. It's just that I feel that the mix should definitely favour the former.

[Shi Tong]

I have the 5 volume version of 三国演义 with English on the right hand page and Chinese on the left.

Do you think this might be a bit too much of a leap? ;D

[renzhe]

It might be. I haven't read it myself, but if it's anything like the other classics, it will have lots of tricky vocab and less common characters. If I recall correctly, you haven't read a, say, 100-300 page book yet, and you're learning characters intensively at the moment.

You might be better off reading a medium-sized book that's slightly easier first, then coming back to the Three Kingdoms when you're finished with that. Something more modern and colloquial, closer to the language you're familiar with.

The classics are certainly doable for a learner with decent reading skills and vocabulary. But not exactly easy

[HedgePig]

Apart from Chinese Breeze books, what recommendations do people have for relatively easy books?

renzhe, you mentioned "Condor Heroes". Do you remember what level your Chinese was when you started this? (e.g. roughly how many words or characters?)

I suspect I still need to increase my vocab before attempting even an easy novel.