Author: Jared Turner

So you can read Chinese, but you want to improve your speaking, listening, and writing? Look no further! Here are some activities that can enhance the gains from your graded readers that specifically focus on areas other than reading. Some of these activities can be done alone but many work better with a language partner or larger group for discussion. Either way, you’re in for something more enjoyable than reading a textbook.

Read one or two chapters and predict what will happen.

The anticipation of what will happen next in a story keeps us engaged in book. Take that anticipation to the next level and predict what you think will happen. This activity allows you to collect your understanding of the characters and make sense of it all…in Chinese! This can be done by yourself or with a language partner. It can be discussed orally or written down. Grab a language partner who is also reading the book and discuss. If you’re alone or want to practice writing, write down what you think will happen next. Type it out on your computer or, for the adventurous, write it by hand!

Stop reading at a crucial point and offer a character advice.

From an outside perspective of the character, it’s easier to see their flaws, strengths, and opportunities. Take your perspective during a critical point in the book and offer the character advice from the perspective of a friend, relative, or some other outside observer. Write it down or discuss it with a language partner.

Make a personal list of new vocabulary and then share with a partner.

When you come across a new word or character, write it down. Share this list with a language partner who is reading the same book. Explain characters or words that were not problems for you and have your partner do the same for you. At the end, you may have a list of new vocabulary which are new for both of you. Review and study these words and understand how they fit into the context of the reading. Use them in conversation between the both of you.

Write letters from a character or write a characters’ journal entry.

In “The Secret Garden” the character 文思远 (Colin Craven) is a spoiled boy who has been given everything he has ever asked for on a silver platter while at the same time deprived of the one thing he needed most: love. Write a journal entry as if you were the character or write a letter from that character to another character in the book. Try to understand their point of view and imagine what they would think in their own situation. This activity can be done alone and can be carried further by sharing and discussing with a language partner.

Suggest a continuation or a sequel to a story. Tell or write your idea.

The end of the book need not be the end of the story, so write your own! Here are some examples of a few sequel ideas:
“The Exploitation of the Country of the Blind“ Chen Fangyuan comes back to the Country of the Blind as a capitalist roader and turns the land into an amusement park.
“The Monkeys Down the Hall“  We discover that Mr. and Mrs. Zhang were simply victims of an elaborate hoax by their son to get some life insurance money.
“The Secret Fight Garden“ The first rule of the Fight Garden is: You do not talk about the Fight Garden. The second rule of the Fight Garden is: You do not talk about the Fight Garden.

I expect you to send us your sequel!

Read one chapter then tell somebody else about it.

Excellent comprehension activity that forces you to use what you just read. Simply explain what you read! You can do this for every chapter or for the entire book. Put the story in your own words in Chinese! This is an excellent oral activity however also works for a written activity as well.
Use the story as a topic of discussion

This can work with a partner or in a group/classroom setting. Think of this in the same way a book club would discuss a book. Bring out the main themes, characters, motives, and events for discussion among the group. Come prepared with questions and topics to discuss. Start with one question and give people time to think and formulate an answer. A good rule of thumb is to wait at least 7 seconds for a reply after asking a question. While your vocabulary may be limited, you’ll find new ways to express your ideas using what you know all the while learning from others and occasional references to a dictionary.

I have known these types of discussions go on for hours, moving beyond a formal setting onto dinner at a restaurant and continuing in the parking lot till late in the night, all in Chinese! Sure beats repeating sample dialogue from a textbook.

Role play scenes from books and add missing dialogue.

Get theatric! Grab a graded reader and act out what is happening in the book. Adlib scenes and take on the personality of each character. This helps you to gain a greater connection with the language by identifying with the emotions of characters in Chinese. You can explore how to use intonation in Chinese beyond the confines of the standard 4 tones.

I hope you can use these activities can help you develop your Chinese skills. We want to hear your stories. Happy reading!

It’s no secret that I’m an advocate for extensive reading and I love talking about it everywhere I go. I also get a lot of questions and some skepticism. Sometimes I feel like a broken record addressing similar questions. In that light, I present to you seven (7) of the most common mistakes people make about extensive reading.

1. “Intensive reading is pretty much the same as extensive reading.”

BIG difference. Extensive Reading is reading at around 98% comprehension while Intensive Reading is between 90% and 98% comprehension, also known as “Study Reading.” Just a few percentage points don’t make a big difference, do they? Yes, they do! This can be the difference between stopping to look up a character every sentence versus every paragraph. Less frequent stopping means you are able to read more words in a shorter period of time. Reading more words accelerates your progress towards fluency.

I would also caution that even with the amount of technology available today allowing us to quickly look up a character with the simple touch of a finger, research has shown that there are better learning outcomes reading at higher levels of comprehension and too frequent use of dictionaries built into electronic devices can become a “crippling crutch.”

2. “Studying is more effective than reading.”

Conventional wisdom assumes that unless we are studying, we are not learning, or that teaching equals learning. However, this no different than assuming because you have a treadmill in your house you are losing weight.

We can distinguish between two types of learning: 1) Studying about language and 2) learning to use language. Most time spent in classes, textbooks, and sample sentences is studying about the language (vocab words, grammar, structure, usage, etc.). Reading books and conversing in the language is learning to use the language. While both are important, you will never ever become fluent without learning to use the language. Because few have the luxury or circumstances to live among native speakers of Chinese, reading in the language is the next best thing to build fluency.

3. “Children’s books are just as good as graded readers.”

Children’s books are written for native speaking children who already understand the language. Kid’s books are often filled with words and characters that a Chinese learner will never encounter unless they reach advanced levels or are frequently among Chinese speaking kids. For example, here are just a few characters and words from the Chinese translation of “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”《好饿的毛毛虫》.

蝴蝶 – butterfly
嫩 – tender, soft
钻 – to drill, dig into
截 – a chunk or length
腌 – to salt, pickle
茧 – a cocoon
啵 – (onomatopoeia) pop

Of these, [蝴蝶, 嫩] are at an HSK 5 level, [钻, 截] are at an HSK 6 level, and [腌, 茧, 啵] are non-HSK characters.

Barring unusual circumstances, it is difficult to see how these characters are important for any elementary or intermediate learner to study over more commonly used characters. Taking the time to learn these characters is less effective towards building fluency and functionality in Chinese. I can assure you that with just about any Chinese kids book you pickup, you’ll encounter similar obstacles. Kids books in Chinese are simply not suitable for you because they are not written for you!

4. “Quizzes and comprehension checks are important.”

Extensive Reading experts largely discourage testing and quizzes on the reading for a few reasons. Every minute spent completing a test or quiz is a minute the learner is not reading. Many teachers have noted that quizzes and tests in books used for Extensive Reading tend to de-motivate the reader and takes the pleasure out of the entire experience. Instead, many teachers turn the books into a tool for class discussion. Imagine how much more interesting it is to have a discussion in Chinese on how 李叶 (Mary Lennox) from “The Secret Garden” changes as she brings the secret garden back to life. You are guaranteed to get much more out of this than any comprehension check.

5. “I don’t have time to read. I have to pass this Chinese test.”

Students who read in the language they are studying significantly do better on tests than students who do not. I don’t make this stuff up, check out only two of the studies, just for fun:

Study found reading in Spanish was a better predictor of Spanish competence but length of living in a Spanish-speaking country, formal study, and studying was not.

Ninth graders in Japan raised their English test scores comparable to students two years their senior through extensive reading.

6. “I need to read more difficult material to learn anything.”

Conventional wisdom states that in order to learn anything, there must be a lot of unknown words in the text that we have to learn. This results in selecting texts that can be much too difficult, sometimes tackling articles and books where you understand as little as 10% of the words. Regardless of what you read somewhere online or what a friend told you, this is not an effective method. You’ll do better with easier stuff!

7. “I need pinyin above the characters in order to read.”

Truth be told, this is perhaps the most “crippling crutch” of all. This method is largely a result of traditional Chinese education where students are taught to read characters FIRST and pinyin second. For us who can read any language that uses the alphabet, pinyin above characters is an immense distraction. It’s something that you just can’t un-see. The pinyin acts like a siren’s song pulling our gaze towards its warm familiarity and away from the rocky characters of which many a student has wrecked their penmen-ship. The only thing worse than this is having the English below it. If you really need the pinyin to get through it, then it’s probably above your level anyway and you should be reading something easier. If you can speak some Chinese but can’t read any characters, it’s easier to get by with only pinyin at the start but you’ll hamstring your learning in the long term.

Extensive Reading is a very simple concept and the closer we can adhere to the core principles, the more likely we are to experience the results that ER can bring. Happy reading!

Every now and then I am fortunate to run across people who have accomplished amazing things. I present to you one of those unique individuals, Marc, one of our readers from Belgium who recently shared with me his powerful experience in learning languages. Keep in mind that Marc is 58 years old and studying Chinese.

My native language is Dutch, my first foreign language was French, most of which I picked up from friends, but learning a language just by conversation about ordinary topics never will bring you up to the level that you need if you are serious about a language. So, from the age of 15 onwards I started reading French books, novels mostly. The books that I chose appealed to me one way or another. In fact, now that I think of it, I had only one rule: interest. Adventure stories, history, popular science, etc. That was what interested me and that was what I read: in Dutch, French, (later on) English, German, Spanish… Even now, most of the books that I read are in a foreign language.

Over the years I have mastered these foreign languages and I agree with your analysis that ‘extensive reading’ can give a tremendous boost to your knowledge of a language. I became fluent in English, French, Spanish and German because of the many hundreds of novels that I read in those languages. Key is the number of words that one can understand from the context in relation to the number that you really know. And many thousands of books later (I am 58 and I have always read a lot) I can definitely state that extensive reading works!

When I started learning Chinese my goal was (and still is) to be able to read Chinese books about martial arts, especially about Taiji Quan (太极拳), fluently. In that respect I may not be a typical student of Chinese. I am still not there yet, but I do believe that only by reading tons of ordinary material (again stories, novels, nonfiction stuff) that is more or less at my level, I will get there. But the going is rough and the path is steep.

Graded readers are a very good idea but so much more useful to me for Chinese than for other languages because if these ‘black holes’ appear too frequently -as they do in most authentic reading material- they slow me down and prevent me from absorbing the thousands of pages I need to read to increase my fluency (I am not even mentioning the frustration). The control over the amount of new material makes it possible to reach certain goals as far as the volume is concerned while still allowing me to learn new words and characters, but in moderation. The books that are available now at level 1 are too easy for me, but still useful to get those patterns and pairing of words and sentences into my head.

Another big advantage is that you not only practice and maintain vocabulary, but also grammatical structures and pairing words and sentences with other words and sentences. Nothing can replace quantity of exposure for this. I am reading “The Sixty-Year Dream” now and I really think that it can help me a lot in this respect.

There are two key things that I take away from Marc’s story:

The Power of Reading

Marc’s life is a testament to the power of reading. I will note that I think I made only 1 minor grammatical correction to his whole story, which is less than I make when writing the first draft of a blog post! His mastery of English shines through and it’s because of how much he has exposed himself to the language through reading. The same level of mastery awaits those who are able to read similar amounts of texts, regardless of what language they are learning. Because of the unique nature of written Chinese, Marc has found graded readers to be of even greater help than in other languages. Reading is powerful and arguably one of the most effective ways of learning any language, if you are reading at the right level.

It’s Never Too Late to Learn

A favorite saying of mine goes “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the next best time is now”. It’s never too late to learn. I’ve met people who have lived in Shanghai upwards of 10 years who still do not speak any Chinese and often the reason I hear is that it’s too late for them. However, I recently met a lady named Jane from Romania living in Shanghai for 6 years and she finally began learning a year ago. She’s still working through the elementary level, but she’s so excited about what’s she’s learning and how much more independent she has become. People like Marc and Jane are excellent examples to all of us no matter what our age, location, or circumstances.

What’s your story?

We want to hear your story of how reading has helped you learn Chinese, or any other language! Send us an email or write us a review on Amazon or iBooks.  We look forward to hearing and sharing your story!

– Jared Turner

“So, what should I read to improve my Chinese?” he asked as I looked disapprovingly at his book. Zach* had come to Shanghai as part of an exchange program to study business and Chinese. With no previous Chinese skills, he studied hard and quickly worked through the basics of the language. After a few months, I invited him over for a nice home cooked meal and to see how he was doing. He excitedly showed me his recently purchased copy of Jack Welch’s autobiography… in Chinese. He opened it to show me his progress; I saw how the margins were covered with pinyin and every other word had underlining with a definition scribbled beside it. He had been at it for a week and was pleased that he had struggled through two pages and “learned” a lot of new characters.

Zach was not the first to have done this and certainly will not be the last. So what level should he read at? I’ll begin with a couple points about language learning that virtually all language researchers agree upon.

• We need enough repetition to learn new words: Our brains do not learn things all in one instance and we quickly forget many things we learn, especially recent knowledge. We tend to pick up complex things like language in small incremental pieces rather than in whole chunks. For example, we know that it takes 10-30 or even 50 or more meetings of an average word before it is truly learned. Once we understand the meaning, there must be enough exposure to the word in different contexts before we understand how it is used. Basically, a learner must have enough exposure to the language before it is learned and can be used.
• We need comprehensible input: Learners can learn new words from listening or reading IF the language is comprehensible. This “input” can be listening or reading, but it must be at a level that the learner can understand for learning to take place. For example, we speak to a three year-old child much differently than we would to a college professor. To a child, we speak in a way that can be understood while gradually introducing new words and ideas. If we spoke to a child in the same way as a college professor, they would understand little of what is said and learn at a much slower pace. The same principle is applicable to learning a second language: the input (language) must be at a comprehensible level.

Keeping these two points in mind (enough repetition, comprehensible input), the experts at the Extensive Reading Foundation have put together this handy chart to help you determine your appropriate reading level.

Extensive Reading

If you are reading at a 98-100% comprehension level you are reading at an “Extensive” level. At this level, you able to read at a faster pace without stopping every few words to look up a definition. Because you are reading quickly, you encounter more new words in a shorter period of time although there are less new words per page. You get enough repetition that is needed to build fluency in the words you know while at the same time learning new words. Grammar patterns begin to click and reading becomes easier. By reading at this level, you are able to appreciate the story in the foreign language and it turns into something enjoyable. Many people feel that it ceases to become study and turns learning into something fun.

Intensive Reading

If you are reading between 90% and 98% comprehension, this is an “Intensive Reading” level, also known as “Study Reading”. Most learners are familiar with this type of reading commonly found in textbooks in the form of short articles introducing many new vocab words. At this level, you know enough of the words in the book to understand what is going on most of the time but still need to frequently stop and look up many words. Although there are more new words per page, research has shown that learners are less likely to retain the words because there is not enough repetition and reading at a slower pace results in reading less words.

Reading Pain

Below 90% comprehension (one unknown word in 10), reading becomes frustrating and slow. I think we’ve all been here at one time or another. You have to stop every few words to look up a character, slowly limping along as you grind through the sentence. By the time you’ve read the sentence, you go back to read it again but have already forgotten most of the words you studied. Since you can’t remember what you’ve read, you instead try to remember the meaning in English. 30 minutes later, you’ve made it through a couple paragraphs and you don’t even remember what you read before. Reading at this level is less effective. While you encounter a lot of new words, you don’t have anywhere near sufficient repetition needed to truly learn the words and comprehension suffers badly. Most people find this to be a de-motivating task.

The Right Level

It’s clear that Extensive Reading meets two basic language learning fundamentals: provides enough repetition at a high level of comprehension. Intensive reading has it’s time and place, however learners reading at the Extensive reading “sweet spot” can start to experience significant improvement similar to my own experience. You should match your books to your reading level.

Graded Readers are helpful because they provide reading materials that can be matched to a learners level. If you want to know if a book is at your level, open it up and have a look: if there are 3-5 unknown words on the page, it may be at your level, however at 10-20 or more unknown words, you’ll want to work towards this level or start with easier books. The eventual goal of every learner should be to progress towards Actual Readers (native level books such as the Jack Welch autobiography) but only when they can read it with a high level of understanding.

As for Zach, I extolled the virtues of Extensive Reading. I loaned him a low level Chinese graded reader to rescue him from the clutches of Reading Pain. It was still a bit above his level, but he had a much better experience working through easier text. He managed to learn a lot more…even if he dabbled in that Jack Welch book from time to time.

Jared Turner

*Name has been changed to protect the innocent

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. I was only able to communicate in short words and phrases. I felt like a primitive caveman who had to use grunts and hand gestures just to get my meaning across.

At that time I was working with Chinese investors to start educational programs in China. Once while I was interviewing an experienced teacher, he excitedly told me about extensive reading. While he was teaching at a university in Bangkok, they had used this method with great success in TOFEL test preparation. In one experiment, they put two groups of students through TOFEL training where one went through a traditional class while the other focused on extensive reading. At the end of the term, the extensive reading class significantly out-performed the other on the TOFEL.

My interest piqued, I began researching Extensive Reading. Could it really be that good? Over the course of the next few months, I read dozens of academic papers on the method, talked to experts in the field, identified successful programs, and reviewed available materials. There was a mountain of evidence demonstrating the superiority of ER, but the more I learned, the more it simply made sense.

Most of the research on ER is for English learning, but if it works for people learning English, could it work for me learning Chinese? I sought out graded readers in Chinese and found only one series. I bought every book I could get my hands on and I started to read. The first book was at a 300-character level and I moved very slowly. I was not accustomed to reading in Chinese and, while I knew most of the characters, my recognition speed was quite slow.

The first few chapters were really slow but soon thereafter things began to click. The first book was a bit of a slog, but I did it! The second book took about 30% less time to read. My reading speed and comprehension began to improve. I started to see how words were used in different contexts. The grammar started to make more sense.  At one point, I found myself laughing at part of a story. I stopped, astonished, and said to myself “I’m laughing at something in Chinese!”

The most astonishing change I experienced was how I stopped translating in my head. I knew the meanings of the words, but now I began to read at such a speed that didn’t give me time to translate and I began to simply understand Chinese! It broke me free from a habit that had slowed my progress for so long.

My colleagues were the first to notice the change. I was understanding more of their conversations. I replied to questions in Chinese. Within three months, I completed 10 books and I was finally able to hold a conversation in Chinese. Everyone was asking what I had done; “Just reading Chinese” was all I could reply. It seemed so simple I didn’t feel like I could take credit for anything. The difference was night and day and the feeling was so empowering! I forever would be able to say that I’ve read books (note that is plural with an “s”) in Chinese!

From that point, my life in China became just that much easier and my opportunities became greater–all from reading some books in Chinese 😉

Jared Turner

On our About Us page, I mention how one day John and I met in Shanghai on the bus (#96). I was a China noob, only having been in Shanghai for less than a year, and was heading to my job at a Chinese company. I had only started learning Chinese when I arrived in China and it wasn’t even good enough to fool my parents into thinking I could speak. When I got on the bus, it was full with only one empty seat next to the only other foreigner on the bus. “Double bonus!” I thought to myself, “I get a seat AND I can actually speak to this guy.”  As I sat down, he looked up and we gave each other the “greetings, fellow-foreigner” head nod.

He was listening to music on his iPhone and seemed to be content not talking to me as I tried to strike up a conversation. I asked where he was from; “the U.S.” he replied, not really looking over. After a couple more questions, he must have realized he wasn’t going to get rid of me that easy. His short-cut hair must have bristled with slight inconvenience as he took his earphones out and we started chatting. We quickly found out that we lived just down the road from each other. He told me about his job at ChinesePod and had recently started his company AllSet Learning. I got off a couple of stops later but not before getting his card.

Who would have guessed years later we would have teamed up to create Mandarin Companion? Fate, some might say, or 缘分, as the saying goes in Chinese. We hope you are the direct beneficiaries of our fateful meeting and that extensive reading does for you what it has done for me and millions others.

We are very reachable and encourage you to get in touch with us via email, Facebook, or Twitter. Join our newsletter to stay up-to-date on our newest releases and news. Tell us what you’d like to know about graded readers, Mandarin Companion, or any related topic. You can expect to see a lot more from us in the future. Keep in touch!

Jared Turner