I'm not quite sure how to go about increasing my reading skills

[Fishyesque]

I'm fairly new at learning Mandarin, but I'm a fast learner and I'm really excited about it. My main focus is speaking, but I'd like to work on reading skills here and there. I came across Harry Potter in Mandarin, but I haven't the slightest idea of how to go about understanding it. I've got Pleco, and was using it to translate the characters/character combinations but with characters having multiple possible meanings based on context, I'm not sure what the best way would be to go about this process.

Thanks in advance!

[renzhe]

It's not that easy, I'm afraid.

Just like any other language, Chinese has a complex grammar and a large vocabulary, and both need to be learned. The lack of word boundaries in Chinese is an additional obstacle: you don't know where a word begins and ends unless you a) know the word or b) understand sentence grammar well enough to figure it out.

Reading is something you get better at by doing lots of reading, but Harry Potter is a difficult book. You should start with something much simpler. The best way to go about it is following a good textbook, which will start you with simple reading and make it progressively more difficult. From there, you can try simple comic books, more complex comic books, simple short stories, simple books, and then finally a proper full-length book.

I started with New Practical Chinese reader, then switched over to Doraemon, then Ranma 1/2, then Ba Jin, then Jin Yong (actually, I did the last two in the opposite order, but this order makes more sense). You need the volume because your ability to recognise familiar characters and grammar patterns improves a lot with volume, so you can concentrate more of your effort on the trickier bits. In other words, getting good at the easy bits will help you read the more complex bits because large parts of any text are going to be common characters and patterns.

Perhaps there is a faster way, but I'm not aware of it.

[gato]

A faster way is to read more per day, say, 8 hours instead of 4 hours per day

[renzhe]

True, but often brain fatigue will kick in after a few hours, especially if you're new to reading Chinese, or you are reading material that is too challenging for your current level.

Once you get to the point where you can read something comfortably, then I completely agree with you, more is always better.

[Fishyesque]

I appreciate the helpful responses. After I posted I continued to look on the site and quickly realized that I was getting ahead of myself. I'm grateful for the kindness of everyone here.

[Fishyesque]

Also, do I just need to get http://www.amazon.com/New-Practical-Chinese-Reader-Textbook/dp/7561910401 ? I saw in a review that there are more materials that go together. Thanks again for pointing me in the right direction!

[tysond]

Ahhh... Harry Potter.... fond memories...

When I learned Dutch, I was living in Belgium for 3 months. I did half of Assimil, read some comics, then in the last few weeks, went straight to Harry Potter (side by side with English). Harry Potter was tough for the first page (had to learn a bunch of past tense irregular verbs, which are rare in comics) but quickly became readable. But that's because Dutch is highly related to English - same alphabet, similar words, similar grammar - you could zero in on the few differences and concentrate on them until they became well understood. Honestly, the hardest part was that they changed Dumbledore's name, that really put me off.

With Chinese, as renzhe points out, there are no spaces between the words， thousands of characters in use with multiple meanings, and what's more, everybody's name has been changed. There's no way to zero in because everything is a big mystery. Your eyes are just bugging out trying to read one character at a time. I own a few side by side novels (English/Chinese) - purchased when I thought I could use the Harry Potter technique - and it's not at all like the English/Dutch experience despite considerably more study time spent on Chinese.

I've had to accept that I need to train my eye/brain reading system to be as familiar with characters (and multi-characters) as it is with words. It needs to be unconscious, automatic reading.

Like Renzhe suggested, I've found graded material is super helpful. Chinese Breeze readers are pretty good for me and have helped me be able to see sentences as sentences (like - "the cat sat on the mat", not a brain frying trying to spell out "t-h-e-c-a-t-s-a-t-o-n-t-h-e-....").

Then when it gets more complex, at least you can see "the X sat on the Y?" and you can use your brain to actively zero in on those bits and start guessing at their meaning.

If you want to find some good online resources, consider the short stories on Just Learn Chinese.

http://justlearnchinese.com/mini-novels/

[Demian]

You will find a collection of 900 short texts on this page of the University of Iowa web site. The texts range from beginning (first 300) to advanced (last 300) level. Each text is accompanied by an audio recording, and a series of questions to test your comprehension.

You may find Yin Po-Ching's Basic Chinese Grammar helpful. It has exercises with solutions, ideal for self-study, in my opinion. This grammar book can be used in conjuction with the texts on the Iowa university web site.

Assimil Chinese with Ease and Linguapohne Chinese are two wonderful courses for beginners. They teach reading and speaking.

You may also want to have a look at professor Alexander Arguelles' YouTube videos on language study.

Tysond: If you want to find some good online resources, consider the short stories on Just Learn Chinese.

http://justlearnchin...om/mini-novels/

Thank you!

Source

我是中文的學生。(I am a learner.)

[roddy]

Definitely get NPCR, or similar. Not sure what other specific materials there are, but order the textbook NOW. We must harness this early bout of enthusiasm.

[c_redman]

To read a text with the vaguest of understanding, you probably need to know at least 75% of the words on the page (rough estimate). To be able to follow the story, it's more like 85-90%. If you want to read native materials outside of textbooks and graded readers, that means having a large vocabulary. It's a lot of work, and there's no way around it.

I've got Pleco, and was using it to translate the characters/character combinations but with characters having multiple possible meanings based on context, I'm not sure what the best way would be to go about this process.

At this stage, you should focus more on Chinese words (the "character combinations") than on individual characters. If you study well from word lists and flashcards, you can get a jumpstart with pre-made lists like the HSK lists, or user-created lists for the Anki flashcard application, or from online sites like iMandarinpod (free) or Chinesepod (not free). Personally, I prefer to learn from word lists, rather than looking up a lot of words on the fly, which interrupts the flow of my reading.

Keep in mind Stephen Krashen's Input Hypothesis, the postulate that progress is most effective when the material is just slightly more advanced than your current level. That doesn't mean avoiding things that are at a much higher level, if it's something you enjoy. Having fun is definitely an important part of learning.

[Ruben von Zwack]

We must harness this early bout of enthusiasm.

I have the Chinese Breeze graded readers from BLCU, some graded readers from Cheng & Tsui, Boston, the 成语故事/Ancient Chinese Parables from "Integrated Chinese" (Level 2) textbook (<- tip! comes as a supplement free on the web, excellent for the ambitious beginner!)

... but to be honest, I also resort to... children's books! Stories about the zodiac animals, about the adventures of cute cats... I really enjoy that. Oh and it's not like you can't learn grammar from them!

Thanks for the resources, Demian + Tysond!

[renzhe]

There are plenty of additional materials for NCPR, but I don't think that they are necessary. I didn't use the workbooks or the CDs, but some people find them useful.

I did like the DVDs, but they are all available on youtube, like

, so this is not a must. The conversations in the video may sound stilted, but this is to make it easier to follow.

[Silent]

I came across Harry Potter in Mandarin, but I haven't the slightest idea of how to go about understanding it.

I don't know the level of the Harry Potter books or your level so no judgement or Harry Potter is suitable. The way I found very effective for my first book is:

Make a frequency analysis of the words in the book.

Learn the most frequent words in order of occurence.

Read the book in a webbrowser with a pop-up dictionary.

At first I felt that I was reading the book by reading the pop-up translations, but very soon I noticed that I was reading the Chinese and only went to the pop-up translations when I did not know the word immediately. I still read more translations then strictly needed as I did not take much time to think about the lesser known words. The big advanatage however was that I could go through the book at a reasonable pace which makes the reading far more enjoyable and thus motivating.

With a few more(but still far too little) books under my belt I recommend to read easier book so that the comprehension rate without dictionary is still fairly high. To make it most effective you should learn the words more or less in sync with the reading so that words learned will immediately be used and repeated immediately.

What I do nowadays is make the frequency analyses of the entire intended reading material (a couple of books) but learn the most frequent words that occur in the section ahead. In this way you prevent to learn words that only occur far ahead or are actually rare but are relatively specific for a certain section/book.