Vocab list for children's material

[jbradfor]

Does anyone know of a vocabulary list that is appropriate for reading native Chinese children's material?

I realize the are other lists such as HSK, textbooks (NPCR), etc. However, these lists tend to be based on word frequency for adult reading. This is not the same as what one sees in children's material; for example, in children's material, names of animals, body parts, household itemss, etc are common.

When I started reading comics (aimed at kids), or books aimed at teaching Chinese kids to read, I was struck by the disconnect between the HSK words, and the words found in these material. At least the stuff I was reading, I didn't see "economic reform" coming up very often. [You listening, feihong? ] While many people said one needs to know maybe 1000-1500 ish words to read them comfortably, they were most definitely not the 1500 words I knew from leaning the HSK list. It wasn't until I reached maybe 3000 words that they became comfortable to read.

[LaoJian]

I google some web resource for your reference, if you like you can try searching with key word like'幼儿' ‘识字’ ‘动物’ ‘身体’ ‘教学’， I think you can get more

for slice show - visit here

for flash show - visit here, and here is a demo, interesting, I like it

[WestTexas]

I tried reading Chinese kid's stuff for awhile and ran into a few problems:

(1)Pick up any two books and they will be two completely different levels. I have heard other people complain about this too. I remember buying two books of Chengyu for kids that looked pretty similar. One of them was easy - I looked up maybe 1-2 words per page. The other one, I couldn't understand at all. When I looked up the words from the second book on my frequency list, a lot of them weren't common at all

(2)Some of the words you find in kid's books aren't that useful. For example, Chinese will have a different character for many different onomatopoeias. You will spend several minutes looking up some character only to find it represents some sound. These never show up in adult material at all. Another example, say there is the word for giraffe. Well, some Chinese kid sees the pinyin for giraffe and has heard it before; he knows what it is because kids like animals. You don't know what it is, and really have no reason to know.

(3)Some of the books just use really obscure words. For example, a book which taught kids about safety used the words for 'electrical transformer' and 'mosquito candle'. Another book, which was supposed to teach kids biographic information about great scientists, was full of obscure scientific terms.

The book about famous scientists was the worst one. The first story in the book was about some Russian guy whose name was like 8 characters long. It had a bunch of words I didn't know also. I started looking them up and, with difficulty, translated the passage, which was mostly about he and his wife giving a dinner party and the food all tasted too sweet. Then it says that's how he invented something. I didn't get it, so I looked up the translation for what he invented: Saccharine. Then I looked up Saccharine, which is apparently an artificial sweetener. Then I got pissed off and threw the book in the trash. I mean really, how the hell is the guy who invented Sweet-and-Low an important scientist? I really felt I'd wasted my time.

[querido]

Does anyone know of a vocabulary list that is appropriate for reading native Chinese children's material?

How about the reading and writing books used to teach Chinese children?

Vast, coordinated, culturally relevant, free:

PEP Yuwen (standard textbook series for Chinese children in China)

Homepage:

http://www.pep.com.cn/xiaoyu/

Textbooks (vocab lists are in the back):

http://www.pep.com.c...tbjx/kbjiaocai/

Storybooks and writing practice books coordinated with the above:

http://www.pep.com.c...shi/tbjx/yuedu/

http://www.pep.com.c...oshi/tbjx/xzjc/

Zhongwen (series designed to be used overseas)

Textbook and workbook free pdf download (vocab lists in the back of the textbooks can be cut and pasted out):

http://www.hwjyw.com...loads/zhongwen/

Courseware viewable for free:

http://www.hwjyw.com...dzjc/huawen.htm

Last time I navigated Chinese webpages generally, Google Chrome with the built-in translator was the best.

Edit: Thank you for the beautiful links LaoJian! :-)

[jkhsu]

(2)Some of the words you find in kid's books aren't that useful.

I noticed this as well when I was looking at Childrens books. They learn words like 鸭嘴兽 (take a guess, it's an animal), obscure sounds, etc. Then I realized that we do the same thing in the USA. Ask any kid what's a brontosaurus or a platypus and he/she can easily tell you but ask any Chinese native studying English and they'll give you a blank look. I came to the conclusion (I should say hyphothesis) that very specific animal names and other rarely used words (typically things, sounds, etc.) are commonly taught to kids who have great memories and a lot of time to learn a language. For the rest of us adult learners, we'll just have to refer to a dictionary when we encounter those words.

[jbradfor]

Ask any kid what's a brontosaurus or a platypus and he/she can easily tell you but ask any Chinese native studying English and they'll give you a blank look.

Exactly! That is the point I was trying to make -- the words used in reading children's material is different than the words used in adult material. And if one wants to read children's material, and wants to study word lists to make progress faster (which I did, and found very very useful), one should study word lists that mirror children's material, not adult material.

Anyway, thanks for the links above. None of them are really want I was looking for, although the vocab lists in each book are the closest, but that would require work to assemble.

[Silent]

Exactly! That is the point I was trying to make -- the words used in reading children's material is different than the words used in adult material. And if one wants to read children's material, and wants to study word lists to make progress faster (which I did, and found very very useful), one should study word lists that mirror children's material, not adult material.

Before making those vocabulary lists I would first wonder whether that's the way you want to go. What's the point in putting a lot of effort in learning less common words if you lack the more basic words needed for a simple conversation? Sure, you never learn exactly what you need most in real life, but that does not mean you should consciously switch to learning rare words. Perhaps you should just select children books about more common subjects. Baking a cake during school vacation, baby brother/sister that has arrived. A story about picking an apple and the angry farmer that chases them. Not all children books are about rare subjects.

[querido]

The original question wasn't about the wisdom of the methodology, it was about wordlists and which wordlists. I suggested the very words taught to Chinese children in their reading and writing classes, as this seems to me to be supremely "appropriate for reading native Chinese children's material"!

About methodology, I've posted about my *own* experience in this regard elsewhere in the forum: after two or three years and at about the 3000 word level I had to force myself to study more conventional materials aimed at basic conversation. Successfully. But, I hope to return to these, maybe next year.

The Yuwen collection is 10.5 bookshelf-inches and thirty disks, all *vocabulary-coordinated*. It's a generous collection of *standard* children's literature. It is also probably supportive of their literacy needs in their *other subjects*. It starts with chickens and monkeys, but advances very rapidly toward stories about pioneers, scientists, history, etc. I see Curie, Darwin, Pasteur, soldiers, ancient-looking poets, etc. (People ask about graduated reading; this is a graduated library. Doesn't anybody dig this? Would anyone argue that it has less inherent value than (the excellent) Chinese Breeze series, e.g.?)

Part of my fascination with this is the natural branch-off into the student's other subjects, math especially. And doesn't it seem like a natural entry-point into a study of Chinese History *as it is taught to Chinese people*?

It doesn't stay at the level of nursery rhymes; it advances very fast.