Reading manga to improve spoken Chinese

[Olle Linge]

Before I start, I had a very hard time deciding whether I should put this post in Reading and Writing or Speaking and Listening, so if any moderator feels this is the wrong place, I apologise. This post is both about reading and listening, but I think the listening part is the most interesting one, that's why I post here.

So, I've thought a lot about reading manga to improve spoken Chinese, both listening and speaking. In short, it's an excellent way of seeing sounds, words and phrases in written form that otherwise hardly ever appears in written form. I've read lots of manga in Chinese and constantly have "ah, so that's what people have been saying" or sometimes I hear that people frequently use words I didn't know, but I only realise they are doing it after stumbling upon the words in written form. Perhaps this is something about different kinds of learners; I like to see things written down.

I wrote an article about this, too, which you can see here: Reading manga for more than just pleasure

What I'd like to discuss is if other people have had similar experiences and have things to add or comment. I think many people read manga simply for pleasure, which is good, but think there are some additional, serious benefits with reading comics. What do you think?

[OneEye]

I'm reading Ranma 1/2 right now, and I try to use the vocab I learn from the manga in class. Sometimes my teacher tells me the vocab is too 書面 but usually it's OK. Of course, I'm not always sure if she's just being cautious of introducing more "advanced" vocab too soon or if I really would sound funny using, say, 何况 in conversation. I guess time will tell.

At any rate, it's helping me a lot with learning new vocab. I haven't read enough yet to see how else it may be helping me.

[Areckx]

One of the first days of my Chinese class, I asked my Laoshi about the difference between [什么] and [何] because I was so accustomed to using 「何だ」 etc from using Japanese. She explained that [何] is archaic, and only used for written Chinese to express doubt/questions etc.

This was strange for me, since 「何だ」 is used frequently in Japanese.

[Olle Linge]

She explained that [何] is archaic, and only used for written Chinese to express doubt/questions etc.

This isn't true, or at least it isn't the whole truth. I hear people using 何 everyday and I don't even live in a Chinese speaking country (although I do have some Chinese-speaking friends). It's common in expressions such as 如何，爲何，etc. Using the character alone is perhaps archaic or using it in some combinations, but not all cases and all combinations. Perhaps it isn't very colloquial, but it's still used in spoken Chinese a lot.

[Gymnosopher]

One of the things I did when starting my Chinese course was pick up a sort of comic style/book (not exactly manga/graphic novel - just short strips that I hear are supposed to be funny). However for me I just don't have the character recognition required to make any sort of process with it. I felt it it was taking me too long to manually look up each character so much so that there was no flow, and that the sheer number of new things was off-putting that I'd better spend my time elsewhere.

Perhaps when you have a higher grasp of Chinese than mid-beginner level moving on to this type of thing would work out better?

Alternatively, it could be to do with what else you have going on in your study simultaneously. For instance, whilst studying currently on a full-time course (all be it just morning lessons) and trying to push yourself (it was a level higher than I could handle at the start, and now I'm trying to prepare for HSK4) I find that as much as many many many of the tips and advice I read online such as right on these forums or the active and useful blogs I just don't have the time for that much additional! In fact, I've currently got myself into a bit of an Anki pit that I'm just digging myself out of, with so much vocab from class and the HSK list that often when I come across vocab that seems useful I just feel like I need to tell myself that's for later!

So perhaps a plus for those self-studying to spur interests and give words and grammar in context but a so-so for the full time student.

On another note I did ask for and buy pick up a copy of 喜羊羊 and got through some of that, shame it was at triple the price of the more wordy magazines read by my more literate classmates!

[Olle Linge]

So perhaps a plus for those self-studying to spur interests and give words and grammar in context but a so-so for the full time student.

While I fully understand your reasoning up to this point, I don't really agree with your conclusion, or at least it doesn't fit my personal experience. i suppose it depends on where you're studying, but I've spent a total of six semesters studying Chinese full-time and only one of them have required me to work more than, say, six hours a day. That's not full-time. So, whenever I've studied Chinese full-time, I've had quite a lot of time doing other things (learning other things). On the other hand, I have also studied Chinese on my own for a number of semesters without any formal tuition whatsoever. During these periods, I've found it really hard to find the time to study all the different things I want to study.

I suppose it all depends on the nature of your studies and other activities.

[Gymnosopher]

I think it all lies in the reviews. So whilst I have time enough today to go and read something for leisure taking things from it to review would be pretty brutal. So whilst I have perhaps ~60-70 class items a week to learn (many of which includes both learning new characters and new words) alongside however much of the HSK list I can keep up with (and trying to swallow it last week didn't work out!) I'm weary to add more to my reviews. I may have 4 hours to study in but I'd rather not spend them all on Anki!

So this is why I think it may be linked to general character and word knowledge. If I was able to read more, manga and other things, at a higher level of comprehension -not stopping at every 2 characters or more frequently!- then it could prove a useful method of keeping in practice, reviewing what you know in that old chestnut of 'natural srs' and getting away from textbooks. Infact it's this sort of logic that is making me consider trying to almost solely focus on character knowledge (recognition, understanding, production) when class breaks for my course - in the hope that a few months down the line when I won't have so much time to study it might be a little easier to keep going. Like what those following the heisig method call the long short cut!

[Olle Linge]

Your analysis seems to be accurate, in my opinion. What I would do in your situation is to try to find ways of studying which won't include more new words. You can either do this by choosing material which is so easy that you hardly ever see new words (this might be tricky to find, though) or you may just accept that you aren't going to do this to learn more words. I mean, it's perfectly okay to practise listening without trying to learn all the words in everything you hear. Likewise, you can read and just skip what you don't understand, provided that you understand enough to make it enjoyable. You can also look up a few key pieces of vocabulary here and there, but rather than keeping them, just use them as keys for understanding what you're reading now. There are many things you can do that don't include adding words to your Anki deck, which I understand can be very taxing.

[Silent]

@Gymnosopher, I agree with Snigel there is no reason to learn all words in new material. There is no need to understand everything you're reading. I even tend to say in contrary. It's far better to go through the reading material a bit faster and to loose some of the content. The first time I went through the chinese breeze books I felt I knew (almost) all the characters. But as I had little knowledge of grammar and experience with reading Chinese it took far too much time to figure out what it all meant. Consequently I got stuck in details and lost the large line. After one chapter I started over and forced myself to continue, even though not everything was clear I got the overall storyline. If I got confused as I had the impression there was some inconsistency I went back a page or two and started again from there.

Sure this way you loose a lot of the details, but if you get the main story lines and it's far more enjoyable than analysing every sentence. As you read faster that way you cover more text and keep up reading longer. This means you cover more text and in the end most likely learn more. If you like you can read the same material again a bit later. Then you notice more details, the mistakes you made the first time and notice that you've improved well compared to the first read which is very motivating.

The main issue is to find enough reasonably interesting reading material of the right level. It of course depends on your level and interests, but apart from Chinese breeze I've found no really decent reading material. The main issue's being not the right level, interlined with pinyin (which distracts) and the stories are very short (often shallow, and it doesn't encourage to keep reading).

BTW: A reasonable alternative to learning all the vocabulary you come across is to learn only the high frequency vocabulary of the reading material. If you get it through a frequency analyzer you will notice that often a huge amount of the vocabulary occurs only once or twice. What I tend to do is start to learn the high frequency words of the material. Benefit of this approach is you learn words that are really relevant for what you're reading and after you learned the words they get immediately re-inforced by natural repetition.

[Areckx]

I skim Chinese and Japanese text every day. It's a good indicator of words you already know, and gets your brain used to seeing the text so when you are at a higher comprehension/recognition level, you won't have to start from scratch.

You benefit even if you don't understand anything that's going on in the text. The enjoyment from reading material comes at the higher advanced stage. I didn't start reading books in English until I was about 6 or 7, 8 or 9, one of those... Consider how much English exposure and practice I had leading up to that.

You just have to set yourself into habits. Your reading may start with lots of dictionary look-ups and skimming, but it will improve over time, just as it did with English.

I remember my mom highlighting single vocabulary words in the local newspaper and helping me sound them out. I was probably only about 3 or 4 at the time, and didn't know anything about the newspaper or what was written in it, but I was getting into the habit of actively reading.

[studychinese]

Anyone know where to find Japanese manhua in SIMPLIFIED HANJA on the web? All I can find is Taiwanese stuff, all of it is in traditional characters.

[feihong]

There are not nearly as many choices for comics in simplified characters, but you can find a decent number on this spreadsheet that I compiled:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ao2aBk5qbR3udEFtMWpIaUJwVUhmY3B2SThndFZTclE&authkey=CM3ymrwI

[DespikableMi]

@feihong

I noticed you have links for each manga on your spreadsheet, do you know any popular manga sites? Many of the sites I searched were either blocked outside of China or were only available in Traditional Characters.

[feihong]

The links in the spreadsheet all go to popular manga sites (most comics in Chinese are just translated manga). DM5 is probably the biggest site with the largest selection.

[Areckx]

Learn both traditional and simplified.

[feihong]

At the same time? Not realistic. (At least for people studying in their spare time, as opposed to students.)

[Areckx]

What I do is everytime there is a traditional form, I make a box with two stars in it and write the traditional form with an arrow pointing to the simplfied.

Why not at the same time? Again I don't really understand why there's such a big fuss over traditional, and they're used all the time in Taiwan and other places, so you're going to encounter them a lot. May as well learn both.

I also am a full time student so I guess I can see the difference. But really... take the time to do it right rather than limit yourself.

Plus I'm already comfortable with the characters because of Japanese...

[Olle Linge]

Feihong: That's one ambitious list, much kudos to you for compiling and sharing it. I wish I could give more than +1.

[grawrt]

Feihong....................

I saw Walking Dead and I didnt believe my eyes so I clicked it and nearly squeeled when I saw the chinese characters xD <3 This is too awesome for words *is a big fan*

Anyway..... In relevence to this thread. I think this is really interesting. The idea of speaking better chinese through reading. Im still a beginner at chinese but I was wondering at what level one would be able to tackle comics? One of my biggest qualms with reading anything inchinese is that I'd really like to know if im reading it right... Maybe its because im so used to comparing translated texts to the translations I had in my head that my brain got spoiled?

[Areckx]

I just use text as a way to test myself on the readings. If a character keeps on popping up, I'll eventually get annoyed that I STILL don't know the reading of it, so I'll look it up in the dictionary, ESPECIALLY if I know the Japanese reading and have been using that as a crutch while reading, It's a habit I've been trying to avoid, since speaking "nihondarin" in my head isn't going to help either my Japanese OR my Chinese.

It's sort of a natural way to SRS yourself.