Strategy to relearn reading for heritage learner

January 16, 2012 at 09:20 PM

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for some suggestions how to improve my Chinese reading skills. First a bit about myself: I grew up outside China but spoke Mandarin with my parents, so my speaking and listening skills are mediocre. As a child I also went to Chinese classes. However, that proved to be mostly a waste of time for me since I didn't have the motivation to learn and I disliked the method they used (rote learning). I ended up lagging behind my classmates - it was the highest level class (there's another story how I ended up there) - and each time I would just feel more and more overwhelmed. As a result I've forgotten most by now.

Now I feel the motivation to learn again by myself, and with new tools like Pleco, Perapera-kun, Anki etc. that make the initial learning curve less steep, I feel confident that I can do it. I searched the forums for others in a similar situation and found some threads, but I still have a few specific questions.

My strategy is to start with easy texts, add unknown characters and idioms to flashcards and practise, practise, and practise some more. Since I've forgotten most characters except the basic ones, this will be like learning how to read from scratch.

What I wonder is:

1. Any suggestions where I can start?

I'm looking for easy texts in simplified Chinese to read, preferably in electronical format so that I can view them on my iPad. Any textbooks worth looking into to improve my reading skills? It would be nice with one that starts very basic, and then adds a few new characters every chapter (I'm thinking about digging up my old textbooks from school for this purpose).

Currently I plan to read texts from Chinese Text Sampler and Slow Chinese.

2. How do I make sure that I don't forget everything again?

Is something like Tuttle Learning Chinese Characters recommended? I know that Heisig has a similar book, but I don't like the fact that the Pinyin isn't included (yes, I know it's intentional, but as a heritage learner I think it would be easier to know that the actual word is). Of course, I can always add the Pinyin myself.

3. Any other advice?

My goal is to be able to read "everyday texts", such as newspapers, signs etc. without problems. I also hope that this will improve my other skills. For example, everyday talk is OK for me, but I can't use fancy idioms and 成语.

Thanks in advance!

January 17, 2012 at 03:56 AM

How do I make sure that I don't forget everything again?

That is what SRS-based flashcard programs are for. You might want to consider anki, or since you already have an iPad, pleco.

Since I've forgotten most characters except the basic ones, this will be like learning how to read from scratch.

You might want to consider, either in addition to or before you start reading, just work on vocabulary. Without at least a basic vocabulary, starting to read might be a painful and demotivating endeavor. To do this, pick a list of the most common Chinese words (the HSK list is as good a list to start as any), and starting learning them in your flashcard program.

January 17, 2012 at 09:10 AM

In another thread, I recommend to another heritage learner to "go through the 2000 most frequently used characters with flashcards, until you can recognize all the words you can speak" as a core first step in gaining or regaining literacy. In your case, I am not sure if 2000 is too much, but you can start with 1000 and see how you do. I think this is the most efficient way to start for someone who already speaks Mandarin and knows the basics.

Here is a list of characters sorted by frequency, in case you don't have one.

http://plecoforums.c...16&p=3101#p3101

Most commonly used Chinese characters and idioms

By the way, it would be great if you can come back and tell us your progress. I've answered a number of questions similar to yours on the past in the past, but so far nobody has ever reported back. I suspect that those individuals probably gave up eventually due to inability to invest the time needed. It would be nice to see a success story. Heritage learners have a huge advantage in starting with a sizeable vocabulary and an intuitive knowledge of grammar, but still it's no cakewalk and a good chunk of study time is still needed.

January 17, 2012 at 10:41 AM

Gato,

I'm a heritage learner (barely) and I don't remember ever asking you a question directly but I've found your posts to be incredibly helpful. I'm nearing the 2,000 character mark and am about to start concentrating on words (as you've recommended in the past).

I think you're right that alot of heritage learners just give up too easily. I know a number of them who I believe would be able to pick up reading very easily if they just put some time into flashcards. If they just took the basic characters that they already know (1-10, 大，小，中国，etc.) and then learned 5 characters a day, they'd be there in less than a year. My Mandarin background is not as strong as theirs and it's a bit amusing to me to see people avoid the upfront work needed to get there.

Lans,

I think your strategy is fine. I think textbooks like NPCR and Boya that are often mentioned on this forum are good to get you started. As you start moving into reading native material, I recommend reading blogs because they written in a more conversational style that are you are likely to be used to. In more formal writing that you will find in newspapers, there are a number of characters, words, and sentence structures that are never used in everyday speech. When it comes time for you to start tackling newspapers, I would recommend getting a textbook that specifically teaches these more formal elements.

January 17, 2012 at 11:12 AM

I think the strategy should probably be two-tiered: ie. learning the most frequent characters (as Gato suggests) and then increasing vocabulary and cultural knowledge, first through textbooks, then through a mix of textbooks and real texts, and then mainly real, authentic texts. It seems to be that many heritage learners' biggest obstacle is lack of vocabulary (say, only knowing words related to everyday life and food, but not much else). Expanding past that is the key, it would seem.

I think Gato was successful because he specifically set the goal of trying to be as literate as the average Chinese grad student, and this goal motivated him to read a lot about economics, politics, culture, literature...and so on.

So, it might be useful to set one's goals high, but have a lot of intermediate goals in between (ie...finishing a particular textbook).

January 17, 2012 at 05:00 PM

Thanks everyone for your helpful replies!

I forgot to mention that I've tried the "learn x most frequent characters with flashcards" approach but found that I wanted to see the characters in context. That's why I was thinking of finding easy texts to read. However, the general consensus seems to be that it's more efficient to start with flashcards, and I know that the main thing I need to work on first is to recognize characters. Therefore my new strategy is as follows:

1. Work on the 1000 most frequent Chinese characters. Read some texts from Slow Chinese for variation and add unknown characters and idioms to a separate flashcard deck.

2. Continue with the 2000 most frequent characters.

3. Start reading textbooks and then move on to other material (while still doing flashcards).

For those wondering, I plan to use Pleco's flashcard system for new characters I encounter - I like how easy it is to add new cards from the dictionary, and the example sentences given in Tuttle Learner's Dictionary. When I become more familiar with them I'll export the deck to Anki, my main flashcard application, which also will be used for the pre-defined flashcard sets.

Gato, I'll surely try to report back about my progress. I'm pretty busy already (who isn't?) and won't have much time to spend on this, but my hope is to make it into a habit, and move forward in a slow but steady pace.

January 17, 2012 at 07:48 PM

I am a heritage learner. I have personally found that being able to read newspapers and understand news broadcasts require a higher level of knowledge than being able to read basic signs, chat room content, forum posts, restaurant menus, and to understand TV dramas (non-period), entertainment shows, talk shows, etc. Being able to read news articles without having to consult a dictionary constantly is one of my ultimate goals.

I have recently found that spending time in language exchange chat rooms have been very beneficial, as it gives me a chance to acquire new vocab and to use them at the same time. There's an abundance of English learners out there who are wiling to help you improve your Mandarin if you help them with their English in return.

I have tried learning with flash cards in the past, but I've found that I don't have the patience or frankly the discipline for them. I enjoy chatting with strangers so, for me, I have found chat rooms to be a more efficient way to learn. The most important thing is that I love spending time there. It never feels like a chore.

Like someone else may have pointed out, heritage learners are more likely to have a good grasp of basic grammar and more importantly the tones, so might benefit from a different approach to those who are learning the language from scratch. It's certainly helpful that you can already speak some Mandarin, and you could perhaps start off with audio chat and progress from there to written chat.

Edited to add:

I've found is that I retain characters a lot better when learning them as components of words than when learning individual characters in isolation. And guess what, those characters are almost always components of words when they're found in the wild, with the exception of single character words, of course.

January 17, 2012 at 10:23 PM

@lans, you might find graded readers such as the "Chinese Breeze" series useful (do a search of the forums for the relevant threads). Although not a heritage learner, I would personally also avoid pre-made flashcard decks. I find I remember things much better if they are words I've come across myself in context. The trick is just to get broad enough exposure to content so that you'll be covering all the words that would have turned up in these pre-made decks anyway.

January 18, 2012 at 12:37 AM

I'm also a heritage learner and I super-highly recommend gato's advice about getting the top 2,000 characters nailed down using flashcards (preferably SRS). As for identifying the top 2,000, I didn't grab them from a list but I added them by the truckload while consuming so-called easy reading material (even a video game that has sporadic dialogue can potentially send you over the 1,000 mark).

January 18, 2012 at 02:47 AM

Lans - I also identify with your wish to read actual materials as you ramp up. For me at least, the path of getting from upper beginner to lower intermediate -- call it ~300 to ~1,000 characters -- was easily the most frustrating part of learning Chinese. You've already gotten past the initial thrill of being able to say a few things and read a few things. And now you're learning hundreds upon hundreds of characters and words a month pretty much only through rote. And you still can't read anything. At this stage, I think it's helpful keeping in mind that once you get past this stage, and start moving on to native materials, it definitely gets more fun and more rewarding.

If you're learning traditional characters, I think the DeFrancis readers are still very good for this stage.

January 18, 2012 at 03:39 AM

I forgot to mention that I've tried the "learn x most frequent characters with flashcards" approach but found that I wanted to see the characters in context. That's why I was thinking of finding easy texts to read. However, the general consensus seems to be that it's more efficient to start with flashcards, and I know that the main thing I need to work on first is to recognize characters.

Another reason I recommend the flashcards first approach is because you have the most motivation at the start of your study and it'd be easier to do the relatively boring flashcard work now. For someone who already speaks Chinese and knows some characters, it shouldn't be too challenging. i'd recommend one morning session and one evening session for the best effect. Maybe half an hour for each session if you only have one hour total per day. With flashcards on your mobile phone, you can also sneak in some review whenever you have some free time or you are waiting for something.

Learning the characters is also like learning the alphabet, or the multiplication table, or doing drills when practicing music, once you have it under your belt, it'll be much easier for you to move on to more interesting things.

Here are some older threads on flashcard work and recommended settings that might be helpful:

http://www.chinese-f...post__p__242413

1,500 words in 30 days

http://www.chinese-f...to-review-1000/

Flashcards - how many can you review in 30 mins?

http://plecoforums.c...mplified#p21764

How to set up Cram Session

January 18, 2012 at 03:46 AM

I'm a heritage learner (barely) and I don't remember ever asking you a question directly but I've found your posts to be incredibly helpful. I'm nearing the 2,000 character mark and am about to start concentrating on words (as you've recommended in the past).

That's great to hear. Where would you say you are now with 2000 characters under your belt? Can you understand the easier short stories? Newspaper? TV shows? Movies? What could you understand when you started?

In more formal writing that you will find in newspapers, there are a number of characters, words, and sentence structures that are never used in everyday speech. When it comes time for you to start tackling newspapers, I would recommend getting a textbook that specifically teaches these more formal elements.

The book mentioned in this thread below is great for learning to read formal written Chinese.

http://www.chinese-f...hinese-writing/

A Learners' Handbook of Modern Chinese Written Expressions (Paperback)

by Yu Feng

January 19, 2012 at 05:54 AM

It's much more fun than it was a year ago.

So I started learning in earnest in May 2010 with a very weak heritage learner's background -- I could make the sounds and the tones, knew simple phrases (吃饭，生日快乐，乱七八糟） but basically couldn't have a conversation in Chinese. Couldn't really read anything.

Currently, my reading consists mainly of Caixin news, Caixin blogs, and the Weibo posts of the people I follow. To a lesser extent, I read FTChinese, Tianya, and Southern Weekend. It's pretty skewed toward economics/business but that reflects what I read in English too. If it's an article about a subject I'm familar with -- inflation, housing prices -- I'll usually almost completely understand. A recent article about Dangdang vs. Jingdong e-commerce war was difficult but I was able to get the main points. Another article about water hyacinths in a reservoir near Kunming had me completely lost.

In terms of TV and movies, I watch modern content like Feichengwurao and am working my way through Woju (蜗居). Sometimes, I follow pretty well. Sometimes, I get lost. I watched Let the Bullets Fly and had absolutely no idea what was going on. I watched Dear Enemy (new movie with Xu Jinglei) and followed that pretty well.

My goal this year is to be able to read Caixin comfortably. To do that, I'm going to try to learn 10 new words a day that I come across in the course of daily reading.

I'll ask this question here because it's related to the OP's stated goal: How long does it take to get from kind of/barely being able read the newspaper to being able to comfortably read the newspaper?

January 19, 2012 at 06:06 AM

@wedge: It's great what you have achieved, to go from not being able to hold a conversation to being able to read magazines and watch TV shows in a year and half. That should provide a lot of encouragement to other heritage learners. How much time would you say you have put into learning Chinese? 20 hrs/week? Are you in a full-immersion environment? It would seem that you can answer your own question about how long it would take to be able to read a paper. No?

January 19, 2012 at 11:23 AM

Gato - Thanks so much for the encouraging words. I want to make sure I don't overstate my reading ability: In a typical issue of FT Chinese, I can comfortably read maybe 20% of the articles. Another 50% I can get the gist of and probably a full 30% I don't really understand. And I think FT Chinese (which is mostly tranlated from English) is easier to read for a learner than Caixin or Caijing.

I started off with an 8-month full-time study course in Beijing so that's how I got up the intial curve. Since then, I've been working in Hong Kong at an all-English speaking firm.

I've been doing about 15 hours of Mandarin a week. I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to improve while living in HK but I've found that not to be true at all. Now I'm thinking of trying to take up that 1,500 words in 30 days challenge...

January 19, 2012 at 11:46 AM

I used to read (or at least buy) every issue of Caijing a few years when I was ramping up my Chinese studies. (My background is that I went through sixth grade in China before going abroad, so I started with a solid base. My problem was mostly that I had forgotten a lot of what I knew and needing to learn more advanced vocabulary.)

You probably know that the Caijing team left for Caixin (新世纪周刊) a couple of years ago, so that is the new must read magazine. They had a great report on the CCTV/Da Vinci furniture extortion scandal a few weeks ago. A good read if you haven't seen it.

http://news.sohu.com/20111231/n330904613.shtml

达芬奇“造假门”始末:被暗访总经理实为业务员

http://www.techweb.com.cn/hotnews/2011-12-31/1137722.shtml

《新世纪》：“达芬奇”深陷公关陷阱

You might consider doing this below to make your reading more efficient.

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/23505-advice-to-higher-chinese-student/page__view__findpost__p__193729

While reading, I would just underline the words that I don't know and try to guess their meaning through context the first time around and look them up in bunches (say every hour or two). This avoids the disruption of constant lookups. It's also critical that you record these new vocabs into a notebook or a software for later review (flashcards, in other words).

January 20, 2012 at 02:08 PM

This forum has been a great source of both knowledge and inspiration, I very much appreciate everyone's suggestions! It's nice to see a mixture of both heritage and non-heritage learners.

Gato, I tried your 2200 most frequently used characters list, but it only had 2199 characters! Grr..

(Seriously, very helpful, I've also read your posts in other threads.)

For Anki users, can anyone say anything about the quality of the shared "Chinese Characters (Level 1 and Level 2)" deck?

One problem I realized with flashcards is characters with multiple pronunciations (多音字). What's the best way to handle them in flashcards? a) Use the most common one (sometimes it's hard to decide) or b) put all on the card?

(I'm using the Pinyin Toolkit plugin for Anki and it doesn't seem to handle 多音字 in a nice way, so I probably have to create them manually.)

January 20, 2012 at 02:45 PM

One problem I realized with flashcards is characters with multiple pronunciations (多音字). What's the best way to handle them in flashcards? a) Use the most common one (sometimes it's hard to decide) or b) put all on the card?

I prefer a) but this is because I only see flashcards as a way to get familiar with a character, and I get further readings and meanings through vocabulary study, reading, and the like.

Whatever you do, do not create many cards for the same character, all with different readings.

February 3, 2012 at 01:19 AM

Thanks for the suggestion and sorry about the late reply. I hadn't even thought about creating multiple cards, but now that you mention it, it sure sounds like one of those good ideas that turn out to not be that good.

So, I'll go with the most common reading (as determined by the frequency list posted by gato).

April 15, 2012 at 08:14 PM

I am an ABC, so I can speak chinese decently (not fluently, though). My vocabulary, however, is pretty basuc. My reading/writing skills are limited to 50 characters. I might be going to Taiwan this summer for two months to visit my friends and maybe take some chinese classes, and I would like to improve my vocabulary and learn more characters so that I am more prepared. What do you guys think is the best resource for me to do this? I've looked into the DeFrancis books and the New Practical Chinese Reader online, but am unsure of other options. What do you guys suggest?

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Strategy to relearn reading for heritage learner

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