How Reading in Chinese Changed My Life

[Rufus]

I've started a blog dedicated to reading and learning Chinese. Here is an excerpt from my most recent post and I hope you guys like it!

 

How Reading in Chinese Changed My Life

When I first moved to China, I didn’t speak any Chinese, however I was determined to learn. I had a lot of encouragement from friends who did speak, I ground through the daily tasks of life that required some Chinese, and later I bought a textbook and started waking up an hour earlier every day so I could study before I went to work. Characters looked like spooky animals and many friends had said things like, “you don’t need to learn to read Chinese,” or “learning characters will slow you down,” but a good friend of mine encouraged me to begin learning and made a good point: “If you can’t read, then you’re illiterate!”

About two years into my China life, I still couldn’t hold down a conversation. My studying went in spurts and starts. I knew a lot of words and characters, but putting it together was a challenge... (click here to read the rest) 

[Wang7]

Great post, but am I understanding you correctly? You embarked on an extensive reading program and you improved your vocabulary, and listening comprehension reading level one books?  That's pretty impressive!!

[mandarina]

Hi Jared, 

I'm glad you've got so far.

It's especially encouraging that reading helped you so much with your speaking -  people (myself included) usually have a very hard time transitioning from reading to speaking, or they have to adopt two different methods to study them both. 

Might try this method with my Spanish

[Nathan Mao]

Reading changed my life, too.

The first time I sat down and read through a teenage-level story (about 100 or so pages), it really helped my language advance.  It expanded my vocabulary significantly just by repetition.  The more I was able to read, the more I was able to hear.

This book was where I developed my process of reading out-loud, because I realized it helped me listen to myself, improving my tones and accent, developing my ear for Chinese, but also improving my listening.

I followed it with reading John Grisham's "The Partner" translated into Chinese.

I think reading those two books really expanded and solidified my vocabulary, reading ability, listening ability, and speaking ability.

[Rufus]

Indeed! Reading in Chinese improved every aspect of my Chinese. There is mountains of empirical research showing that reading at a comprehensible level in a foreign language results in improvement in every aspect of a language: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. I'll need to write a new blog post citing some of the more interesting studies.

 

It's important to note that the key to achieving these type of gains is to read at at levels of high comprehension. The experts generally agree that this is around a 98% comprehension level, or one new word for every 40-50 words. Other research also shows that it takes around 10-20 encounters with a word until it is truly learnt, sometimes up to 50 or 100 if the word is abstract. By reading at levels of high comprehension, you can being to read quickly enough to encounter the volume of language necessary to truly learn the words and how they are used in context. The same is with grammar which is simply patterns in language. By continued and massive exposure to these grammar patters, you begin to learn them in a natural way with context.

 

Thanks for sharing your experience Nathan! I suspect you must have had a sufficiently high level of comprehension before tackling the native level texts you mentioned. Some people that tackle texts high above their level and learn through it, and research shows that it's much better to start with materials at your level, not above it, as you'll experience the gains much quicker. Very cool!

 

The topic of extensive reading is very deep. I'll be addressing a lot of these things in the future!

[jmido8]

I love this blog post, I'm at that point you're talking about. I'v been studying for a couple years now and know tons of characters but my grammar and such is a mess. I'm always questioning whether I can use words in a certain way or if I'm using a grammar correct. Ihave a question about your reading techniques though, did you do any exercises or anything while reading? For example, copying sentences from the book or anything like that? Or did you just read and read and then read some more?

[Wang7]

Thanks for sharing, Rufus and Nathan Mao. I just ordered a bunch of China Breeze texts! Let's see how it works for me.

[Rufus]

Hi jmido8, the amazing thing about Extensive Reading is that you just read. The key is to get as much language input as possible. Doing other activities can detract from this unless it's utilizing output in a constructive way. If this is available, it's great if you have a friend/study partner who is also reading the same book and then you two can discuss what you've read in Chinese. Since the material is graded at your level, you can have a discussion using that material at your level. The results are fantastic!

 

Wang7, thats great! Don't forget about Mandarin Companion 

[imron]

@Rufus, and as per the guidelines for commercial posters, don't forget to disclose your connection to Mandarin Companion for people who might not be aware that you help produce this series (nothing wrong with promoting products you've created, we just like that fact to be explicitly clear for readers).

[jmido8]

Awesome thanks, I'm trying to find some teenager adventure/mystery novels to read (does anyone have any suggestions?). When I was in China, they had lots of them in the bookstores and I even found one I liked called charlie domo or something like that but I forgot the book in china and can't remember the exact name to look it up again

Also, you said you read lots of very low level texts but in another post you said you need to read advanced texts:

 

"It's important to note that the key to achieving these type of gains is to read at at levels of high comprehension. The experts generally agree that this is around a 98% comprehension level, or one new word for every 40-50 words. Other research also shows that it takes around 10-20 encounters with a word until it is truly learnt, sometimes up to 50 or 100 if the word is abstract. By reading at levels of high comprehension, you can being to read quickly enough to encounter the volume of language necessary to truly learn the words and how they are used in context. The same is with grammar which is simply patterns in language. By continued and massive exposure to these grammar patters, you begin to learn them in a natural way with context."

Should I be looking for something higher than teenager adventure/mystery novels? I have read stories and such from 韩寒 in my Chinese classes but I didn't know 40-50% of the vocab and I always felt like I didn't get anything from it because I spent the entire time looking up words. By the time I had all the words looked up for a 3-5 page story, it would be 2-3 hours later and I would be burnt out (note I wouldn't even have them memorized yet, just flashcards made).

[Rufus]

Hey Jmido, thanks for bringing that up for clarification. The key is to read at levels of high comprehension, i.e. read at a level where you can understand the vast majority of what you are reading.

 

In the situation you described where you're reading at 40-50% comprehension, this is described as Reading Pain. It is recommended that you do not attempt to read at this level. The reading is slow, difficult, and comprehension is poor. Basically you learn very little. Stick to materials that are easy for you. From what you have written, I assume you are not ready for native level books in Chinese. You'd do best sticking to lower level material and gradually work your way up. The only issue is that it can be hard to find the right reading material at your level! As noted before, Chinese Breeze and Mandarin Companion (my company) are the only two doing true graded readers in Chinese, but there are a lot of other supplementary texts out there.

 

Imron, thanks for the reminder! 

[imron]

See also these topics for previous discussion on reading fluency and comprehension, including a nice video demonstration of why understanding 98% is useful.

 

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/34803-extensive-reading-and-vocabulary-range-video/

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/35880-reading-fluency/