Group read! 《秘密花园》; "The Secret Garden" (300-ch. book). Discussing through Chapter 2!

[Marguerite]

Quick info:

Discussion of the current chapter, Chapter 2, starts here.

Chapter 1 starts here.

Chapter 3's discussion will start on Friday, November 22.

Please feel free to join in at any point, just please don't post anything from beyond the current chapter.

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I recently finished 《秘密花园》, Mandarin Companion's new translation of Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden. I really enjoyed it, and would like to discuss it with anyone else out there who has read or is reading it.

If you don't already have it, you can get it from Amazon, Kobo, and iBooks. Note that although this is a beginners' book, it doesn't use pinyin. It might be a great intro for those who are making the jump to hanzi, though!

What I'd like to do, and I've run this by roddy, is post every few days about each of the chapters in the book. Basically,

1. Pick a date for the chapter.

2. By that date, read (or re-read) the chapter.

3. On that date, post a quick summary, some key vocabulary and grammar, and any questions I had about it.

pseudo-3a. In order to practice writing as well as reading, I might post a few sentences about the chapter in 汉字, which would then also be open for correction as well as discussion. By necessity, this would/should also be at about the 300-character limit.

4. Post the date for the next chapter. Right now, I'm thinking roughly every 3 days, to give people time to read, write, and discuss, but that can be adjusted. If there's lots of discussion, we can spread it out a little, and if I'm the only one in here, I can shorten it to daily.

In order to keep things organized, I'd ask people not to post about future chapters until the date has come. That way, nobody's spoiled if they don't already know the story, and readers coming to this thread later will also be able to follow along in (relative) order.

If it goes well, we can discuss other books next. Possibly the other Mandarin Companion books, or maybe other digital books. I know there are another few beginners out there reading these books, but it would be very interesting to get more experienced learners' perspectives too. I'm very sure we'll need your help for some of the grammar questions, if we can't find appropriate topics elsewhere on the forum.

To give people time to get the book and read at least through Chapter 1, I propose to post about 《秘密花园》 Ch.1, on Saturday, 2013.11.16. Preliminary schedule for Ch.2 is then Tuesday, and so on.

[JiangshiLieren]

I'm game. The 300-word no-pinyin books are right about my level right now. I'm reading one of the level 1 graded readers that says it's for 300-word knowledge. Problem is, it doesn't say which 300 words I need to know

[Marguerite]

It changes a bit from book to book, as far as I can tell so far. Chances are good that you've already come across most of them by HSK 2, though, and they do give a very helpful partial vocab list at the back of the book for words you might not have come across. I mostly read on the Kindle app for iOS, and the suggested popup dictionary is also very, very helpful. Well, except that everything I looked in defined 着 as 'a move in chess', rather than a character used to denote aspect. (That is completely going to be one of the grammar bits I post about on Saturday.)

[Ruben von Zwack]

Lovely idea! I'd love to participate, but alas, I don't have a kindle and don't intend to get one

 

PS: 着 as an aspect particle is only the third definition in the perapera popup dictionary, too.

[Marguerite]

Well, if you don't object to Amazon you can buy the Kindle version and use one of the Kindle applications (for iOS, OS X, Windows, Android, what-have-you) on a non-Kindle device. Or you can do the same with the Kobo link. Unfortunately, I think iBooks is not as flexible.

[JiangshiLieren]

Just bought this book via Kindle. Wish I had known some of these were available via Kindle first - I spent a fortune in shipping getting paperback graded readers from China.

[pprendeville]

Great idea. Have a few chapters down already.

[roddy]

Great to see something the newer students can get their teeth into, many thanks to Marguerite for taking the lead here. 

[JiangshiLieren]

I'm finding the Kindle cloud reader to be annoying for these eBooks - I can't copy and paste so I can't quickly dump place names/proper nouns into google translate to get the pronunciation. Instead, I have to pull out Pleco and draw the hanzi to get the meaning/pronunciation. 

[Marguerite]

How irritating. Can you use the standalone app, or is that a no-go? I'm still looking to see if I can find a way of adding a dictionary to either reader -- the iOS version downloaded a Chinese dictionary for me automatically the first time I highlighted something, and I hadn't tried on the web or on my PC yet. I didn't realise that this would be a difficulty.

ETA: So far, I have not been able to get a popup dictionary working in the PC app either, but at least you can copy the characters. On the up side, your hanzi writing will be even better by the time we're through! ;)

[JiangshiLieren]

I just grabbed the Kindle app from the Mac OS X App Store. It allows me to copy characters so that's good, but it doesn't download a Chinese dictionary - just the New American English dictionary, which does us absolutely no good reading Mandarin

[Marguerite]

Well, boo! Sounds like the OS X version does the same as the Windows PC version -- you can copy, but no Mandarin dictionary. Amazon cloud has no dictionary and you can't copy. iOS can have a dictionary (but can't copy, as I recall). How about anyone using the Android app?

Or the non-Kindle versions? Kobo, iBooks?

Edited: Apparently the new version of the PC app does let you download a Mandarin dictionary to use. Slight hitch: it's totally in Mandarin, not M-E.

Edited November 14, 2013 at 04:33 PM by Marguerite

[pprendeville]

For anyone with a Mac this bit of software is great for copying text into and getting Popup definitions: http://www.byzanti.co.uk

[JiangshiLieren]

Unless I'm missing something (and I probably am) that software only works on individual characters. When I used it to try and analyze some of the text from the book, it lets me hover over each character (which is super helpful!) but it doesn't detect actual words.

[imron]

I can't copy and paste so I can't quickly dump place names/proper nouns into google translate to get the pronunciation. Instead, I have to pull out Pleco and draw the hanzi to get the meaning/pronunciation.

As frustrating as this might seem, it will mean you'll actually learn the word better.  Quick lookup == quick forget.  Pull out Pleco, look it up, tap the '+' button to add it to your flashcard list, come back some time later and revise.

 

It's more work, but it's better learning.

[Ruben von Zwack]

I guess it's a good exercise when you have to work without a popup dictionary. I find they cheat you into this illusion that your Chinese is much more proficient than it actually is. You* navigate websites and all and tell yourself*, hey, this is going well. Then, in the book shop, you* pick up an elementary school book for the first year and realise you* can't even read the contents page.

 

* I'll admit, I'm talking about myself

[imron]

I find they cheat you into this illusion that your Chinese is much more proficient than it actually is

Yes.  I agree with this 100%.  I stopped using them when I found out this was happening with myself.

 

It's better to struggle and actually learn, than have it easy but only be under the illusion that you are learning.

[JiangshiLieren]

I agree... the struggle is part of learning and the things you learn "the hard way" are retained deeper and for longer than stuff you can just quickly look up. I like to do it the hard way first and then use the "easy way" (copy paste) to check my work after.

[imron]

I like to do it the hard way first and then use the "easy way" (copy paste) to check my work after.

Whenever you are reading Chinese and you want to look up a word you already 'know' in the dictionary 'just to check', that should be a trigger to indicate to you that you haven't really learnt the word properly yet.

 

It's ok to use an easy way to check, but just make sure that when you check you spend a little bit of time really reinforcing the part that you were uncertain of rather than thinking, yes I know this word, I was correct.  Otherwise you'll find yourself continually needing to look it up just to check, but not actually spending the time to make sure you won't need to check next time.

[yiersansiwo]

I would love to join, but am a bit afraid I cant do it yet. As an idea to the authors, what about providing a list of the 300 words one needs to know with each book, so not so advanced learners can study those first and then read the book? Would be a good aim to set yourself, with an immediate opportunity to practice them.