The Long Road to Reading Native Materials in Mandarin Chinese
Many a Chinese learner comes to us with a strong desire to read native Chinese language materials. Whether it’s novels, news articles, or even non-fiction, once those texts are seen no longer as a far-off impossible dream but rather as a realistic goal, the impatience begins to grow. And yet, it can be incredibly difficult and frustrating to find reading materials to help intermediate learners progress to native level materials. Why is that? There are a number of reasons.
Chinese Children’s Books Are Not Easy
It may seem like a good idea (genius, even!) to start reading Chinese children's books once one has reached the intermediate level. Fun stories, everyday vocabulary, nothing too complicated... it seems perfect, right? Unfortunately, Chinese children's books, for the most part, are a huge let-down for learners of Chinese. These is because most children's books are jam-packed with difficult characters, difficult vocabulary, and even difficult chengyu. It would seem that Chinese children's books are not designed to foster a love of reading for reading's sake, but rather to stimulate vocabulary growth at the maximum rate. This is a huge bummer for us learners! (The Chinese kids probably aren't loving it, either.)
Not a Lot of Materials Created for Upper Intermediate Learners
This will come as no surprise to most intermediate learners: there just aren't a lot of great materials out there for intermediate and above (let alone free materials). When native-level materials are still punishingly difficult, you’ve already read as many graded readers as you can, and there's not much else to choose from, what is a learner to do? That's the subject of this blog post.
Typically there are some textbooks or books that a learner can choose from, but just not a lot. Finding the ones out there can also take quite a bit of time. (This is one of the key advantages of our VIP service: we spend this time and effort for you.)
Reading Chinese News Can Be Brutal
We don't often encourage learners to tackle reading the news early on unless it is a central learning goal. This is because the news in Chinese is both difficult and formal, but also because it's full of proper nouns (people, place, company, and government department names) which are typically low-frequency and don't appear in subsequent articles after a particular story has been phased out of the news cycle. But if news is not the place to go, what is?
A Plan for Progression from Pinyin to Native-Level Materials
This isn’t theoretical; it can be done! AllSet Learning clients have made this transition and continue to do so in the present. Although each learner is different and the reading material should be adjusted to each learner’s needs to ensure the appropriate level of difficulty and a high level of interest, the steps, roughly, are:
Learn pinyin: become really familiar with all syllablesm correct spellings and pronunciations, etc. (the Chinese Pronunciation Wiki can help)
Learn characters, paying attention to structure: Pleco’s Outlier Dictionary is especially useful here
Start reading early: not books, but easy sentences. You can do it!
Read graded readers: for many learners, this can provide a breakthrough in understanding real Chinese. We recommend our partner Mandarin Companion, but Chinese Breeze is good too.
Read selections or comics: Rather than reading entire articles, just read a paragraph or too. Easy Chinese comics like Boring Bangongshi are also great at this level.
Read text which has accompanying audio: You’ll have to dig for this, but it’s out there. Ebooks with audio are also an option, as are podcasts with transcripts.
Read short stories or articles (or chapter books for kids): You’ll have to dig for this, but it’s out there.
Read short non-fiction (or kids’ stuff): in most cases non-fiction in Chinese is easier to read than fiction. Just be sure to choose a familiar topic which interests you.
Read short novels: Hint: 三体 (The Three-Body Problem) is not short!
Read longer novels of non-fiction: OK, you can read 三体 now.
Learners Must Walk a Fine Line
Serious learners of Mandarin Chinese looking to progress to native-level reading materials must walk a fine line between somewhat level-appropriate materials which are nevertheless quite boring (often outdated textbooks and the like) and interesting materials which are painfully difficult, requiring a prohibitive number of dictionary lookups for every single sentence.
For more detail on navigating this “difficult path,” be sure to listen to this podcast, where our founder John speak with his partner at Mandarin Companion, Jared, about the process.