How do you practise reading?

[natra]

I agree with Roddy on making decisions about the importance of learning certain vocabulary. Your personal goals for learning Chinese should direct those decisions. Yes, there will always be vocabulary that you are not familiar with. However, where you seek to apply your language skills in the future also seems like a pertinent question to ask oneself.

[Shi Tong]

Hello Hedgepig, I asked the same very valid question earlier-- what other good books have English and Chinese in them? What kind of level do they "start at" and is there anything besides/ boyond hanyufeng- as far as I can make out, they only have up to 750 characters.. right?

[Chinadoog]

read it now/想读就读 - these books have different levels. beginner, intermediate, advanced. but even the beginner ones probably require you to know 750+ characters and 2-3,000 words. i like them a lot better than chinese breeze (which i can't stand mainly because of the horrible stories and same vocab being used over and over)

doraemon comics

http://collections.uiowa.edu/chinese/topic_advanced.html

these are all good for beginners and have been mentioned in a lot of other threads on this forum

[bande]

I wish I could offer positive advice, but I'm afraid I can mostly say what didn't work. While it seemed like a good idea, the readers for kids that have pinyin weren't very useful. I don't have a good answer for why, but it seems that language was too formal, and perhaps the content too boring. I think I can remember a post on another blog too that effect as well. Also, at school I spent a great deal of time struggling through readings from the 20's through the 40's and some time post graduation as well. Although I think the writing from this time period is great, I wouldn't recommend it to a current learner because it would probably be too difficult for a prolonged period of time. Harry Potter is also fairly difficult. I think the specialized fantasy vocabulary makes it a fairly time consuming read, and thus not necessarily rewarding as one might think. The area where I had the most success, actually, involved middle school text books. The pep press books on chinese history, world history, geography, and yuwen were all very useful. I think there was also another post saying that those materials are online now, so I would definitely see if you could stomache them. Another thread recommended 古龙‘s novels. If you at all can find wudai novels interesting, then I would try him. If you're interested in business the white collar novels such as 杜拉拉 could also be interesting, although make sure to stay away from the 杜拉拉 movie. Still, I think making the jump to chinese books in fiction/nonfiction is going to be difficult no matter what level you are, so the sooner you can do it the better.

[renzhe]

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 think I could read about 2,300 characters, and had a vocab of about 5,000 words. It was a bit early for Condor Heroes, but it wasn't so far out of my reach.

Keep in mind that I had read a couple of thousand of pages of comics, so I had some routine. Still, the first pages were pure labour, with dictionary and wikipedia, it took me a while to get into the "groove".

Jin Yong is not easy to read for non-natives. I picked it because I wanted something with kung fu and pretty girls to keep me interested :blink: but there are better starting books. Ba Jin is a breeze in comparison, and I still recommend 家 as a really good book to start with -- it uses very simple language, but is loaded with cultural context.

The other recommendation to supplement or replace the Chinese Breeze books would be comics, if you can find interesting ones to read.

[HedgePig]

Thanks for the further replies everyone

Chinadoog - Thanks for pointing out the Read It Now/想读就读 series. This looks promising.

I've soon the uiowa collections but each of these readings is quite short and they progress quite rapidly in the number of characters used. (There are over 2200 different characters used at the beginner level.) While this is useful for learning new words and characters, I'm really looking for something which has relatively little new content, so I can practise what I know.

bande - It's also very helpful to hear what "didn't work", so your comments are much appreciated. I have looked at primary school books and also found them surprisingly difficult.

I had also wondered about Harry Potter but do think it would be too difficult

renzhe - I think your level of Chinese when you started Condor Heroes was well above my current level. Maybe Ba Jin will be easier?

Shi Tong - yes, I'm also still waiting for the magical series of books that has both Chinese and English at not too high a level (i.e. quite low!) Actually I have seen Chinese and English books but they are aimed at Chinese students learning English and generally the level is well above my Chinese. However perhaps I should look at these again.

As for Chinese Breeze, the second level (500 characters assumed) probably ends up covering somewhere between 600 and 700 altogether, once you've added in all the new vocab.

[renzhe]

Ba Jin is probably the easiest "real" author you can read. At least in the Torrents trilogy (家，春，秋), the story is straight forward and dialogues very easy.

All the other serious modern stuff I've read (Lu Xun, Yu Hua, Eileen Chang, Xiao Hong, Wang Xiaobo) was more difficult.

Jin Yong is tricky in the sense that he uses classical phrasing more often, and lots of archaic and Wuxia vocabulary, often delivered in a condensed manner. It is a challenge for a learner because your grammar and vocabulary need to be solid. The other authors I've mentioned are more difficult at an abstract level, you need to detect satire and humour, allegories and hinted meanings.

This sounds like I'm trying to pass for an expert or something. I'm not, I've just sampled different authors, trying to get a feeling for their styles. I prefer classic literature in general, so it's reflected in what I've read.

[SiMaKe]

@HedgePig

Have you looked at “Lady in the Painting”? This is a well-known folktale written with a base vocabulary of 300 characters and 250 pages in length (although this includes vocab lists and explanations of grammar points). I don't know if this is too elementary for you or not.

http://www.amazon.com/Lady-Painting-Expanded-Simplified-Publications/dp/030012516X

[natra]

《家》by 巴金 was also one of the first books I read that was in Chinese. Renzhe's suggestion is a good one, I think. It is kind of a dry read, but you can get through it with a limited vocabulary.

加油加油！

[HedgePig]

SiMaKe - Thanks for mentioning that. I have seen that book recommended before but I had completely forgotten about it. From the preview on Amazon, it looks a little basic but I really like the idea, especially it has vocabulary and quite detailed grammar notes. I might still get it though as it looks so good. I'd love something a step or two up from that!

[Lu]

There's at least one thread with suggestions of easy books over at the books forum. I usually recommend 活着, and a few others, and recently found another easy one: 山楂樹之戀, very romantic and very sad, and also a very quick read.

[BirdRockster]

I tried by reading Alice in Wonderland on nciku. This was a little bit difficult at first and progress can be slow. You can also read poems and other short stories, try searching for some on baidu or google.