Been waiting long enough for level 2 books? You need only wait a little longer. Production is under way for level 2 readers. We’ve already begun adapting the Charles Dickens classic story “Great Expectations”. Without giving too much away, this story will take place in modern China.

For Estella, the love interest with a heart of stone, finding an appropriate Chinese name was not difficult: 冰冰. But what about Pip? His name in the typical Chinese translation is 匹普, which is horrible, and we’re certainly not using. Suggestions welcome! This could be your chance to go down in the history of Mandarin Companion.

I was talking with a Chinese friend about her son who is enjoying his Summer vacation after his first year of college. “I helped him get an interview at a pizza restaurant for a summer job, but when he was in the interview and they asked him about his English, he said ‘My teacher always said from the time I was little that my English was not good.’ He blew the interview and now he is just sitting around the house with nothing to do.” Her son has shown great proficiency in math, science, and Chinese, but he seems to have trouble with English. He can speak a little bit, but not very well.

It just so turns out that this entire conversation I had with the mother was in Chinese. In fact, the mother has been working in an English environment for five years but can speak only about 10 words or phrases in English. I asked her why she hasn’t learned English after all these years. Her reply “Oh, I’m not smart, not like other people. I can’t learn English, it’s too hard!”

I’ve heard this one before; “I can’t learn [insert foreign language of choice], it’s too hard!” I’ve heard this from a German colleague about Chinese, an American friend about Spanish, and Chinese people about English. Curious enough, I have also heard this from individuals who can speak but not read Chinese; “I can’t learn Chinese characters, it’s too hard!”

Is it really that hard? To this dear lady, I pointed out that despite not even trying, she has learned a handful of English words and phrases: no, thank you, sorry, what are you doing, etc. When I first met this person, my Chinese was limited to “ni hao, xie xie, duoshao qian”. Fast forward 4 years later, despite my Chinese being nothing close to what you might think as fluent, we’re having a full conversation in Chinese.

“Imagine how much English you would be able to speak if you had only started to learn.” What was holding her back? The exact same thing holding back her son: believing you can.

You can learn Chinese. You can learn Spanish. You can learn French, Bulgarian, Russian, Zulu, or any other language. There is no ‘secret’ to learning a language. Having faith in yourself is the very first step in accomplishing anything worthwhile. All that it requires is consistent effort in the belief that you can learn. The perfect time to start is now.

Reading makes you smarter. A study by the UK’s Institute of Education tracked a group of 6,000 British citizens over the last 40 years since the day they were born. This is one of the first studies of its kind that examines the effect of reading for pleasure on cognitive development over a long period of time. There are some very compelling findings that have implications for learning any language.

Finding: “Reading for Pleasure” is important

This is not assigned reading, forced reading, intensive reading, or reading pain, it’s reading for fun. This implies reading at an extensive level (~95-100% comprehension) as it is unlikely that stopping every few words to look up a new word can be considered “pleasurable”. This very concept is a key idea proposed by Dr. Steven Krashen and his famous “Input Hypothesis” of which most of today’s language education is based. He goes a bit further stating that “compelling” (not just interesting) reading is essential for true language acquisition. It would make sense that reading for pleasure can have a cascading positive effect on learning a language.

Finding: “Reading for pleasure had the strongest effect on children’s vocabulary development”

Experts and academics have been saying this for years: Reading is the most powerful way to develop your vocabulary. Flashcards and textbooks are excellent at introducing the language, but developing vocabulary and building fluency requires much more that reading provides.

Finding: “They discovered that [children] who read books often…gained higher results in all three tests (spelling, vocabulary, math) than those who read less regularly.”

This phenomenon has been experienced by learners of many different languages and is not exclusive to kids. For example, I once worked with a Chinese student named Bobby who used extensive reading to improve his English. About 6 months before taking the SAT, he started reading a lot of books. He found that his scores on practice tests improved significantly. Why? He was able to read the question quicker, understand it quicker, read the answers quicker, think about it in English quicker, and more quickly provide a response. He went from having a hard time completing the test in the time allotted to having extra time left to go back and review his answers.

As for reading improving math scores, Dr. Alice Sullivan who conducted the study said “It may seem surprising that reading for pleasure would help to improve children’s math scores,” she said “but it is likely that strong reading ability will enable children to absorb and understand new information and affect their attainment in all subjects.”

While it may not be determined the exact reasons test scores improve due to reading, the fact that they do improve is clear. The next time you hear somebody say “I don’t have time to read, I need to study”, you’ll know what to say!

Profound Insight

While the results seem rather straightforward, looking at the data from a different angle reveals a profound insight. We know that the 6,000 people in the study live in a native English speaking environment (the UK) and it would be safe to assume that each person has been listening and speaking English every day, however those who frequently read for pleasure performed better on tests. This points to a profound insight:

Reading develops your language in ways that listening and speaking cannot.

This means focusing solely on grammar or vocabulary (or even the dreaded HSK) while neglecting to READ meaningful Chinese will actually inhibit your overall language development. Likewise, knowing lists of characters but not reading in Chinese will limit your progress as well.

Solution: Read! And while you’re at it, read something you’ll enjoy!

In the world of second-language education, Stephen Krashen is a very influential figure. His “Input Hypothesis” simply states that we learn best at a “level + 1”, or when our second language input is one step beyond our current level. The concept of “comprehensible input” from his hypothesis forms a foundation for extensive reading.

In a recent article, Dr. Krashen goes one step further stating that for language acquisition to take place, the input (listening or reading) must not just be interesting, but compelling. I also find his illustrative example of a boy learning Chinese to be quite interesting.

The Compelling (not just interesting) Input Hypothesis

It is by now well-established that input must be comprehensible to have an effect on language acquisition and literacy development. To make sure that language acquirers pay attention to the input, it should be interesting. But interest may be not enough for optimal language acquisition. It may be the case that input needs to be not just interesting but compelling.

Compelling means that the input is so interesting you forget that it is in another language. It means you are in a state of “flow” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). In flow, the concerns of everyday life and even the sense of self disappear – our sense of time is altered and nothing but the activity itself seems to matter. Flow occurs during reading when readers are “lost in the book” (Nell, 1988) or in the “Reading Zone” (Atwell, 2007).

Compelling input appears to eliminate the need for motivation, a conscious desire to improve. When you get compelling input, you acquire whether you are interested in improving or not.

The evidence for the Compelling Input Hypothesis includes improvement as an unexpected result, the many cases of those who had no conscious intention of improving in another language or increasing their literacy, but simply got very interested in reading. In fact, they were sometimes surprised that they had improved.

I included several cases like this in The Power of Reading (Krashen, 2004): Both students and teachers were surprised by the students’ startling improvement in English after they became avid readers in English.

More recently, Lao (Lao and Krashen, 2009) described the case of Daniel, a 12-year-old boy who came to the US at age eight from China. Daniel’s Mandarin proficiency was clearly declining, despite his parents’ efforts:

They sent Daniel to a Chinese heritage language school but it was clear that Daniel was not interested in Mandarin. He was also not an enthusiastic participant in a summer heritage language program supervised by Dr. Lao, even though it included free reading.

Then Dr. Lao gave Daniel a few books written in Chinese to take home. One was an illustrated chapter book, “The Stories of A Fan Ti.” Daniel loved it.

The book was a bit beyond his level, but thanks to the illustrations and his ability to understand some of the text, Daniel was very interested in the story, and begged his mother to read it to him. When Dr. Lao learned of this, she loaned Daniel more books from the “A Fan Ti” series, in comic book format. Daniel begged his mother to read more, from two to five stories everyday. Daniel liked the books so much that he would do the dishes while his mother read to him. Both Daniel and his mother were quite happy with this arrangement. Daniel’s Mandarin was clearly improving, but he wasn’t aware of it, nor was he particularly interested. He was only interested in the stories.

The Compelling Input Hypothesis also explains why self-selected reading is typically more effective than assigned reading (e.g. S.Y. Lee, 2007). An important conjecture is that listening to or reading compelling stories, watching compelling movies and having conversations with truly fascinating people is not simply another route, another option. It is possible that compelling input is not just optimal: It may be only way we truly acquire language.

– Dr. Stephen Krashen

The Mandarin Companion series is designed to be at the right level for readers, and selection of stories is a big part of that.

Sitting in class, the teacher called on one student to read out-loud from the textbook. Before he began, he nervously paused and glanced upwards at his nearby classmates. He began to read slowly, almost word by word, and stopped every few phrases to collect his thoughts. Difficult words were met with an awkward pause until rescued by the teacher. Most of the students in the class had already finished reading the section quietly to themselves as the boy was still not yet half way through the passage…

Perhaps all of us have had some sort of similar experience where a fellow classmate or friend struggled with reading. For fluent readers, it can be painful to watch one struggle. For poor readers, it creates embarrassment and reluctance to read. So what makes a person a good or bad reader?

The Vicious Cycle of the Weak Reader

Poor readers are not born poor readers. Considerable research into the area has found that poor readers simply do not read much, which makes sense. However, the cause runs a bit deeper.

Typically, poor readers started out reading books or materials that they didn’t understand very well, usually because it was too hard or was an uninteresting subject to the reader; because they didn’t understand it, they read slowly; because it’s difficult to understand and they read slowly, they don’t enjoy reading. This all leads to not reading very much and “the vicious circle of the weak reader” perpetuates itself.

The Virtuous Cycle of the Good Reader

Good readers start out reading books that they can understand or work through until they can understand it; because they can understand it, they read faster; because they understand and read faster, they enjoy reading. This leads to reading more and thus perpetuates “the virtuous cycle of the good reader”.

 How to Create Good Readers

If you or somebody you know is stuck in the “vicious cycle” or you want to become a good reader, the solution is rather simple.

1) Read books you can understand

Don’t start reading something that is too hard! Start reading books that are at or, preferably, below your level. This is where graded readers come into play whether you are studying English, Chinese, Spanish, or German.

2) Read books you will enjoy

Just because something is at your level doesn’t mean it’s interesting. Find books that you want to read! Having something enjoyable to read does wonders for learner motivation and is essential for developing a good reader.

Our recommendation? Read. Read as much as you can. You’ll be hard pressed to find someone who has mastered a second language who is not also a good reader.

Adapting our first Sherlock Holmes novel was a lot of fun. From the very beginning of Mandarin Companion, I had my heart set on creating a Sherlock Holmes adaptation. Our first challenge was picking the right story which would be easy to adapt. Not every story can be simplified using only 300 characters. The setting, characters, and plot has to be just right for us to make an adaption that will be easy to read for elementary-level Chinese learners while still remaining faithful to the original story. After reading “The Red-Headed League”, voted as the #2 favorite among all Sherlock Holmes short stories, I saw this story had all the right elements but the trick was how to do it.

The first task was to localize the name Sherlock Holmes. His commonly known Chinese name is a transliteration nightmare. Get a mouthful of this: 歇洛克·福尔摩斯 (Xiēluòkè Fú’ěrmósī). After going through a lot of ideas, we settled on 高明. It is easy to say, contains easy characters, and literally translated means “brilliant”. Our illustrator did an excellent job depicting what we envisioned a Chinese Sherlock Holmes would look like. Thus 高明 was born.

However, an obvious challenge is that China is practically devoid of anyone with red hair. The genetic standard in China is jet-black hair, only challenged today by hair salons offering every type of hair coloration imaginable. Thankfully, John’s clever wife came up with the idea of a “Curly-Haired” League. In China, curly haired people are about as uncommon as redheads are in the West.

Next problem is that China doesn’t really have anything comparable to a “league.” The only organizations of that nature would be government-sanctioned and it’s not something that people could just start up on a whim. Plus the closest word to “league” is 协会, which has a non-beginner-friendly character, 协, and is usually used to denote government associations. An individual could, however, start up a company and give it just about any name they would want, thus “The Red-Headed League” became “The Curly-Haired Company”.

Working with the illustrator was a lot of fun. We figured 1920’s to 1930’s Shanghai would best mirror the late 1800 London Sherlock Holmes period. The architecture of Shanghai in the early 1900’s is still largely intact today, most visibly on the “Bund” along the banks of the Huangpu river. We selected classic iconic buildings where the story was to take place, and SHAZZAM, we had our story.

We worked with the writer to come up with new names for each character. John and I were excited when we got back the first draft and read through it. As I read, I came across a section that just didn’t seem to match my recollections of the original story.

In the original version, Mr. Wilson (谢先生 in the graded reader), who has fiery-red hair, is admitted into The Red-Headed league and offered a part-time job. It required him to leave his shop in the care of his assistant for short periods every afternoon and copy down the text from an encyclopedia. Even stranger, the league was paying him a generous sum of money at the end of each week. After eight weeks, he found a note on the door declaring the Red-Headed league had been dissolved. Although he had earned a good sum of money, Mr. Wilson was very upset about not being paid for the last week he had worked and for the loss of future income.

In our Chinese version, the terms of this agreement had changed. 谢先生 (Mr. Wilson) was to be paid at the end of every month, however at the end of four weeks, the Curly Haired Company (Red-Headed League) was dissolved without him being paid anything.

It seemed a bit odd to me. Why did they change this part of the story? I worried that we’d get hate-mail from Chinese-reading Sherlockian-purists. Regardless, I felt we should follow the original story as closely as possible. I didn’t see any reason for this to be changed. We asked our writer and the conversation went something like this:

Writer: They are bad guys. Why would they waste any money paying him? If they are crooks then they will certainly try to cheat him without paying him any money. That’s what they would do in China.

Us: Well, if they are up to something, then they want to make it look as plausible as possible, therefore they won’t cheat him just like that to save a bit of money. Besides, he’s supposed to get paid every week, not every month.

Writer: But in China, nobody gets paid every week. That’s just strange. People might not take a job just because you say you’re going to pay them every week. It’s so unusual that people would think somehow you are trying to trick them. These guys are not honest and they’re going to try and cheat him out of any money they can.

Us: We understand that may be the Chinese perspective on this story, but this is Sherlock Holmes and it’s different. These are smart crooks.

Writer: But this story is adapted to China and that’s how Chinese would do it.

The conversation went back and fort till we settled on a compromise; 谢先生 would get paid at the end of the month and receive two full month’s salary before the company closes down. So we’ve localized the payment terms to China while the essence of the story holds true to the original plot. Another case solved!

To see samples of this story or get your own copy, visit the book page.