Mandarin Companion Graded Reader: "The Secret Garden" 300 char level

[roddy]

Have sent messages out to the three people on the top of my hastily-constructed list, apologies to the rest of you. 

[tec]

If you get the iBooks version, definitions are baked into the Apple operating system. I downloaded the sample copy, pressed on "chusheng" on the first line. The popup menu included "define", which brought up a missing word dialog. I pressed "manage" and downloaded the Oxford Chinese-English dictionary.

 

I haven't tried it, but I'm going to guess that the other ebook formats all have the same feature.

 

So there's really no need for glosses on the bottom of the page, a la Chinese Breeze, since you can look up any word within the software.

[querido]

I bought it. Thanks for the beautiful illustrations. Thanks for the carefully crafted vocabulary. Carry on!

 

I see the next title is out now: "The Sixty Year Dream".

[Sobria-Ebritas]

Good effort, I must say. The subscripted numbers look a bit obtrusive to me, though (I agree that Decipher Chinese app fares better in that respect). By the way, what's the point of underlining the names of the characters?
 

Good luck!

[tec]

Underscoring proper nouns is a typical device to avoid giving them meaning while reading.

[Marguerite]

Just wanted to add my voice to those cheering on 《秘密花园》. It's probably a smidge above my level, but so far I am really enjoying it. I like that there's no pinyin, too, even though it's still a beginning reader. It's definitely slowing me down, but I am also getting more out of it.

About the only thing I find lacking so far is an English gloss / translation of the Mandarin version. Sometimes I am pretty sure I understand a phrase correctly, but I'd like to doublecheck.

I'm currently working through a chapter a day. Hopefully by the time I've finished, my reading skills will have improved, so I'll be more comfortable with "The Sixty-Year Dream".

[roddy]

So there's really no need for glosses on the bottom of the page, a la Chinese Breeze, since you can look up any word within the software.

 

John or Rufus might want to add something here themselves, but what if they want to add a note specific to that usage? Or something specifically tailored to the level? 

[Rufus]

Thanks for the feedback! @tec noted that the iBooks has functionality to provide definitions of highlighted words. Thankfully Apple devices offer this advanced functionality although it is largely absent in other reading devices. However, there is a "hack" for the Kindle called "Duokan" which is a separate operating system that can be installed and offers a similar functionality that allows one to look up characters embedded in the ebook. Unfortunately, many users do not use it (it's primarily for native Chinese speakers) and these limitations still necessitate a footnote system we currently employ. 

[Rufus]

Thanks Marguerite for your support! It's difficult reading above your level regardless of what level you are at. I'm glad to know you are able to work through it! My experience in reading my first graded reader was quite similar. I understand that having an English translation would help to validate you understanding but your goal will be to understand it in Chinese. As you push forward this way, you'll seek less and less for an English translation as you begin to comprehend it in the language it is written. By the time you finish the book, you'll find your comprehension and reading speed will have increased and because the entire Level 1 books use the same character and word set, you'll be able to move more swiftly through the second book. You can do it! 加油! 

[imron]

I understand that having an English translation would help to validate you understanding but your goal will be to understand it in Chinese. As you push forward this way, you'll seek less and less for an English translation as you begin to comprehend it in the language it is written.

This is actually really important.  An English gloss can be useful, but you don't want to create too easy a path to check for correctness, otherwise you'll start to develop the habit of always wanting to double-check, which will lead to you never being sure of what you are reading.  By only having a Chinese version, you will either be sure, partially sure, or not sure, but actually, partially sure is really just not sure and indicates a place where you need to do more learning.

 

With an English translation, if you think you understand the meaning but you are not 100% sure, there will be a tendency to look at the English translation and think "yes, I'm correct" and then move on without addressing the problem of why you were not 100% sure.  It gives you a false sense that you are understanding what you are reading.

 

Without the English translation, if you think you understand the meaning but you are not 100% sure, then you'll spend to figure out why you're not sure.  You'll need to think in your mind of the possible ways to analyse or split up the sentence, you'll need to look up each of the words involved, and you'll possibly need to ask someone for help.  All the while, your mind will be thinking about this problem and trying to clear up the uncertainties.  All of this will lead you to improve your ability to understand similar sentences in the future, and to improve your confidence that you are correct.

 

It's harder work to do this, but it is better learning.

[renzhe]

For this type of book, I completely agree. You are aiming at lots of reading with material that is just outside your reach.

Still, having an English translation can be a very useful tool with more difficult books. With more difficult books, sometimes small things add up, until 50 pages later you are utterly confused, so it can be reassuring to check that you're on the right track.

When I was reading Condor Heroes (way beyond my ability at the time), I found it useful to check whether I understood everything correctly. I'd only do it every 10 pages or so, not every sentence. That gives you enough time to figure things out from context, and forces you to think hard about what you've just read. At the same time, you make sure you don't miss any important parts of the story that would completely stump you later.

[Marguerite]

Despite my whinging, I generally agree. I'm more afraid that I think something's correct even though it isn't, and I'm reinforcing incorrect assumptions. Luckily I know this story well enough to avoid any major plot missteps, and have a teacher I can talk to about the grammar points. (Plus the posters here, of course.)

In any case, even for a book this simple, I definitely agree that there shouldn't be things on the very same page. I have found parallel texts useful in the past, where the pages are facing each other, but normally I try to check only every chapter or two, if at all. However, I think it's been a long time since I've been this new to a language and can't draw on past study of related languages. I've forgotten how frustrating it can be!

ETA: To keep this on topic, it's why I appreciate the work that's gone into this book / this series. It is readable even for me, with only a few weeks of study under my belt, and the reptition is noticeable but very welcome.

[Sobria-Ebritas]

 

Underscoring proper nouns is a typical device to avoid giving them meaning while reading.

 

Underscoring proper nouns doesn´t seem a sound pedagogical move to me. Anyway, I´ve never seen this device used in any book intended for Chinese children. But then again, The new graded reader series books are not addressed to them.

[Hofmann]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proper_name_mark

[Yorin]

Even 5 year old Chinese children have 5 years more experience with Chinese culture than any foreigner starting to learn the language. They know what kind of names to expect, when we don't. I believe it's not very productive to confront a learner in the early stage with sentences like "小雨来的时候我们去踢足球。" and not to give him some hint that we might not be talking about the weather here...

[renzhe]

Chinese children learning to read also have a much better grasp of common grammar structures.

I think that underlining names is a great idea for a beginner-level book. Intermediate and advanced texts should probably drop it, though.

[imron]

Names can be one of the big things that throws a learner completely off when trying to parse a sentence correctly, and I remember it taking me quite a while to reach a point where it became easy to spot unknown ones reliably instead of wondering for a few seconds why the sentence didn't seem to make sense before it suddenly clicked that part of it was a name.

 

I think underlining, especially at the beginning level, is not a bad thing.  I imagine they won't continue doing this with advanced level readers when they eventually come out.

[Sobria-Ebritas]

In 《秘密花园》 there’re (only) eight characters. Most of their (sur)names are not uncommon (李，马，文，王，林) and contain frequently used words (阿姨，先生，太太，爷爷). So I’d rather make the effort of learning them before starting to read the book than have them underlined all over the text. But maybe that means simply that I’m not a beginnger any more!

[Sobria-Ebritas]

 

I believe it's not very productive to confront a learner in the early stage with sentences like "小雨来的时候我们去踢足球。" and not to give him some hint that we might not be talking about the weather here...

 

You are right. And in sentences like these

 

你觉得怎么样？马阿姨问。

我没有想去。李叶说。

 

it's also necessary to give the reader a hint, I guess...

[Rufus]

Good points. When we were creating this series, we realized that at the very low level we had to keep in mind the college or high school student who has studied for 1-2 years and has never read any text in length nor has had any experience living among native Chinese speakers. Reading this first book will be quite a feat for this student. Underlining the names really helps that type of reader to avoid all of the issues that you guys have brought up. At some point the level may not necessitate this assistance and that is a point for future consideration! The question would be at what level is it no longer necessary and how do we find out what level that is? I suspect in the end it will just be an educated guess.