Reading Practice Sites?

[jessieweng]

I only know of one or two websites that do daily reading practice, have English translations and vocabulary lists, and don't have horrible design / layout.

I only know chinesereadingpractice.com.

That one's really cool (you can show or hide the English), but it looks like it was just started recently, so there's not much material on it.

Anyway, when I saw that site I wondered if there are any others like it with more stuff? Going back to China soon, so I'd like to get some practice in. Thanks in advance.

[renzhe]

Depends on your level. If you are advanced enough to get through newspaper articles, there is our Newspaper Article of the Day thread, also in this subforum. Some of the articles have vocabulary lists, but not all.

[skylee]

Also check out the 朗讀-A-Day thread. No vocab lists at all. Interesting articles.

[jessieweng]

Thanks, I appreciate it!

[jbradfor]

And a plug for our Grand Comic Reading Project. We are generating vocab lists as we go along, and many of the comics have English translations as well. Plus, the pictures provide lots of context.

Chinese Reading World is another possibility, but no translations. It does have Audio though!

[jessieweng]

Hey, great comic project! Love it! That's an amazing undertaking.

I came across Chinese Reading World once before, but I find the interface unpleasant. I don't know why I'm so hung up on good interface for Chinese practice. Guess I find bad interfaces really distracting. I find a lot of universities will post a bunch of texts, but because the layouts are so bad, I feel like I'm scrabbling around in the dark places of teh interwebz just to find something to read.

One of the top Google results for practicing Chinese reading is and www.uiowa.edu/ site - lots of beginner texts, but horrible layout - as soon as you get to the texts, all the navigation completely disappears. Some sites require you to jump through a bunch of hoops to register, others let you read without registration, but they're lacking a cohesive learning experience.

I don't mean to complain, guess I'm just surprised - there are so many people learning Chinese, so why the lack of nicely presented materials?

[ma3zi1]

Some of the articles have vocabulary lists, but not all.

I'm guessing that last bit was directed at me in some part... sorry for being lazy!

I promise to prepare a vocabulary list in the future if asked

[thekhanon]

They stopped providing the PDF transcripts for free, but I still keep the http://www.slow-chinese.com/ RSS feed in Google Reader and have it read the article to me while I read the characters. I am considering buying the newer PDF transcripts when I'm not in school. check it out. I think they still have free PDF transcripts available for older articles.

[renzhe]

I'm guessing that last bit was directed at me in some part... sorry for being lazy!

Absolutely not!

The newspaper article thread is supposed to be a rapid-fire series of links that one can click and get through quickly, not detailed lessons. I'm not going to write up vocab on every article either.

Seriously, every link is appreciated.

A bit off topic here, but at least we're keeping the newspaper thread clean

[jessieweng]

Oh, I just found one more I thought I'd share with you guys - this is great: http://practice-chinese.com/

[T-revor]

Try http://trevorschinesereader.com I created this application in response to my own frustration with learning to read Chinese. I hope it's useful for you.

[T-revor]

Just one more thing. My favorite site for reading Chinese is the Wall Street Journal in Chinese -- http:/chinese.wsj.com. A lot of their main articles are in both English and Chinese. Click on an article and then click on the 英文 link to see the article in English. Plus, because I'm from the US, I like that the news is geared toward a US audience. Makes it more interesting and more relevant.

[HedgePig]

Jessie - thanks for pointing out the Chinesereadingpractice.com site. I hadn't come across this before and I'm enjoying it very much. I really like the fact a full English translation is provided.

As you mention, there's not a huge amount on it yet but the owner seems to be posting a new article every couple of days or so. Right now there are 7 advanced, 6 intermediate and 6 beginner articles. No pinyin but a vocab list and sometimes a bit of an explanation are given as well.

[HedgePig]

Although it seems to have been around for a while, I only came across www.chinesestoriesplatform.com very recently. It looks quite useful for lower-intermediate and intermediate learners. Here are some initial impressions.

What the site offers

1. Articles in Chinese (both simplified and traditional) The longer articles are split into two or even three separate posts. They are divided into elementary (or lower-intermediate) and intermediate levels. There are close to 250 posts at each of these levels.

2. Pinyin (could be better presented but at least it's there - and on a separate page so it doesn't interfere with the Chinese!)

3. A vocabulary list (with sample sentences in Chinese only.)

4. An audio file (decent quality, slow reading)

The author of the site has gone to some lengths to break down the vocabulary into the different HSK levels.

e.g. at the lower-elementary level, he splits the vocab into "Vocabulary you should know before starting this lesson" (HSK level 1), "vocabulary you should know after this lesson" (HSK level 2), "A bit more difficult" (HSK levels 3 & 4) and "Other" (er.....other). At the lower-intermediate level most of the vocab is from HSK 1 and 2.

The website itself is a little clunky to navigate (e.g. no linking for articles posted in parts) but overall my first impressions are very positive. I plan to be using it a lot more.