At what known-word % should I start reading a book?

[jiaojiao87]

Hello!

 

What known-word percent do people here tend to  recommend before reading a text?

 

As an example, according to Chinese Text Analyser I know 91% of the words in 活着.  The words I don't recognize all are single appearances.  However, knowing only 9 out of ever 10 words feels like it would still significantly hamper understanding and slow down/hamper smooth reading.

 

Just curious what people here think.

 

 

[Pall]

Hello,

First, one should start with simplier texts, for example, teenagers' fiction. In addition, it's language is more of the kind people use in speaking. Second, it's important what words he knows already. If they are most used words, then, I believe, he can understand pretty much even if there is 20% of the new words in the text.

[Jan Finster]

I am German and when I started reading English novels as a teenager, I was in the same situation you are in with Chinese. I learned by reading and looking up unknown words and yes, it was slow. But I plan to do the same in Chinese when I am at your level. I assume it is easier to know what unknown words you can ignore in English than in Chinese (?) At least when I read Lord of the Rings I ignored all unknown words/adjectives that merely described the scenery. I simply wanted to be able to follow the plot. 

[Wurstmann]

Take a look at this. If you want to have a smooth reading experience 98% seems to be the goal.

[Pall]

The post was deleted, as I found a more effective way to learn oral Mandarin and characters. I do not want to guide others along the wrong path.

[imron]

8 hours ago, jiaojiao87 said:

Just curious what people here think.

The best thing you can do is try it and see how you find it!

 

Keep in mind that the first tens of pages will be more difficult than the rest of the book, because you'll be getting exposure to the writing style and word choices of the author, but once you have that familiarity, it will be much easier to read.

 

The other thing is not to fall in to the trap of finding the book difficult to read and thinking the problem lies with not enough vocabulary and so give up on reading books until you have a better vocabulary.  If you're only just starting to branch out in to reading Chinese novels, there are several other skills you need to develop such as identifying word boundaries, processing words in context and associating them with previous context, putting everything together and being able to parse and understand sentences, and being able to do all of that at a speed conducive to reading, and building up the stamina to be able to do all of that for prolonged periods of time without becoming mentally exhausted.

 

Those are skills that you can really only develop by reading, and they'll hold you back and make reading feel difficult until you have a good grasp on them - regardless of your vocabulary level.

 

Even if it really is your vocabulary holding you back, the best way to improve your vocabulary to help you with what you are currently reading, is to keep reading whatever it is that you are reading, and look up frequently occurring new words (or use CTA to extract the frequently occurring unknown words first for pre-study).  Even a small number of frequent words from the content that you are reading can have a significant impact on understanding - far more so than learning vocab from general frequency lists or similar.

[Wurstmann]

What I do for vocab is adding a sentence for every word I want to learn to Anki and then letting Morphman take care of only showing me appropriate sentences for my level. I either take sentences from stuff I read or generate them with subs2srs.

[Pall]

I'm not sure that separate sentences allows for deep memorizing Chinese words in their usage. It's much better to have them in an integral text. Another handicap is that example sentences may contain new uknown words. 

[Wurstmann]

3 hours ago, Pall said:

Another handicap is that example sentences may contain new unknown words.

That's where morphman comes in. It makes sure that every sentence only has one new word.

 

The sentences come from texts I read or shows I watch, so what's the difference to your "integral texts"?

[Shelley]

There is of course level appropriate books,

Chinese Breeze 

https://www.cheng-tsui.com/browse/chinese-breeze

 

Mandarin companion

https://mandarincompanion.com/

 

They might be suitable.

 

 

 

[jiaojiao87]

Thank you all for the feedback!

 

I have already read a bunch of graded readers -- essentially all available Mandarin Companion and Chinese Breeze up to the highest level they offer.  I've been working through the 学汉语分级读物 series, and while these are quite good, I am trying to decide when I would be ready to jump into trying actual native content.  There is still quite a big gap in terms of word % known, it seems, from these graded readers to native content.

 

I'll play around with a few of these suggestions.  Thanks again!

[matteo]

 

Quote

I am German and when I started reading English novels as a teenager, I was in the same situation you are in with Chinese. I learned by reading and looking up unknown words and yes, it was slow.

Agree with Jan Finster's reply above, I don't know how many years I spent as a kid reading English language novels with a massive dictionary on my knees, but to me it's always been very enjoyable. 

 

II think it really depends on how much you are able to still have fun in the process of a very laborious reading full of interruptions. It is extremely tiring at the beginning but gets better as you get familiar with the author and get used to look words up; it's probably not everyone's cup of tea,  but personally I find it infinitely more rewarding than reading a dulled-down and tasteless graded version...(I don't have anything in particular against graded readings, and have used them in the past but in my view they are just a stepping stone to get past as soon as possible).

If looking up too many words really turns you off, I think that comic books are a good alternative, still geared to adults(ish) and entertaining, but easier than proper literature. 

Recently I've been reading this, a bit silly but enjoyable https://detail.tmall.com/item.htm?id=580415529584&ali_refid=a3_430750_1006:1110146616:N:ALRnTm6EJlecVWMvAPKM2g==:614bd082579b55206b19b0580576be0a&ali_trackid=1_614bd082579b55206b19b0580576be0a&spm=a21wu.10013406.0.0

[大块头]

10 hours ago, imron said:

Keep in mind that the first tens of pages will be more difficult than the rest of the book, because you'll be getting exposure to the writing style and word choices of the author, but once you have that familiarity, it will be much easier to read.

 

Here is some reading rate data from the first couple novels I read in Chinese. Note the large initial jump in reading rate for the first novel.

 

 

 

Yes, you shouldn't read something that isn't way above your skill level, but if you read it on your phone or tablet Pleco is just a copy/paste away. Just don't let it become a crutch. I try to read and understand each sentence before I look up any words I don't know.

[DavyJonesLocker]

2 hours ago, 大块头 said:

Yes, you shouldn't read something that isn't way above your skill level, but if you read it on your phone or tablet Pleco is just a copy/paste away. Just don't let it become a crutch. I try to read and understand each sentence before I look up any words I don't know.

 

I use the OCR feature if I'm reading on a tablet. It makes reading far more fluid.

However you're right in that it's tempting to check with the OCR before you gave it a good try to recognize the word yourself 

Ive fallen into that trap a few times my self. I found I was looking up very simple words unnecessarily

[imron]

30 minutes ago, DavyJonesLocker said:

I found I was looking up very simple words unnecessarily

Confidence in knowing a word is just as important as knowing the meaning and pronunciation.  Looking something up 'just to check' should trip a mental alarm that you need to spend more time on that word even if you 'got it right' because if you really knew the word you wouldn't have needed to look it up in the dictionary, even if it's 'just to check'.

[Moshen]

Quote

Agree with Jan Finster's reply above, I don't know how many years I spent as a kid reading English language novels with a massive dictionary on my knees, but to me it's always been very enjoyable. 

 

WIth Spanish what I've done was to buy Spanish and English versions of the same novel, then I read a page or so of the Spanish version and go over to the English version to make sure I've properly understood it.  Then back to the Spanish.  The first four or five times I did it, this worked out great, but in the most recent pair of volumes, which had a lot of slang and "Spanglish" in it, there were whole sentences left out of the Spanish version where apparently the wording was too difficult to put in the other language.  Normally I choose a novel that was originally written in Spanish for this, but the most recent one in particular I made a mistake on: it was by a Mexican-American author and originally written in English, not Spanish.  So the language you're trying to learn should probably be the original, not the translation.

 

I don't know whether this will work with Chinese as it partly depends on how faithful translations are.  The good thing about this method is that I was training myself to read for meaning and not getting hung up on a particular word that I didn't know.  Unless, in a few cases, the word kept being repeated and I couldn't get it from context, in which case I might try to locate that particular word in the English translation.

[Shelley]

5 hours ago, Moshen said:

WIth Spanish what I've done was to buy Spanish and English versions of the same novel, then I read a page or so of the Spanish version and go over to the English version to make sure I've properly understood it.  Then back to the Spanish. 

 

There are books written with one page English one page Chinese - Side By Side.

 

This is just one example https://www.fluentu.com/blog/chinese/2018/04/11/chinese-parallel-text/

 

it may be a good step from graded to native material.

[Dawei3]

On 6/16/2019 at 9:07 AM, imron said:

identifying word boundaries, processing words in context and associating them with previous context, putting everything together and being able to parse and understand sentences, and being able to do all of that at a speed conducive to reading, and building up the stamina to be able to do all of that for prolonged periods of time without becoming mentally exhausted.

A fascinating perspective.....  I think it will be a long time before I achieve this (my main goal is spoken communication & wechat).  

 

7 hours ago, Moshen said:

buy Spanish and English versions of the same novel,

A friend gave me a copy of the classic "My country, my people" by Lin Yutang.  It alternates between the languages on different pages.  Yutang himself did the translation.  The bilingual book makes Moshen's strategy easier.

 

This said, the 2 versions don't completely correlate.  In at least a few cases, what Yutang wrote in Chinese was considerably different than in English.  He apparently didn't want to offend Chinese readers when discussing Chinese culture.  The Chinese friend that pointed this out was quite surprised at the differences.    

[Moshen]

Quote

A friend gave me a copy of the classic "My country, my people" by Lin Yutang.  It alternates between the languages on different pages.  Yutang himself did the translation.  The bilingual book makes Moshen's strategy easier.

 

Amazon isn't showing a bilingual edition.  If you still have the book, could you post the ISBN number?

[ZhangKaiRong]

What does the Chinese Text Analyser analyse? Separate hanzis? Common polysyllabic words? Chengyus? My biggest grip to date with reading Chinese literature is chengyus - it's hell annoying when I know all separate characters but when they're combined to a chengyu I need to rely on Pleco. And it happens too often, unfortunately, which kills the fun, at least for me. And this is why I rather read literature in either English, Spanish or in my native language. 

 

As the others suggested, start with something simpler, novels aimed at young adults/teenagers. My first novel in Chinese was Murong Xuecun's Chengdu, and that was a very long and frustrating experience, and I wanted to give it up many times, even though the text is not too difficult overall.