Need Advanced Book Suggestions

[jkhsu]

Hi,

I'm learning Mandarin on my own while living in the USA. Does any one have suggestions for advanced level books? These would be late 3rd and 4th year college text books and readers. Here are the books I am planning to go through. My goal is to be able to read newspapers, novels, understand the news on TV and watch movies in Chinese.

Upper Intermediate / Advanced:

All Things Considered: Advanced Reader of Modern Chinese

A New Text for Modern China (C & T Asian Language Series) - Already bought this a while back. I know there is a new 2 volume series.

Advanced:

Advanced Chinese: Intention, Strategy, and Communication (Yale Language Series)

Advanced Reader of Contemporary Chinese Short Stories: Reflections on Humanity

Also for Classical Chinese, does anyone have suggestions? Have been looking at the following:

Language of the Dragon 1 & 2: A Classical Chinese Reader (C&T Asian Language Series)

Classical Chinese: A Functional Approach by Kai Li and James Erwin Dew

Thanks for the help.

[character]

Perhaps at your level it's worth trying to tackle a novel with a translation available, so you can figure out any confusing bits. Something like Pleco with OCR to look up new words and add them to flashcards would also help tremendously in the effort.

[rezaf]

After some point there are no textbooks, it's just you and your dictionary. I suggest you get a good dictionary and start reading novels and newspaper. As for classical Chinese I followed the advice in this forum and bought the 王力 series. I haven't started it yet but it seems fine.

[Meng Lelan]

A Reader in Post-Cultural Revolution Chinese Literature by Vivian Ling Hsu. It could be out of print though.

[jkhsu]

Thanks for the suggestions. Just to clarify, I haven't started the upper intermediate / advanced level books yet. I am not ready to read a novel or newspaper as I've tried already. My hope is that after I finish the advanced level books, I can start reading novels / newspapers with a dictionary.

[daofeishi]

If you are at an intermediate level, I would recommend you to start reading native level material right away. Try something that was written explicitly for children, like 小人书 or 漫画. Then you can go on to read progressively harder material from there. It took me about a year or so to go from 小人书 to reading my first novel.

Here is a cute one. See if the difficulty level is appropriate for you.

[tooironic]

For intermediate learners I always recommend primary school student essay collections (小学生作文大典). You can find them pretty easily at any Chinese bookshop. The level should be just right and the essays are usually relatively interesting and not too long. Primary school students tend to use common and useful chengyu, plus the occasional slang expression, making it a fun read, plus the design is usually quite visually appealing.

[jkhsu]

Thanks for the link to 小人书. The story about the monkey was just about the right level for me to read and learn some new words without being frustrated.

I'll also look into the student essay collections as suggested.

For those of you who finally could read a newspaper or novel, how did it feel?

[imron]

After some point there are no textbooks, it's just you and your dictionary.

Ain't that the truth. +10 for this comment.

For those of you who finally could read a newspaper or novel, how did it feel?

Very satisfying, and yet frustrating that there are still always unknown words and characters :wacko:

[amandagmu]

I still hope for a day when I can pick up a newspaper and know every character in an article. And I sit around and read in Chinese ALL DAY right now for my research. I keep wondering if/when this language will stop humbling me, but I think never.

The books that taught me how to read newspapers were ones produced by Taiwan Normal University that I used at ICLP. They basically have articles on various topics (some quite interesting) with lots of descriptions on the formalities of that type of writing. I don't know where you would find these books outside of Taiwan; when I went to the bookstore in Beijing looking for newspaper readings I was told they had no such books. It's a shame because I don't think reading a newspaper is so easily learned without the help of a teacher or an excellent book. I find teachers in Beijing to be over-obsessed with conversation at the expense of teaching students how to read at a higher level. Nowhere did I find this more evident than in taking one-on-one classes. So, while I agree that at some point there's just you and a dictionary, I also think that there's quite a huge jump from intermediate to advanced material and it is not easy to sit around looking up words all day, especially when they're words like 亦, 以，已，之，而，其，该, 及，与，予 ETC used in different ways (and those are just some simple examples). The books I used had lessons that included not just new vocab but also explanations of formal language found in real articles (from Taipei newspapers).

Good luck understanding the news on TV. Even after living in China and reading newspapers there's too much new vocab for me to fully understand most of the TV news when spoken a mile a minute.

[rob07]

Advanced Reader of Contemporary Chinese Short Stories: Reflections on Humanity

If this is the Wang and Reed one, then it is really excellent, I can't recommend it highly enough. I don't know the other books you have listed.

After some point there are no textbooks, it's just you and your dictionary

I agree with this, but a useful preliminary stage is to have genuine native material with definitions of the hard words and explanations of unusual/difficult grammatical constructions every few pages. It is very difficult to look up 20 words per page in the dictionary without it breaking the flow too much, but if all the words are marked and the definitions (and the tough grammar) are all in one place just over the page then it becomes practical and relatively very hard texts become accessible. Short stories work well for this. I think Wang and Reed have comprehension questions and suggested essay topics as well, but I am lazy so I ignored them.

There are quite a few advanced level textbooks out there using this model, but the problem is that the quality of the writing is often not very good (in terms of it being something you would actually want to read). This is where Wang and Reed stand out, almost all of the short stories are exceptional reading. I remember the first one is 我没有自己的名字 by 余华. There is no doubt that you will get a great buzz out of reading it if the textbook is the right level for you.

Apart from Wang and Reed, I remember a company called Sinolingua doing some good stuff in this area.

[imron]

and it is not easy to sit around looking up words all day, especially when they're words like 亦, 以，已，之，而，其，该, 及，与，予 ETC

I've found that such words are significantly easier to look up if you use a Chinese-Chinese dictionary rather than a Chinese-English one

[roddy]

OP: Can anyone recommend any of these cars?

Interweb: You should buy a TRICYCLE!!!!

I suspect it might be a bit below your level, but I have fond memories of enjoying 核心阅读. This Advanced Chinese Reader (not to be confused with DeFrancis' one) also comes to mind, but I suspect I just carried it around for a few years and never actually used it.

[edelweis]

About newspaper reading, some textbooks which were mentioned in another thread are: 新编汉语报刊阅读教程 （初级本、中级本、高级本） 北京大学出版社. I borrowed the first one a while ago and thought I ought to buy it later when my level is a little higher.

From what I noted, each lesson contains an article, vocabulary (with pinyin, English, Japanese and short Chinese explanation or synonym), explanation of the use of some terms and structures (in Chinese), exercises, another article with some more vocabulary, and some starting points for discussion or zuowen.

[roddy]

Split some posts off.

[Yang Rui]

Else where on this forum I've recommended The Independent Reader by Vivian Ling. In Chinese the book is called 從精讀到泛讀 (it's in traditional characters).

http://www.amazon.co...42349566&sr=1-5

http://www.smcbook.c...b8vv9rp9b10chh0

ISBN: 9576384125

Not sure how easy it is to get hold of, but it's very good. It aims to take students from the level where they're largely reading texts aimed at learners to the point where they can independently read and discuss texts aimed at native speakers.

A good teacher is an essential part of getting the best out of any textbook, otherwise you're limited to quite passive learning.

I came across this book while doing a summer course at Cheng Kung University in Taiwan, and really wish we'd used it on my degree course in the UK. It was far superior to anything we used.

[jkhsu]

Else where on this forum I've recommended The Independent Reader by Vivian Ling. In Chinese the book is called 從精讀到泛讀 (it's in traditional characters).

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll add this to my list of reads. The only thing is that I am currently learning simplified and am planning to get to more of an advanced level there before I tackle traditional. I do plan to eventually learn both.

[jkhsu]

Good luck understanding the news on TV. Even after living in China and reading newspapers there's too much new vocab for me to fully understand most of the TV news when spoken a mile a minute.

Is this really true? My assumption was that if you can read the newspaper, you should be able to understand the news on TV because they are the same words. I am assuming that when you are reading the newspaper, you can "listen to yourself" say those words out loud.

[Gleaves]

Reading the paper and understanding the news on TV are two different skills. You'll often see folks here talk about how their listening and reading skills are not at the same level. And even if someone reads pretty well, it is likely that they are not reading as fast as the people on the news are speaking.

Edit: This thread inspired me to pick up the Reflections on Humanity text, so thanks for the recommendation. I haven't successfully used a textbook for years, but I am going to try and actually use this one.

[imron]

Is this really true? My assumption was that if you can read the newspaper, you should be able to understand the news on TV because they are the same words.

The problem is that when reading a newspaper you can take your time slowly going over everything, figuring out the occasional new word or grammar pattern, going back to re-read parts you didn't quite understand and so on.

With TV it's completely different. For most learners, the speaking speed on TV is almost certainly going to be faster than their reading speed, and if you miss something there's no going back. Sometimes you'll be so busy trying to figure what they said in the previous sentence that you'll miss the next 2 or 3 (or 5 or 6).

Listening and reading are very different skill sets.