Improving reading skills as a native speaker

[tdm]

Hey everyone

I'm trying to improve my Chinese reading skills over the summer as was wondering if you guys had any advice on how to go about it. I was born in China but moved to UK before starting school so I am a fluent speaker but have pretty limited reading skills (maybe around 1000 characters at a push) and very limited writing skills. I think the best way to go about it is to immerse myself in the language as much as possible and just doing things I'm interested in. I'm thinking of just watching lots of TV with subtitles and trying to read online news sites/forums which I would otherwise read in English, and perhaps doing some flashcards.

Is anyone else in the same boat as me here?

Thanks,

Joe (正宇)

[PengHaoShi]

Have you ever tried out www.skritter.cn or .com, for learning to read and write characters and words? I think, you could very quickly learn the HSK characters and words, around 3000 characters and 6500 words. This would give you a solid basis to go on with the stuff you mentioned.

I am also using the booklets "Chinese Breeze", because my reading skill also needs improvement. I still read quite slow, although I'm almost at 4000 characters and 9000 words. Grammar of these books etc. is very easy, but I use them as a tool for improving reading speed. They can be bought in China from bookshops and also from amazon for 16 RMB.

[Ruben von Zwack]

I'd probably read some contemporary book. I know you said you can "only" write about a thousand Characters, but when you're a fluent speaker, I guess that might help a lot?

That's what I do with English anyway, I get some paperback on a topic that I am interested in and make a vow that I will look up every unknown word. It's a big pain in the ass, I always start off over enthusiastic, but then from page 80 or so on I am so fed up and tempted to stop looking up words. But it really pushes you forward, and feels kind of rewarding afterwards, when you look at the book with all your annotations

Specifically for Chinese I just got Volume 1 of this - you'd need go for the advanced level of course - I like the fact that the text comes in both, Simplified and Traditional. It seems like the publishing house is specialised in these kind of readers. I'm not qualified to comment from a linguistic point of view on how good these books are, though.

http://www.cheng-tsui.com/store/products/tales_traditions/tales_traditions_volume_1

[feierbuni]

Hey Joe,

I am in the exact same boat as you. Not sure what to do either.

I watch a bit of TV and look at news sites in Chinese, and am also reading a few books at the moment. Apart from that and using the WeChat app, I'm not doing much more. Writing is much harder because I don't have the opportunity to practice it, and often it will take some prompting for me to write words which I have no problem recognising when reading. I had to sign some legal papers in Chinese the other day and had to ask someone how to write what they were dictating to me. So embarrassing!

To be honest, I think immersion will be a great way of learning, except that you don't realise how much progress you make. I might try and work through a HSK vocab book or something because incorporating some aspect of discipline will probably be quite useful. As for writing, I think it's useful to set some tasks to do which really push you to work on those skills - editing my Chinese CV forced me to learn so much in a very short amount of time. Maybe try engaging on Weibo more often also?

Lisa