Karaoke–or KTV as it’s known in China–is an exceptional way to improve your Mandarin. If you won’t take that as the gospel truth, then do I have an article recommendation for you. But even if you agree wholeheartedly, you’re left with a serious problem. What are the songs you can actually sing?
Finding an appropriate one for your level is easily the biggest hurdle, so we put together a list to help you out. These are our top 5 favorite Karaoke songs for learning Mandarin–sorted by level to find the best match for your abilities.
We dug deep to give you a feel of each song before you listen, provide context and background on the artists who made them, and most importantly, give you some juicy data on the actual Chinese you’ll need to learn.
Below each song is a table showing how many characters there are in total, the number of unique characters, and a breakdown of each by HSK level. We’ve also included our take on whether it’s an entry level, beginner, or intermediate challenge!
1. I Want Your Love—Grace Chang
我要你的爱 (Wǒ yào nǐ de ài)
This classic, most famously sung by Hong Kong actress and singer Grace Chang, was re-popularized in the 2002 blockbuster Crazy Rich Asians. Solidly in the genre of old school swing, the song has nevertheless been remixed and re-sung several times in more modern genres.
The big band energy and lively tempo makes for one heck of an earworm. Nevertheless, it’s a fantastic song for entry level Chinese students, as the Mandarin is short and sweet. In fact, the hardest part by far is the English!
In case you thought I was exaggerating; you’ll be happy to know there are only 10 unique Chinese characters in the entire song. All but two are in the HSK 1 vocabulary list, and the missing duo, 要 and 为, are so common you’re likely to have already encountered them well before reaching the HSK 2 level.
If you are just beginning your Mandarin journey, this is the song for you.
Teresa Tang is synonymous with Chinese Karaoke. And that’s barely hyperbole. You do not go out for KTV in the Mandarin-speaking world without hearing a rendition of at least one of her songs, and the “Moon Represents My Heart” is no exception.
Originally sung by Chen Fen-Lan, Tang’s 1977 rendition practically introduced pop music to China. It found a place in the hearts of people all over the country and simply never left.
While living in China myself, I must have heard the song half a dozen times before even knowing what it was called. Naturally wanting to identify it, I hummed the tune to a work friend. Before he had a chance to respond with a name, every single one of our local coworkers within earshot spontaneously picked up the song in the same place with nothing short of joy in their eyes.
With 82.5% of the characters in HSK 3 or below, I’d recommend this for higher level beginner or lower intermediate Mandarin learners. The total number of characters is also quite low, making it an easier song to get a handle on. And if you ever go to China and try the Karaoke, this is the song to sing. They’ll love it.
Straight off Yuki Hsu’s first album, “I’m a Girl” should have been lost to the many catchy hits that the turn-of-the-millennium singer’s talent produced. That better future never came to be, however, as her career ended abruptly a mere three years later in 2003, only for the artist’s star to flare once more in 2007 with her final album, Bad Girl.
“I’m Girl” is representative of the upbeat optimism and quirky relatability of Hsu’s early discography, standing in stark contrast with the tragic trajectory of her career as a whole. English-language sources on the story are scarce, describing allegations of breach of contract and blackballing, legal action, and financial ruin.
Delving into the details would likely require using Mandarin to read the original news articles or better yet finding Mandarin forums or blogs examining the topic.
Fortunately, learning this wonderful song requires far less Mandarin skill and time invested than the story behind it. The chorus is catchy and easily memorized and the rest of the lyrics repeat multiple times throughout the song. That said, there are a large portion of HSK 3 and above characters.
You couldn’t ask for a better song if you’re as much an aspiring guitarist as you are an aspiring Mandarin speaker. Released in 2002, Richie Ren’s cover of “Girl, Look Over Here” is mellow yet energetic and reminiscent of the works of Western bands like the Head and the Heart.
Another artist from Taiwan, Ren’s music career had the rather humble origins of working in a store that sold musical instruments. During this time, he was also practicing guitar, an instrument that would become a defining characteristic of his musical career.
The song itself is about a lonely guy trying, and seemingly failing, to catch the attention of a girl he likes—or any girl, for that matter. The chorus and refrain are catchy, relatively simple, and easily memorized, but there’s definitely some higher level language throughout the song.
With the high proportion of HSK 3 and higher characters, this is ideal for intermediate and upper intermediate Chinese speakers.
Released in 2016 by Chinese singer-songwriter Zhao Lei, “Chengdu” is a heart-wrenchingly beautiful song that proved a hit both within and beyond the artist’ home country. Its lyrics are as much a tribute to the Chinese city of Chengdu as it is a tribute to romantic nostalgia and longing.
Like much of Zhao’s music, this original may draw on the artist’s personal experience. Before his career truly took off, Zhao took to the roads and traveled his country as a wandering musician. It wasn’t long until he was performing at festivals and national tours. He even participated in China’s Singer, a renowned competitive music show, and performed “Chengdu” to the delight of the audience.
The lyrics are a bit more complex than some of the other songs on this list, with more advanced vocabulary and sentence structures. However, the song’s slow and melodic pace makes it easy to follow along.
Upper intermediate and advanced speakers will do best with this song.
No matter whether you’ve set your sights on Grace Chang’s “I Want Your Love” or rise to the challenge of Zhao Lei’s “Chengdu,” you’ve set yourself up to do something pretty darn special. You’re learning Mandarin Karaoke. (Or Mandarin KTV if you’re feeling cultured!) This is an opportunity to take a swan dive into real Chinese culture as it exists today, not to mention an incredible way to polish your fluency. So, get some practice and go out there and sing.
If you have a favorite song for KTV, let us know in the comments!
Jared here with some important news. As 2022 moves into its last quarter and learners around the world move back to school, John and I are excited to announce something big. As of today, Mandarin Companion has a whole new look.
Everything from our website to our logo to our fonts and colors have been updated and codified. This is part of a top-to-bottom rebrand—long in the making and the result of many years’ research.
Hold on, though, what about Level-3 graded readers?
Keeping you waiting was never something we wanted to do, but we’re hoping once everything’s explained, you’ll understand why we did this before moving on to higher levels.
The Bus from Shanghai to the World
When John and I pushed Mandarin Companion out of the station way back in 2012, we had little but our own experiences and intuition. Back then, that was the fuel we needed. My own journey from Chinese illiterate to conversational speaker showed me the value of graded readers beyond any shadow of a doubt.
But each year—as we wrote new books, researched our articles and podcasts, and most importantly got to know you guys and gals through the “You Can Learn Chinese” podcast, chat groups, and our memes on social media, something started to bother us.
We realized, in a word, we could do better. Some of what we’d included in the books was superfluous; some of what was helpful just wasn’t there. We were looking at that globe-trotting bus we set out on and realized it needed a look under the hood—not to mention a new coat of paint.
Mapping the Road: What We Learned
In 2021, you helped us complete a survey that would prove hugely important. The goal was simple: understand the motivations of Chinese learners. And thanks to 1,162 respondents, plus one wonderful data scientist, we did just that.
(A little confession—market research brings out Comicon levels of nerdiness in me. I could make a series of articles just on what we learned, but for now let’s restrict it to the greatest hits.)
The research helped us identify 6 different types of language learners: language enthusiasts, cultural connectors, aspirational learners, functional learners, career-focused learners, and obligated learners.
Figuring out who these groups were and what motivates them taught us how to better connect them to our content. Whether it was finding role models in travelers or diplomats, engaging with culture through personal interaction or Beijing opera, measuring accomplishment, or progressing on a career path, each group needed something particular.
Redrafting what we had already done to better meet these needs was the next logical step.
Revisiting Our Books: Improved Graphic Readers
The next round of books had to be different, but first we needed to get the old catalog in line. It just didn’t make sense to us not to apply what we’d learned.
Not too shabby if I do say so myself.
Every book in our existing collection from Breakthrough to Level 2 has gotten a major overhaul. Before you even crack the cover, you’ll notice improved art and design. New graphics and maps have been added on the inside too! With these additions, we hope to better contextualize the story and connect our readers to China’s rich culture and history.
New maps are not the only redesign! Check out the sample PDF’s in the resource section to get a fuller picture of how they look.
You’ll also notice major changes to the layout and a rewrite of the English content. Besides fixing a number of small errors, typos, and errata that we’ve discovered over the years, these revisions, snips, and additions are aimed at fine-tuning what we’ve learned to be the most useful to readers.
A New Central Hub: Redesigning Our Website
Whether you were looking for our books or this article, chances are you’ve already noticed the new and improved website. The changes to our logo, color scheme, and font come together in what we think is a far cleaner look that better represents what we always wanted Mandarin Companion to be. But these changes are far from superficial.
We shared our hard-acquired insights on the homepage to better guide first time visitors. Hopefully, those who arrive curious will find themselves one step closer to discovering the power of extensive reading. We even have a brand new Mandarin Companion Level Finder tool to help learners find the right level for them! With the Level Finder tool, it’s going to be easier than ever figuring out what reading level you’re at and when to move on to the next.
Give it a try!
To create this, we’ve applied our in-depth experience with leveling standards, word frequency, and learner experience with an algorithmic statistical sampling process. For 90% of learners, it will be able to assess your level in 20 words or less. With the Level Finder tool, it’s going to be easier than ever figuring out what reading level you’re at and when to move on to the next.
User Created Resources is something I’m personally very excited about. We are now accepting submissions for worksheets, activities, and other content from all of you to include in our new Resources section of the site! These resources are meant as study tools for Mandarin Companion’s graded readers, so whether you’re a teacher or a learner, you’ll have the opportunity to contribute and benefit.
We encourage you to swing on by as these resources grow. It’s the perfect thing to tide you over until …
New Level 2 Graded Reader: Sherlock Holmes
Kicking off the next level in Mandarin Companion graded readers is one of our all-time favorite recurring characters. Sherlock Holmes will return in Sherlock Holmes and a Scandal in Shanghai.
A movie star, a politician’s nephew, and a photograph with compromising implications, Gao Ming (Sherlock Holmes) faces a high stakes case involving the international community of 1920’s Shanghai. With the trusty Dr. Watson at his side, Sherlock finds himself pitted against the beautiful Hu Die, a star of Chinese cinema. Will Sherlock retrieve the picture in time or will Hu Die outwit the master of deduction?
This new story features all the changes we’ve applied to the old catalog, with a tighter focus on the most useful content. It is our hope that the preparation we’ve taken will make Level 3 the best experience for our long-time readers yet, and we have complete faith in Sherlock Holmes to see you through the next stage of your learning journey!
For everyone asking for Level 3, this meme might prove illustrative.
But seriously, it’s still in our plans!
Looking to the Horizon: Multilingual Versions
Coming soon!
Growing this community into a truly global outreach is something John and I wholly aspire to. We would like everyone, no matter where they come from, to have a chance to engage with Chinese learning.
That’s why our last big announcement is multilingual versions of our existing books. At the time of publication we have the following versions planned:
Spanish/Chinese
French/Chinese
German/Chinese
And more to come!
We’re hoping that anyone interested in having Mandarin Companion readers in their own language reaches out. Whether you’re a teacher with an undersupplied class or a lone struggler on the journey to Chinese mastery, we want to meet your study needs.
If you have a request for your language, send a message through our Contact page or email us at [email], and we can see what the possibilities are.
Watching the mile markers fly by, I can only reflect on what an incredible journey this has been since John and I first met on a bus in Shanghai. And without your incredible support, it would never have been possible.
An actual picture of Jared Turner & John Pasden in front of the very bus stop where they first met. A magical moment.
Step into China’s nightlife, and this is the sound you’ll hear. Laughter bounces around the tables, occasionally interrupted by the venue’s favorite band. They play every night, again and again, but no one seems to mind. Everyone’s focus is on one place—the hiss and rattle of dice. Fortuitous ivory bouncing in a felted cage.
Shhka-shhka-shhk.
This is Liar’s Dice. A game of bravado and numbers. A game that—despite its simplicity—captured a nation’s attention. It’s fun, fast-paced, and (if you’re the legal drinking age) a superior bar game. The vocabulary is simple, too—barely more than one through ten.
In other words, it’s the perfect game to learn Chinese numbers.
Why is Liar’s Dice so good for learning?
Simply put: Focused vocabulary, constant repetition, and visual aids.
Every time you play, you’re using a small set of numbers again and again. The dice themselves show what you’re listening for. And using your hands to count is the standard in a noisy bar. All these factors create the perfect conditions for immersive learning.
With Liar’s Dice, you can learn (or practice) Chinese numbers without a word of English. This works with native Mandarin speakers, fellow learners, or even friends and family with no interest in the language. All you need is someone who’s willing to play.
That said, things will go a little more smoothly if you learn the rules of the game first.
Liar’s Dice: How to Play
Game Objective: Correctly call an opponent’s bluff and they drink; get it wrong and you drink!
What you need:
2+ players
1 dice cup* per player
5 six-sided dice per player
Your drink (or other penalty) of choice
*Plastic cups work too! Just make sure they’re not see-through.
Basic play
To begin with, every player should have 1 cup and 5 dice. Next, you sit in a circle. Turn the cups upside down so they cover the dice.
A round begins with everyone rolling the dice inside their cup. Once those dice are nice and rolled, peek inside—but don’t let anyone else see!
If none of your rolled dice show the same number (you have no pairs) or one die lands on top of another, this is a 顺子 “shùn zi”. Typically, you announce “shùn zi” and reroll.
The first player calls out a set of dice. This combination includes a number of dice and their shared face value, e.g., “three 2s” or 三个二. A call of “three 2s” declares there are at least three dice showing the number 2.
But here’s the twist! Players base their calls on every rolled dice on the table, including what they can’t see in other players’ cups. So every call, including the first, is really based on what the caller thinks is on the table.
Play moves clockwise from the first player. The next calls out a second set of dice, increasing either the quantity of dice or face value of the dice, e.g., “three 3s” or 三个三.
Continuing clockwise, each subsequent call again increases either the quantity of dice or the face value of the dice (or both!). The quantity of dice may never go down. However, the face value may go down if the quantity of dice increased from the previous call.
Eventually, someone will bluff—either by choice or necessity. For example, someone might call a set of “twelve 6s” or 十二个六 when there are barely that many dice. When this happens, any player may say “open” or 开.
Everyone then opens their cups. All the dice are checked to see if the last set called does indeed exist. For example, if someone had called “twelve 6s,” then there must be at least twelve dice showing the number 6 for the call to be accurate.
If the call was true, the person who said “open” loses and must take a drink. If the call was incorrect, however, the bluffer loses and must take a drink.
In some ways, it’s a lot like the card game Cheat (or as you might know it—BS). However, you can never be sure if the call you’re making is accurate or not, and at the end of a good round, the tension gets far higher than any game of Cheat you’ve ever played.
Making a Call
Okay, you rolled your dice and took a peek. How do you make a call?
Traditionally, the oldest player makes the first call of the first round. In every round after the first, the loser of the previous round goes first.
There are two numbers you have to think about. The number of dice and the number on the dice. Every call will have those two elements. You say the quantity of dice first and the face of the dice second. Some calls you might hear in a game include “four 4s,” “six 2s” or “seven 3s.”
Since this is a bluffing game, you can call almost any two numbers you want. However, the second number will never go above 6, since a die only has 6 sides. And the first number shouldn’t go above the total number dice on the table.
Typically, players will go at it cautiously, using the smallest quantity of dice they’re legally allowed in a call. Sometimes, however, it’s a good idea to bet big and force your opponent into an easily called bluff. Regardless, you’ll often want to base your calls on the dice you actually have. Take a look at this hand.
You could start by calling “three 4s” or 三个四. This means there are a minimum of three dice that have the number 4 showing. In this case, you have exactly three in your own hand, so the call definitely isn’t a bluff.
Remember, though. You’re playing every single die on the table, not just your own. Calling “three 5s” or 三个五 might look like a bluff from your perspective, but chances are, there’s at least two other fives on the table. It’s probably a safe call.
Importantly, 1s are wild! You can use any 1 in your hand—and in everyone else’s hands—as any number you want.
Here, you have both three 5s (三个五) and four 6s (四个六) in your own hand, since the 1s are wild.
In normal play, 1s can represent any number except, ironically, 1! You can only use 1s as themselves in the first call of a round. If that happens, 1s are no longer wild for the remainder of the round.
—You can safely ignore this rule while learning the game, however.
For a while, figuring out how many dice there are will seem like complete guesswork. If you play often enough, though, you’ll learn what’s likely based on the number of players. Like in poker, you can also glean information from other players’ habits and tells.
Legal Calls and Illegal calls
Differentiating between a legal call and an illegal call can be the hardest part of the game to start with, but it becomes second nature once you’ve figured it out.
The first call follows a simple rule to keep the game moving. The quantity of dice must be at least one more than the number of players. So, if there are two players, the first call must have three or more dice in it.
Every call after the first follows a slightly more complicated rule. One of the two numbers in every subsequent call has to go up, and the quantity of dice can never go down.
Let’s say the person right before you called “four 3s” or 四个三.
That first number, the “four,” can never decrease. It must go up or stay the same.
However, if you decide to raise the number of dice, the second number (the number on the dice) can be anything you want, even a number that is less than the previous call.
Raising the quantity of dice
Previous call was “four 3s”or 四个三
You are allowed to keep the quantity of dice the same. If you do that, however, the second number must increase.
Raising the face of the dice
Previous call was “four 3s”
Initially, this will feel complicated. Once you’ve played around a bit, though, the rule becomes so easy you won’t even have to think about it.
Calling a Bluff
As a round progresses—and the calls get higher and higher—a player will inevitably be forced to bluff. When someone says there are more 5s (or any other number for that matter!) on the table than you think is likely, that’s a good time to say “open.”
When this happens, all players open their cups, not just the person whose likely-bluff you called out. All the relevant dice should be counted. So, if someone had called any number of 5s, count all the dice on the table showing the number 5.
Remember, though, 1’s are wild and should be counted too!
If there are less 5s than the number called, the bluffer loses. If there are at least that many 5s, the call was not a bluff. Instead, the person who said “open” or 开 loses.
For example, let’s say someone calls “eight 5s” or 八个五 and you think that’s a bluff. After the cups are open, you see that there are only seven (including 1s, which are wild). You were right, and your opponent loses the round.
In an alternate reality, however, there were eight 5s—maybe even nine or ten. In that case, you were wrong. As the person who said “open,” you lose the round.
Ending a round, beginning the next
Whoever lost the round, takes a drink! It’s as simple as that. While you’re still in the process of learning, it might help to take a sip rather than a shot, but the choice is yours.
This ends the round. Every player then puts the dice back under their cup and rerolls them, restarting play exactly how it began. Whoever lost makes the first call of the next round. All the following calls are made going clockwise, as before.
At the end of a round, it’s a great idea to state the quantity of relevant dice you have in Chinese. Not only will this speed up your language acquisition, it’s a lot easier than squinting across the table to see everyone else’s hand.
If you prefer an alcohol-free version of the game, the loser can instead remove one die from their hand. This keeps the odds of the game in a state of flux, preventing play from becoming too boring or predictable.
Using Chinese to Play!
Once you have a basic grasp of the rules, you can start incorporating Chinese into the game. As mentioned before, it’s entirely possible to learn your numbers while playing—especially if you have a more experienced Mandarin speaker to play with.
Don’t fret if all your friends are beginners, though. The game works just as well as a group study tool. Keep a crib sheet with the Chinese vocabulary on hand as you play and substitute the English words with the Mandarin equivalents. As you practice saying and hearing the numbers, you’ll need to refer to the crib sheet less and less.
No matter who you’re playing with, the key is showing calls with your fingers alongside saying them aloud. If you want to call “three 5s,” for example, flash three fingers when you say 三 “sān” and then five when you say 五 “wǔ.”
If you’re feeling adventurous, look up the Chinese hand gestures used to count to ten on one hand. Learn how to do this and you’ll be right at home in any Shanghai bar.
This not only ensures that everyone can understand what’s being said, but also strengthens your brain’s recognition of the words through visual aids. Looking at other players’ dice, and your own, at the end of a round only helps reinforce your learning.
If you really want to impress your friends, you can teach them how to play the game in Chinese. Teaching someone who doesn’t know the first thing about the language is entirely possible over just a few drinks.
Simply use Chinese yourself and show the numbers on your hand as you should be doing anyway. As the game goes on, encourage your friend to start using Mandarin, supplying the words as needed. Teaching others goes a long way in reinforcing what you’ve learned and deepens your understanding of the language.
Making calls in Chinese is simple. First, you need to replace the numbers with the Mandarin equivalent. Take a look at the table below for the numbers you’ll need for most games.
If you want to say six, you instead say liù. If you want to say eight, you say bā. Pretty simple right? However, if you wanted to say “six 6s,” you wouldn’t say 六六s “liù liùs.” Mandarin doesn’t quite work that way.
Instead, you would say 六个六 “liù ge liù.”
Vocabulary: Measure words
Measure words are used to indicate quantities of things. The word 个 “ge” is the most common measure word in Chinese, and it’s the only one you need to know for Liar’s Dice. To indicate the quantity of something (like dice) you put the number first and follow it with 个 “ge.”
When you say “liù ge,” for example, you are saying there are six of something. 六个六 “Liù ge liù” simply means there are six 6s.
Watch out for two, however! When you are talking about the 2 on the face of the dice, you say 二 “èr.”When you want to say there are two dice, you instead say 两个 “liǎng ge.” Two 2s, therefore, is 两个二 or “liǎng ge èr.”
While there are many measure words in Chinese, the only one you need to know for Liar’s Dice is 个 “ge.” Luckily, it’s something of a catch-all measure word, which means what you learn playing the game can be used in almost any other situation.
Grammar: Counting dice
The complete structure for making a call in Chinese is [number] + ge + [number].
This expression indicates how many dice of any one number you are calling. You say the number of dice in Chinese first, followed by ge, followed by the number showing on the face of the dice.
Six 5s would be 六个五 “liù ge wǔ.” Seven 2s would be 七个二 “qī ge èr.” Can you figure out what “three 6s” would be? Take a look at the following table and see if you can translate calls from one language to another.
Practice calls
Fill in the blank!
The Mandarin used to tell another player to open their cup is 开 “kāi.” Give a try saying that if you want a fully fluent experience.
Once you’ve figured that out, you’re more than ready for a game. Of course, the best way to learn is often by doing. If you can, grab a friend who’s up for playing while you get a handle on the Mandarin and have at it. You can even get some dice and a cup and practice on your own. You only have to grasp a small set of vocabulary to play the game fluently. Then, the next time you’re headed to a bar, KTV or a party, think about bringing some dice. The only thing left is impressing your friends.
Reading is undeniably one of the most effective ways to improve your Chinese skills. Mountains of research show the impact of reading on language development, especially in a foreign language. But reading Chinese can be hard, leaving you looking for the best Chinese reading apps.
For us second language learners, research shows that reading at high levels of comprehension, ideally at an extensive reading level of 98%+ comprehension, will not only improve your reading skills, but also improve your writing, listening, and speaking skills.
However, reading in Chinese has its own unique challenges – the most common of which is encountering an unfamiliar character. There is simply no way to sound it or to decode it; you either know it or you don’t.
Thankfully, there are a growing number of Chinese reading apps available to help Chinese learners, like you and I, read in Chinese, even when it’s difficult! We’ve done an extensive review of these smartphone apps so you can decide which will work best for you.
Chinese Popup Dictionaries – Good or Bad?
Before we start with the reviews, we want to make sure you know how to use these apps, *ahem*, responsibly.
Most importantly, we should always strive towards reading comprehensible texts appropriate for our level. This is when learning is most efficient! If you’re reading at below 90% comprehension, or where 1 in 10 words are unknown, consider looking for something easier.
A good place to start is with the Mandarin Companion Chinese graded readers, which are written specifically for Chinese learners like you. Of course, sometimes there is just nothing at your level or, for whatever reason, you need to read something that may be challenging. This is when these pop-up dictionary apps come in most handy.
However, research shows that popup dictionaries have their time and place. You can’t just “click your way to fluency”, so we offer these two general guidelines for using Chinese popup dictionaries.
Elementary learners: use popup dictionaries sparingly. Studies have found little learning benefit for lower level learners because at this stage, the overall grasp of the language is low – more time is spent understanding the looked-up words and phrases in English as opposed to understanding the text in Chinese. Yes, you can get through a Chinese text but you won’t learn much from it. Stick to texts at your level where you don’t need to constantly use the popup dictionary function.
Intermediate learners and above: popup dictionaries can make reading more accessible and lead to learning gains. At this stage, you already have a solid foundation in Chinese, and so popup dictionaries become more of an aide rather than a crutch by helping you with paragraphs and sentences that you already largely understand.
At Mandarin Companion, John and Jared devoted a whole episode on the You Can Learn Chinese podcast that picks apart this subject. For a deeper dive, have a listen so you can make an informed approach.
Apps and Evaluation Criteria
We’ve searched high and low for the best Chinese reading apps for reading in Chinese and have identified these 6 as the strongest candidates.
Readibu
Pleco
LingQ
Kindle
Du Chinese
QQ阅读
To compare the best Chinese reading apps, we have used the following criteria.
What you can read – The content that is available on the app and what you can import into the app.
Key features – The functionality that is important to you as a Chinese learner.
Ease of use – How easy it is to use the app along with any problems.
Pricing – What is free, what is paid, and what is worth it.
Readibu is a freemium app targeted at Chinese-learning bookworms. It’s feature-rich and an excellent choice for reading webnovels.
What you can read
In the Book Discovery tab, there is a limited selection of books that can be searched by HSK level, completion status, genre, and protagonist gender. This database draws books directly from a handful of Chinese novel websites such as Qidian. However, you also have the option of importing Chinese content by copying and pasting any URL into the app.
Unfortunately, Readibu only supports web pages. It cannot import PDF’s, ePubs, or any other ebook or digital formats. The developer has plans to support other formats, but this may be a long way off.
Key features
Readibu excels in vocabulary management. After tapping on a character, the English definition, pronunciation, and transliteration pop up. The app keeps track of words you’ve tapped, as well as how many times you’ve tapped them. You can also ‘favorite’ words into a special category, exportable as a CSV/TSV file to your flashcard app.
Being built for language learners, Readibu also boasts a wide range of other Chinese-specific reading features:
A popup dictionary with pronunciation and English definitions
HSK difficulty analysis
Web Novel discovery
Simplified and Traditional Chinese conversion
Sentence translation (Premium)
Word visualization (Premium)
Proper name highlighting (Premium)
Offline downloading (Premium)
The automatic conversion between Simplified and Traditional opens up a wider range of content for those studying traditional characters. While we have not tested its accuracy, this is nonetheless a useful feature for all those studying traditional characters!
The HSK analysis graphs a text’s difficulty by HSK level, making it a simple visual metric of content accessibility.
Ease of use
While reading, Readibu is quite responsive – it doesn’t suddenly crash or stutter on long chapters. As a result, it’s easy to open up a page and start reading, with the app even providing shortcuts such as automatically pasting URLs from your clipboard.
However, Readibu has its fair share of bugs, likely due to having just one developer. Opening the app or loading a long chapter can take anywhere from a few seconds to a minute. There’s also a small logical error – books in the Discovery tab have a fixed order, making it time-consuming to scroll down to find new content.
The battery drain is also unexpectedly high – more akin to a mobile game than a reading app! Additionally, for readers who enjoy listening wirelessly: Readibu works with wired headphones but doesn’t support Bluetooth. Audio pronunciation will play from your phone’s speakers even if you have Bluetooth headphones connected.
Pricing
Readibu’s free core version includes: a pop-up dictionary, audio word pronunciation, tap tracking, content difficulty analysis, Simplified-Traditional conversion, and Pinyin/Zhuyin support.
The five-dollar monthly subscription unlocks sentence translation, proper noun underlining, a pinyin/definition pop-up quiz, offline reading, and image visualizations for words.
Evaluation
For intermediate and above learners who can already understand basic native content, Readibu will work great. Unless you’re a very dedicated reader or tackling a difficult text, the free version should suffice. But if you’re a lower level reader, most available books will be too difficult and you should consider the other apps on this list.
My vocabulary is pretty large, so I mostly just need the pop-up dictionary for characters like 舵 that always seem to elude me. Occasionally, I’ve had need to translate more complex sentences, such as a description of potion brewing in one of my favorite webnovels《修真聊天群》.
I love the convenience of Readibu – with just a few taps, I can export new words I’ve encountered to my flashcard deck or view the length of an upcoming chapter.
Regardless of your choice, make sure you’re reading with a charged phone! Otherwise, you may have to wait a couple minutes for your page to load, Premium or not.
While it’d be even more amazing if Readibu supported PDF and ePub file formats, the above features make it my favorite reading app for Chinese.
A giant amongst Chinese learning apps, if you don’t already have Pleco on your phone, download it now! This dictionary app has many additional features for reading in Chinese which we’ll cover here.
What you can read
Pleco sells dozens of in-app graded readers, including our Mandarin Companion graded readers, for a range of levels spanning from HSK 1 to 6.
Pleco has three key functions in the app that are all a little bit different in what you can read.
The Clipboard Reader (free) allows you to paste any Chinese text into it.
The Document Reader (paid) allows you to import almost every common file format such as text files, Word documents, and PDFs.
The Optical Character Recognizer (OCR) (paid) optically recognizes Chinese characters in a picture, live on your camera, or currently on your screen (Android only).
Key features
All three feature a pop-up dictionary that integrates with the main dictionary. By tapping on a word or character on the screen, you are given a popup window showing its pinyin, tone, and definition, with the option to add it to your flashcards. With a further tap, you can view its components, stroke order, and sample sentences.
Android owners (sorry iOS users) can even use the Screen Reader/OCR (Optical Character Reader) as an overlay over other apps or web browsers to optically recognize Chinese characters displayed on your device. This allows you to click on characters in the image, app, browser, or whatever is being displayed on your phone for a popup definition of that character or word.
Pleco also has audio narration. While rather robotic, using the system text-to-speech, it is clear enough to listen to while reading a Chinese text.
Ease of use
Pleco has been around for a long time and is virtually error-free – the current version is as responsive as you’d expect from a thirteen-year-old product battle-tested by millions.
The reader for documents or web pages is intuitive and easy to navigate. Tapping on characters and words instantly displays the dictionary entry without any delays.
Loading lyrics and images is less intuitive due to buried icons and unclear functions. There is a manual on their website, but who reads through those nowadays? I don’t, and went months without knowing how to load song lyrics!
Currently, Pleco is working on version 4.0 of the app (with updates to the reader) which has been eagerly anticipated by the Chinese language learning community for some time now.
Pricing
Pleco’s Clipboard Reader, and the Web Reader for Android devices, is free. The functionality is largely similar to the other reader functions, the difference being in the supported content types.
The Document Reader and OCR add-ons both have a one-time cost of $9.99, though they can be bought at a discounted price as part of a bundle.
As for books – in-app graded readers cost between $2.99 and $9.99, and include all Mandarin Companion books available for purchase at a discounted digital price.
Evaluation
Pleco is excellent for learners of all levels and types. The app works both online and offline, and its incredible range of supported files make content loading both a breeze and blazingly fast.
I’ve used almost everything from the optical reader to the web browser and found no bugs whatsoever.
After having purchased a few more add-ons, learning Chinese has been even more convenient – features integrate together very well. All it takes is a single tap to add an interesting word to my flashcard deck!
The only gripe I have is that there’s no sentence translation. Sometimes, knowing the definitions of every word individually in a difficult text is not enough to grasp its meaning. Regardless, in no way does this exclude it from the best Chinese reading apps.
LingQ is a creative reading tool that doesn’t only restrict itself to books – it allows for the import of anything from YouTube clips to podcasts to Netflix films, and extracts the text to help you ‘learn from your favorite content’.
What you can read
LingQ has an enormous library of books, videos, podcasts, and more that you can use to find reading materials. With the release of LingQ 5.0, you can even search through individual ‘shelves’ such as Netflix shows, songs, or Christmas-themed content.
This huge library sometimes comes at the cost of quality, however, since most content is made for natives and thus not specifically leveled for learners – it may take a while to find something that is both level appropriate and interesting to read.
Custom imports of books/podcasts/videos etc. for leisure or study purposes is also quite simple – all you need is the app or the browser extension.
Key features
Features abound, even at the free level. You can read along to natural audio, view detailed learning statistics, import custom resources, and access a plethora of graded Chinese content from the public library. Word definitions include common translations, sample sentences, and pronunciation.
LingQ breaks down every text into individual words, adding gaps between them. These words are highlighted with different colors to represent how well you know them, and can be reviewed with the in-app spaced-repetition flashcard system.
Using all this data, LingQ gamifies reading, providing comprehensive vocabulary statistics and a daily goal feature.
All of these features combined can be a big help when reading!
Ease of use
LingQ has crystal-clear audio, advanced word definitions, and a well-organized tutorial. Word highlighting based on comprehension is an especially useful touch.
One drawback is the limit on viewed vocabulary for the free version. Any new word you click on will be added to your vocabulary list, and after this list reaches a size of twenty, you will only see a Premium advertisement instead of a definition for new words. Only by manually deleting entries from your vocabulary bank can you then see new definitions.
Pricing
LingQ has a free and Premium version. With the free version, you have access to full text translations, lesson audio, SRS flashcard review, and all public lessons, but are limited to twenty word definitions and five custom resources.
For the $12.99/mo Premium version, you get unlimited word definitions, unlimited importable resources, vocabulary exporting options, and a few more minor features such as enhanced statistics and offline reading.
LingQ’s pricing plan offers a discount for purchasing 6, 12, or 24 month subscriptions.
Evaluation
LingQ puts a lot of effort into making itself a feature-rich app. In fact, it is much more than a reading app as it offers tutoring, diary corrections, and other features in a ‘Premium Plus’ subscription, which may be helpful for people looking for these types of services.
The range of supported content is extremely appealing – beginning Chinese learners, for example, may find that cartoons allow for earlier and more enjoyable ‘reading’ of native content. If you’re more advanced, ‘reading’ a new media type like a podcast episode can be an exciting experience.
That being said, you may feel frustrated if you stick with the free version, as after reaching the twenty-word limit, you’ll be assailed by frequent Premium advertisements.
But overall, LingQ can massively boost your reading skills. It’s wide range of content combined with motivating visual cues make LingQ a good, albeit pricer choice!
This is Amazon’s cross-platform reading app, developed to mirror the Kindle e-reader. While it is not specifically built for language learners, features such as a bilingual dictionary and flashcards still make it a decent choice for reading Chinese as a learner.
What you can read
Tens of thousands of Chinese books (in both Simplified and Traditional) can be found on the Kindle Store, including the Mandarin Companion series, and some of these Chinese books are free. Likewise, you can email a wide variety of file formats to the app.
Key Features
Amazon Kindle supports text highlighting and bookmarking, which you can use to come back to a word or add comments.
The app also has a built-in, easily-accessible manual flashcard system. This, or note exporting, makes it simple to keep track of new vocabulary.
As a user, you can also highlight a phrase to get a free translation from Chinese to a language of your choice through Bing. If you only selected one word, you can even view the pinyin using a downloadable Chinese-English dictionary.
Ease of use
After logging in with your Amazon account (a requirement to use the app), getting started is easy. An intuitive and minimalistic interface lets you focus on just what’s important – reading Chinese.
If any thoughts strike you, four different highlighter colors and an infinite capacity for annotations make it easy to note them down.
Book and file loading is extremely fast, and moving between pages is smooth.
To load your own files into the app, you’ll have to send them to an email associated with your account, a somewhat tricky process clarified by an official guide here.
Pricing
The Kindle app is free on all platforms, along with all of its features. The only time you need to spend money is when buying books in the Store.
Evaluation
When going through a text, I appreciate the note-taking features and free, detailed translations offered by the Kindle app.
It’s also been very useful for trips, as everything in the library is available offline. Even an airplane ride can’t be an excuse for not reading Chinese!
Plus, the app is cross-platform – meaning you can pick up on your computer where you left off on your Kindle app.
However, there are a couple downsides. Firstly, you have to manually indicate where a character or word starts and ends when translating words or using the dictionary function. This is somewhat frustrating when a word is a chengyu or proper noun, making it unclear what section to highlight. Similarly, for longer phrases not in the dictionary, it can be frustrating to have to break it down into individual characters to learn the pinyin.
There is only one Chinese/English dictionary available for use. The dictionary is good but if you want a wider range of definitions installing others is a roundabout process.
Du Chinese is a bit different from the rest of the apps on this list – it’s specifically made to provide high-quality, learner-targeted Chinese text, but the library is restricted to officially-published content only. However, this content is well-graded and accessible even for beginners, and it’s worth taking a look.
What you can read
Du Chinese offers over a 1900 Chinese stories, each specifically written to target one of the HSK 1-6 levels. There are a few hundred ‘lessons’ for each HSK category, with a slight skew towards the lower levels, and every lesson is from a couple hundred to a thousand characters in length.
In addition, there are a number of mini-series (a few for each level), which are about 4+ lesson-length chapters that tell a longer story.
Key features
Every Chinese word in the text can be tapped on for a detailed dictionary definition (including audio). All the characters can also be colored-coded based on their HSK level or set to show pinyin.
Each chapter has a professional recording by a native speaker which highlights each sentence as it’s read. If you are unsure of the meaning of a sentence, it can be tapped on for an English translation which has been done by a human, not Google translate.
Apart from the individual lessons, you can also save vocabulary for later export or in-app SRS flashcard review. Additionally, after creating an account, you can set goals for how many lessons a week and words per day you’d like to review.
Ease of use
Transitioning between lessons, reviewing vocabulary, or listening along to the text is seamless. Similarly, the ‘Discover’ tab allows for easy discovery of texts at the appropriate level given their colored HSK tags and stories are sorted into categories based on topic or searchable based on content.
A small downside is that the web and mobile versions of Du Chinese don’t fully share all features (such as options for audio speed). However, for the most part, features are well-laid-out and easily accessible, even for someone new to the app.
Pricing
Du Chinese comes out as the most expensive on our list, with a monthly subscription costing $14.99. Six- and twelve-month subscriptions are also available at slightly discounted prices, but this is still higher than most other options. However, the Du Chinese team is constantly updating their lessons and adding new content, so you won’t need to worry about running out of new things to read.
It is worth noting that you can receive a 10% discount off your purchase, regardless of the subscription length, if you use the official code shared on their website here.
These subscriptions will unlock all 1900+ lessons (the free version only offers a couple random ones per HSK category per week), as well as allow you to download lessons for offline listening and reading.
Evaluation
If you’re looking for extensive Chinese reading content and have run out of graded readers such as ours, Du Chinese is a natural next step. The app can be helpful regardless of your current Chinese level through its vast array of lessons with native audio and translations. Even those at HSK 1 with just 150 words under their belt can already access hundreds of leveled stories.
Given the short nature of the stories, Du Chinese is also perfect for those who have just a few minutes to spare – that’s all it takes to have a targeted reading session and finish a lesson. Equally, it’s very convenient to review learned vocabulary through the built-in flashcard system.
The largest downside is the price, as Du Chinese is relatively expensive at nearly $15/mo. However, such a subscription unlocks reams of content that will suit you as your level grows, and is thus definitely worth considering for those who aren’t quite ready to dive into native or longer-form content.
QQ阅读 is an app for native speakers with millions of users and an enormous catalog of books. If your Chinese is good enough to navigate through the app and you have a large vocabulary, it essentially makes the Chinese webnovel world your oyster!
What you can read
Since QQ阅读 doubles as a book discovery platform, finding books will be the least of your worries! The app uses a sophisticated algorithm to recommend books to you based on your interests and reading history.
If none of the recommendations compel you, there’s a dedicated, searchable page listing popular books, newly published ones, free titles, and so on. You can also import a range of file types (all main formats such as TXT, ePub, PDF, etc. are supported).
Key features
Being developed for natives, there aren’t many Chinese-learner-specific functions. For example, rare is the native speaker who tracks new words they learn! Therefore, the app lacks support for managing or exporting vocabulary – you’ll have to do so manually by writing down new words or highlighting phrases in-app. Fortunately, there is a Chinese-English pop-up dictionary with audio pronunciation and pinyin, and even an automatic translation function.
Nevertheless, QQ阅读 has a couple of useful features regardless of level. Firstly, all books have free, high-quality AI narration – and some even have human narration too. Using this to listen while reading is advantageous for language acquisition.
Secondly, QQ阅读 is unique in having a commenting feature. Lines from popular books have upwards of hundreds of comments, which can answer plot-related questions or teach you genre-specific slang. Or are you perhaps looking to interact with native speakers? Adding to or creating a discussion only takes a few moments.
Ease of use
The app and books load quickly, complimenting a deliberately simple interface that’s been perfected with data from over a hundred million users.
Finding books or rearranging your bookshelf is also extremely straightforward, with all features intuitively labeled. If ever in doubt, there’s even an online guide and support team.
One hassle is the need for verification to access all features, which has to be done via SMS or by connecting to other Chinese apps such as QQ or WeChat.
Pricing
Most of the books are published under a freemium model; after reaching a certain point in a novel, you’ll have to pay (on a chapter-by-chapter or subscription basis) to unlock additional chapters. Infrequent ads are also displayed.
Given that this is a Chinese app, books are very cheap. For example, a Hobbit-length webnovel would cost roughly $1.50. Each 1000 characters will typically cost between $0.01-$0.02 (0.01-0.05 yuan).
There is no fee for importing files.
Evaluation
I’m planning on migrating to QQ阅读 as soon as my level allows me to!
With its hundreds of thousands of books and countless users, it’s an excellent opportunity to chat with natives and read interesting books at a low cost. Additionally, I’ve found the statistics tracking, such as current book progress and time spent reading, to be motivating.
The audio is also simply amazing – it’s even free for custom files! For the advanced learners out there, or those reading easier content, this feature makes the app an excellent choice.
However, the lack of Chinese-learner-tailored features (such as showing pinyin for words) is a real drawback. Reading a book for natives without any pop-up dictionary assistance was quite time-consuming, and navigating through the interface with its technical descriptions was a challenge at first.
That being said, for Android users, using Pleco’s Optical Character Reader screen overlay allows you to essentially have a popup dictionary with QQ阅读. Modern problems call for modern solutions!
Summary
This has been our deep dive into the best Chinese reading apps you can use as a Chinese language learner! They’re all unique and suitable for slightly different purposes, so let’s summarize this into one table.
For lower-level Chinese readers, we recommend Pleco and/or LingQ. If you’re interested in reading a range of accessible content, the versatile LingQ import functions and public library will suit you well. The minimalist design and lower cost of Pleco is excellent for those who want to solely focus on reading Chinese texts.
For intermediate learners, we recommend Readibu, thanks to its sentence translation and proper noun highlighting – these two features make decoding difficult phrases much easier. While only supporting Chinese webpage content means beginners may struggle finding suitable texts to read, those who can already understand native works will benefit greatly from the Chinese-learner specific functions.
Advanced readers may find apps such as Kindle or QQ阅读 the best choice. QQ阅读’s vast array of native books and active Chinese community will give you many opportunities to interact with native speakers. This app even offers audio narration for all books and custom files, making it ideal for those who enjoy listening to audiobooks. The Kindle app similarly offers a large number of Chinese books, but also has excellent cross-platform support that makes it slightly more convenient for those using multiple devices. Of these two, the one most suitable to you will ultimately depend on which of the above features you find more useful.
And of course, regardless of your level, if you’re looking for shorter-form content, Du Chinese has got you covered. Their thousands of stories with professional audio and translations make for the perfect intensive study session or casual few minutes of reading, though for a high monthly price.
Which of these Chinese reading apps do you use? Share your experience in the comments below. New Chinese reading apps are always being developed and it is exciting to see what apps will come in the future!
Once again you’ve found your way back to the Asian market. But, today, you’re on a mission. You’re going to find someone to practice Chinese with even if it kills you. Hold on. There, that’s an opportunity for a conversation if you’ve ever seen one. You approach and, as courageously as a lion, you squeak “nǐ hǎo.”
You’re in luck! Your new acquaintance is happy to talk. If only he’d slow down. Or at least speak up a little. And wait, is this even Mandarin? After a minute, you’ve lost any sense of language at all. Now you’re nodding your head along and thinking . . .
This might be a little more challenging than you thought.
Listening in Chinese is hard. No two ways about it. Most classes do a fantastic job teaching vocabulary and grammar, but listening as a skill in its own right is too often neglected. Thankfully, there are a variety of scientifically backed strategies you can use to up your game. But not every challenge is internal. Sometimes finding the right person to practice with is as important as the practice itself.
There is, in a word, an ideal speaker. Finding someone with the right traits went a long way toward improving my Chinese listening skills. You can help yourself too. All you have to do is learn who to look for. So then, who is this amazing person I’m raving about?
How to improve your Chinese listening skills
The ideal speaker:
1) Slow and measured
“Qǐng nǐ shuō dé màn yī diǎn” is an incredibly useful phrase. Unfortunately, asking someone to speak a little more slowly doesn’t always work. As a beginner, you need enough time to differentiate each word, define them, and work out a complete translation. Many native speakers will already be on the third sentence by the time you’ve translated the first.
2) Clear spoken
This criterion is straightforward, but boy-oh-boy is it important. I’m a mumbler myself. And I regret to inform you that there are many of us—so many, in fact, we could easily take over the world. If only we could understand our own dastardly plans. Try to find someone who enunciates. If you cannot hear what someone’s saying, you don’t have a shot at comprehending it.
Aging does a number on our bodies, and the parts necessary for clear speech are no exception. Changes to the vocal cords, larynx, and chest can weaken a person’s voice, hurting comprehension. Fortunately, these issues only begin to arise very late in life. However, older generations are also more likely to use provincial dialects and non-standard Chinese.
4) But not too young!
Children have a lot to teach us. Mandarin listening skills aren’t among them. While older kids might outshine your speaking abilities many times over, the very youngest are still learning themselves. Unless you’re willing to double check everything you pick up from your kindergarten mentor, it’s probably best to stick with an adult.
5) A female speaker
Generally, women are easier to understand in a second-language context. There are many exceptions, to be sure, and even the research is mixed. Nevertheless, I’ve found men are more likely to express the speaking habits that stump learners, such as mumbling or an unintelligible tone of voice.
6) Non-accented standard Mandarin
A heavy accent is a major barrier to comprehension. That’s only amplified when someone uses non-standard Chinese. In South China, for instance, there’s a tendency to pronounce “shi” as “si” regardless of the tone. Working out that “sì sì sí sì kuài” is supposed to mean “it’s forty-four yuan” might be more of a challenge than you’re looking for.
7) Neither too formal . . .
Business meetings, weddings, and speeches are great examples of situations where your textbook cannot save you. This is the land of jargon, poetic language, literary references, and infrequently used vocabulary. If you’ve been lucky, you might know a tiny fraction of what’s going on. Beginners stay away—there are better ways to improve Mandarin listening skills.
Make sure you bring an interpreter for this presentation.
8) . . . nor too informal
Likewise, overly informal language hinders comprehension. This is often why movies and songs help less than you’d hope. They don’t always use that textbook language. For better or worse, informal language abounds in run-of-the-mill social situations, too. The bar, the game, a night of KTV. Expect informal language. But that’s not to say you shouldn’t go.
9) A person, not a group
An individual can tailor their language and word choices. As someone gets to know you, they’ll build a sense of your abilities and make Mandarin listening easy. Good teachers are adept at grading their language like this, but you’ll find others who can do it, too. In a group, however, people aren’t just speaking to you. They’re speaking with everyone. Language grading goes out the window.
Essentially, we’re looking for a young or middle-aged woman who speaks slowly and clearly; uses standard, non-accented, and textbook Mandarin; and does so in a one-on-one setting. Some of you might have noticed I just described your Chinese tutor. It’s no coincidence. These traits can make a great teacher. They’ll also make for a great partner to practice with.
The next time you’re in the Asian market, on the web, or wherever you happen to look, remember the aforementioned traits. They’ll give you a leg up in finding someone to practice with. Maybe more importantly, they’ll help you recognize the places and people you should go back to. Try striking up a conversation with your waiter at a few different restaurants. Chances are, before too long, you will find someone who, not only is easy to understand, but also enthused to talk with you.
But what then? Even after you’ve found the ideal person to practice listening in Mandarin with, you’re going to want strategies to maximize your conversations. Check out the second part of our listening series, “Help I Can’t Understand a Thing!” where we answer the all important question—how to improve Chinese listening skills—with a focus on listening strategies and specific techniques.
So. You’ve scoured the menu at your local Chinese restaurant and found something you can read. Fingers crossed, it’s something you’d actually like to eat, too. You place the order. Your Mandarin’s perfect—you’ve hit every tone and syllable like a championship boxer. And then . . . then the waiter replies. Years of study evaporate from your brain in a moment. You cannot, for the life of you, understand a word.
If you’ve been there, you’re not alone. But you’re not without hope either.
Listening is a skill in itself—one that second-language research shows is understudied and under-supported in most classes. Not every teacher recognizes this, monopolizing instructional time with yet more reading, vocabulary, and grammar. Likewise, too few students know how to help themselves.
So, what can you do to improve your listening skills?
The best listeners adopt specific strategies—cognitive, metacognitive, and socio-affective. If you’re struggling with listening comprehension, the smartest thing you can do is to learn these strategies, build techniques around your individual needs, and implement them.
Cognitive Strategies
Cognitive listening strategies involve manipulating language to make it easier to understand. In other words, it’s about simplification. Any method that requires using your mind consciously and actively to solve a listening challenge qualifies, but—and this is a big one—you really have to do it consciously and actively.
I know, I know. Listening seems like the single most passive task imaginable. But you need to change listening from something that happens to something you do. You see, you’re already using cognitive strategies, specifically bottom-up cognitive strategies. These involve using your senses to take in the smallest blocks of language and build them up towards meaning. This is incredibly useful, even necessary. The problem is one of overreliance.
Advanced learners use top-down cognitive strategies to understand spoken Chinese better than their peers. Rather than stubbornly clinging to every single sound, they use outside information to establish and modify theories. In other words, their listening starts in the brain and flows down toward the senses.
Putting your brain ahead of your ears might sound crazy, but it will help you overcome common listening challenges, like the speed of native speech. Your first step, then, should be identifying which strategies work. Here are the five I’ve found most helpful in improving my own Mandarin listening skills.
Cognitive Strategy #1: Listening for Gist and Detail
The beginner’s most common mistake is a toxic love affair with word-for-word translation. That is, translating. every. single. word. into English and then cobbling them back together into a meaningful sentence. Trying to understand everything is a guarantee for mental overload.
Instead, you should focus on what’s useful. This is what listening for gist, the broader meaning, and listening for detail, such as key words, is all about. These strategies allow you to manipulate complicated language into something simpler. All they require is changing your focus based on what really matters in a conversation.
Take listening for detail. When you need specific information, that’s where your focus should be. If you need to hear a number, listen only for numbers. Paying a cashier is an obvious time when putting this to practice will help. Even if you hyperfocus on numbers to the exclusion of everything else, you can still pay what you owe.
On the other hand, if someone approaches you out of the blue, you don’t know what you’re listening for. That can be a sign you need to cognitively back up and listen for gist. Don’t get bogged down in every word. Don’t even worry too much about what they’re saying. Instead, focus on what they’re trying to communicate.
The difference is subtle, but it’s more about understanding the message than the vocab and grammar. Figuring out this person is lost is far more important than the specific phrasing they used. Because now, you can focus on the productive part of the conversation, where they need to go. Think about it this way. You’re trying to read the plot summary instead of all the dialogue in a script.
Cognitive Strategy #2: Context
Another cognitive tool advanced listeners use is context. This requires you to consider what’s happening, who’s talking, and where the conversation’s taking place. Once again, it’s less thinking on the language itself. This time, however, it’s more thinking on everything around it.
To use this strategy, take a moment to consider your current circumstances. What are people holding or gesturing at? What do they likely want from you at that moment? When you stiff your waiter on the tip and they’re angrily waving the check in your face, even the words you don’t know start making sense. Sometimes the meaning just falls into place.
But when a stranger’s talking a mile a minute, differentiating specific words and structures can be hard. Maybe you misheard a tone. Or maybe that next syllable wasn’t a separate word, but part of the first. In situations like this, even basic words can grow more heads than a hydra and threaten to devour you.
Well, fear not, Hercules. Context can still save the day. One of its main benefits is cutting down the number of possibilities. Restaurant vocabulary, for example, is tens of thousands of words less than the entire language. It’s the same with doctor’s visits and shopping trips. Think about context, and you’ll better know where to focus.
Cognitive Strategy #3: Co-text
Thinking about co-text—the conversation so far—is also a huge help. Longer chats and truly conversational uses of the language move away from immediate demands and surroundings. When that happens, you can fill in the blanks by referring to what’s already been said.
Like other cognitive strategies, co-text relies on critical reasoning. However, you’re not drawing on completely prior knowledge. Nor are you looking at your surroundings to make sense of things. Instead, you need to consider the natural flow of a conversation. Based on what you heard previously, what’s likely being said now?
Suppose you made a cute new friend at the bar, and you got things started showing off your Chinese skills. You’ve held your own in a full-blown Mandarin conversation for quite a while, but now you have a problem. The only words you’ve understood in two minutes were “dǎ zhēn,” meaning to give a shot.
That’s not a lot to go on. So, what do you do? Rather than simply trying to listen harder, you think back. Just a little while ago, you were talking about this person’s dog. A theory starts to form. One more word and it clicks. Your new friend is taking their dog to the vet on Friday—so, no, they can’t take you up on that date.
Cognitive Strategy #4: Forecasting
Forecasting is knowing what someone’s going to say before they say it. Even a presidential address can be a cakewalk when you’ve divined every word of Mandarin ahead of time. Sounds handy, right? But how do you do it?
You make pre-emptive use of other strategies. It’s doing your homework the night before instead of the morning of. Before you go somewhere to practice Chinese, think out the context and the co-text, details and gist. And yes, do it ahead of time. With critical thinking and a little effort, you can anticipate much of a conversation before it happens.
Returning to the restaurant, there’s a pretty set course of events, isn’t there? The waiter asks if you’re ready to order. You are, so you tell them. Then they ask how you’d like your meal prepared or what kind of rice. Somewhere in there, they’ll ask what you want to drink. Keep going and you can think through every major conversation beat from entering the door to walking out of it.
You can go one step further, and in my experience, you probably should. Don’t stop at the English— “Are you ready to order?” Think out the Chinese: “Nǐ zhǔnbèi hǎo diǎn cài le ma?” If you don’t know it, look it up beforehand. Then, when your waiter asks, your brain is already primed to recognize it.
Cognitive Strategy #5: Guesswork
Sometimes, every other technique fails. When this happens, just guess. Yup. I’m completely serious. Just take a guess. While it may not seem like it, this is a legitimate cognitive strategy. In fact, you may have noticed the prior cognitive strategies all rely on some degree of guesswork.
The key is phrasing guesses in a way that will keep the conversation going and elicit something you can understand. Try gauging reactions to see if your guess was accurate or if you’ve led the conversation astray. Ask clarifying questions. But ask pointed ones. Don’t just default to “what did you say” and “can you repeat that?”
Recently, I was approached in a local dim sum joint. I knew it was food related and nothing else. So, I guessed. I gestured to my empty plate and declared “tèbié hàochī!” The food was “especially good,” but the manager talking to me looked confused and disappointed.
Words she’d said, but I hadn’t made sense of yet, ran through my head—next, chicken, pot. It clicked. She was suggesting I order the chicken hot pot next time. In Chinese, I asked if that was the case. The manager’s face lit up. She continued enthusiastically, clarifying that I should try the chicken dry pot. Guesswork works, if in sometimes unexpected ways.
Metacognitive Strategies
Meta-cognitive strategies are how you bring it all together. These entail thinking about how you learn and planning around that. To a large degree, it’s also recognizing the specific challenges of different scenarios, as well as thinking on the cognitive strategies that will best help you in those moments. But perhaps most of all, it’s about reflecting on yourself.
Consider your Mandarin listening experiences thus far. Have you ever noticed anything specific you struggled with? Perhaps you’ve used Duolingo or a similar app, and you breezed through the early content. But somewhere along the line, you stopped understanding even a single word. Ask yourself what happened. Look for the specific change.
This happened to me, and asking those questions helped me realize that I could easily understand six or seven syllables at a time. But stick in one more, and my brain just couldn’t move fast enough. I was relying way too much on word-for-word translation. You might have noticed something like this in your own studies.
Before I tell how I addressed my problem, here’s an exercise to get you started on metacognitive thinking. What would you recommend? What would you do in my shoes? Developing metacognitive strategies requires questioning yourself and the scenarios you encounter. It asks you to examine different cognitive strategies and pick the one that’s going to be most effective.
Ultimately, I settled on forecasting. After all, apps like Duolingo categorize language into blocks. They repeat related vocabulary and phrases over and over again. Instead of trying to pick apart these sentences with my ears in real time, I took the text and wrote it down. I practiced saying them myself, repeating them in my head. When I came back to listen some time later, the number of syllables didn’t matter.
Whenever you go out to practice, take some time afterwards to reflect. Consider what went well and what didn’t. Determine what was due to vocabulary shortages, what was due to an overreliance on the wrong strategy, or what was due to nervousness. Which brings us to . . .
Socio-affective Strategies
Your state of mind is the final piece of the puzzle. Not everything is logic and cleverness. There’s a critically important emotional component—anxiety. Anxiety shuts the mind down. It’s why even basic exchanges can leave you grasping for the simplest of words. Everyone gets nervous when practicing a new language. The best listeners respond with socio-affective strategies.
Simply put, these encompass stress reduction and confidence building. Everyone makes mistakes when learning a second language. You will too, and that’s okay. The important thing is finding a way to move past the anxiety. You might not have time for a meditation session in the middle of a conversation, but you can take a slow breath to regain control. Self-affirmation, recalling accomplishments, and thinking positively about outcomes all build confidence.
Personally, the thing I’ve found most helpful is reframing your mistakes. Every single one is a learning freebie. After all, nothing is quite so easy to remember as embarrassment. Accidentally proposition someone while trying to ask for office supplies, and I guarantee you’ll remember every word of both sentences for the rest of your life. Mistakes can motivate you to do research afterward, and as previously mentioned, recognizing them mid-conversation can narrow down correct interpretations.
Eventually, though, even the best mistakes can wear on you. Pay attention to your emotional state when you’re struggling and note when your confidence starts to flag. You might have gone out too far and found yourself in learning content that’s simply too difficult . It’s okay to swim back to shallower waters and rebuild your confidence before setting out a little further once more.
Final Thoughts
In the end, there’s no one strategy to improve Chinese listening skills. There are many. Getting better relies on using the ones that work best for your individual struggles and skills. But there is a clear path of progression. Start by learning as many cognitive strategies as you can, like the five listed here. Focus on the so-called top-down learning strategies.
Simply by knowing what these strategies are and how they work, you’ll have begun the process of meta-cognitive thinking. Afterward, make a habit to examine yourself and examine these strategies. Implement the ones that work and discard the ones that don’t. As Bruce Lee said, “It is not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away the unessential.”
And if there’s one thing I’d like to stress above all else, don’t give up. It’s too easy to postpone your studies, to stop practicing with strangers after a failed attempt, even to tune out mid-conversation when you can’t follow. Be aware of when that happens, and go back in with twice the passion.
If you’re looking for help with that, check in with John and Jared at the You Can Learn Chinese podcast. In Improving your listening skills (Part 2 of 2), they break down these critical skills with a thoroughness that could give a Socratic dialogue a run for its money.
Chinese reading exercises might not have the sexy swagger of, say, watching a hip Chinese sitcom or meeting up with your language buddy for a drink. But—did you know that they can improve your language learning acquisition leaps and bounds? Read on to learn why (and how) Chinese reading exercises can boost your fluency quickly.
Why focus on Chinese reading practice?
There is a mountain of research that shows that if Chinese language students only read, it will also improve their listening, speaking, and writing skills. However, continued academic research in the field of extensive reading has shown that if we combine reading with activities that facilitate listening, speaking, and writing, students can experience accelerated gains in their overall language knowledge and proficiency.
And we’re all trying to *hack* learning Chinese, right? Right!
“Few, if any, language professionals dispute the value of extensive reading for improving students’ reading abilities, motivation to read, self-concept as readers, vocabulary, and other skills,”
Stories, texts, and articles written in Chinese, that are also interesting and engaging, can be used as the basis for exceptional discussion and writing activities. The key is to choose stories that enrich readers’ lives and awareness of the world around them and, in the process, you will improve your reading and writing skills. As Day and Bamford claim:
“The beauty of extensive reading is that it leads to ‘reading gain without reading pain.’”
When students are reading books that they enjoy—and not dreading Chinese reading practice—it is much easier for a student to develop ideas and opinions which they would like to express. Extensive Chinese reading activities like the ones below are suggestions for ways you can express your ideas and opinions, all while leveling up your abilities to read Chinese text!
3 effective Chinese reading exercises
1. Writing, Re-Writing, and Adding Chapters to a Book
After you’ve finished reading a Chinese text, such as Journey to the Center of the Earth, sit down and get ready to add new content tothe story in your own words.
Write an Additional Chapter: What happens next? Write a brand new chapter to continue the plot or storyline in some way, including some or all of the characters you love—or maybe adding brand new characters of your own!
Rewrite the Ending: Come up with a new outcome (we’d mention it here, but no spoilers!) to create a new plot that is different than the original story.
Write a New Story Altogether: Select a main character, a minor character, or even an unnamed character, and tell a brand new story about their adventures. You can change the point of view, change the circumstances, add new plot elements, take them to Hawaii instead. You call the shots!
You can write as much or as little as you think is necessary for each of these activities, but we’ve found the students who are dedicated to writing creatively (even looking up new words and phrases to bring their chapters to life) can get the most value out of Chinese reading exercises like these.
Who doesn’t love a “Choose Your Own Adventure” story? This type of Chinese reading practice will get your creative juices seriously flowing.
Check out Twine to improve your Chinese reading skills
This activity challenges you, as a Chinese language learner, to develop writing, decision making, logic, and creative writing skills.
Basically, you can use pre-made visual editors like Twine, Quest, or Squiffy to create an interactive story (or “IF game”).
Using the actual characters and storyline from your most recent read, like The Prince and the Pauper, begin creating choices for the reader that results in different consequences and multiple possible storylines.
For example:
Based on The Country of the Blind, the main character becomes angry at the people in the village, all who are blind. He yells at them and runs out into the field where they come looking for him. The story could start at this point and begins with a choice for the reader to…
a) “You throw rocks at the men” or
b) “You run off into the mountains” or
c) “You calm down and go back to the village.”
Each choice leads to different consequences and different choices for readers and writers alike. This is an especially fun Chinese reading activity if you can get a friend or two in on the action!
3. Reading Check Ins with Friends
There are dozens of ways to discuss shared reads with your friends, but structured activities and discussion questions can help challenge your reading comprehension. You can play 20 questions (Which character am I?), predict the story (helpful when you read a handful of chapters at a time), or deep dive into questions like “What motivates this character?” “What should they have done?” “What shouldn’t they have done?”
These kinds of Chinese reading exercises can be done online or in-person and pair well with a book you both love and a tasty beverage (matcha, anyone?).
Finding accessible Chinese texts is easier said than done. We’ve found the following aren’t actually helpful for most Chinese learners aiming for fluency:
Books for Chinese kids.
Books with un-scientific level standards.
Books with pinyin over the characters.
Books that aren’t long enough to provide sufficient context and repetition.
That’s where graded readers come in (and where they thrive). Graded readers are story books written for learners at different difficulty levels (“grades”). They incorporate a very careful analysis of words used (corpus analysis), disciplined writing, and creative storytelling. In the end, you’re given options for books that are fun to read AND designed to fit your specific skill level.
Decades of research by the Extensive Reading Foundation shows that we learn best at a 98% level of comprehension.
At Mandarin Companion, we’ve worked hard over the last several years to build a collection of Chinese graded readers that are useful, interesting, and affordable. You can buy physical copies of our graded readers or access a digital copy via your Kindle. So if you’re trying to find where to read Chinese online, look no further! Dig through our Chinese novels for learners, find the right grade for you, and get cracking—you’ll be able read Chinese text like a pro in no time.
A beautiful illustration from Journey to the Center of the Earth
Reading Chinese isn’t always easy, but these tips can help!
“Good things happen to students who read a great deal in the new language. Research studies show they become better and more confident readers, they write better, their listening and speaking abilities improve, and their vocabularies get richer” (Cambridge). Prioritizing Chinese reading exercises, and reading in Chinese in general, will help you reach fluency faster than you can say 很快 [hěn kuài].
It’s always an exciting endeavor to work on ideas for new books. When John and I conceptualized a lower level that used only 150 characters, we didn’t realize the challenges that lay ahead of us. Now that we are announcing the release of the 5th book, Just Friends?, at the new 150 character Breakthrough level, it’s quite exciting to see the feedback and buzz that these new books have generated.
Perhaps the most rewarding feedback we are getting is that so many Chinese learners around the world are now able to begin reading a book at a much earlier stage and are seeing for themselves how this seemingly simple experience of reading in Chinese has such a huge impact on their language ability. That translates into a general increase in Chinese language proficiency for these readers and a lower drop-out rate simply because these learners are feeling progress and experiencing wins sooner. This is exactly what John and I had hoped for with this new level.
At the same time, Chinese teachers are jumping on this series and using them in greater numbers in the classroom. I’ve had the opportunity to work with many Chinese teachers in dual immersion, middle school, and high school Chinese programs who are experiencing exciting results with their students. As part of this, I am in the process of writing a teacher guide for extensive reading in Chinese that combines our collective experience with graded readers in the classroom, academic research, and best practices from around the world into one guide specifically for Chinese teachers. I expect that this will be released by summer of 2020.
Just Friends?
Dapeng and Wendong are best friends attending the same college. When the beautiful Zixin arrives on campus, they soon discover they both share an interest in her. To preserve their friendship, they make a promise not to pursue her. However, when Wendong sees Zixin going for a ride in Dapeng’s car, the truce dissolves into a battle between the two friends trying to gain the affection of Zixin. Whom does she really like, or are they “Just Friends?”
John and I worked on this story last of all, simply because it was the most complex of the five stories that we came up with. The idea of two guys who had fallen for the same girl and ensuing hijinks elicited a plethora of hilarious ideas to my mind. I took this story and ran with it.
Some of what I thought were the best ideas sadly ended up on the cutting room floor simply because we just didn’t have the vocabulary to tell it. One idea for a scene involved one of the friends trying to sabotage the others dinner date by borrowing a jackhammer from construction workers outside the restaurant and proceeding to tear up the sidewalk and create unbearable noise. While we had the word for workers (工人), we couldn’t spare the words for jackhammer or even loud or noisy!
That being said, we did come up with a number of quite humorous scenarios for this story. It required more editing than normal, but both John and I are happy with the final story and we hope you enjoy it too!
“We can’t have any animals in any of the stories” John said as we sat down to discuss story ideas.
“Not any animals at all? Why not?” I defiantly stated.
“If you look at all the characters for animals, they all fall outside of the 150 characters we have for the Breakthrough Level”.
John had spent months systematically creating the Breakthrough level standard. To develop the standard, he used special text analytics tools we have developed, employed a comparison of essential characters across different leveling standards, discussed results with his team at AllSet Learning, and added a little bit of his own intuition of the Chinese learning experience. He was quite clear about what or what would not be included in the Breakthrough Level.
“We have to be so careful about adding complexity to the story. For example, rabbit 兔子. Yeah, it’s a simple animal, but…” John went into an explanation about how when we use a new character it comes at the expense of a different character and we need to focus on the most relevant and useful characters for a learner to know at this level.
I’d heard this before, and I certainly agreed with it even if it stood at odds with my ideas for new stories. I found myself playing scant attention to this lecture as I was shifting through sheets of paper that held lists of characters and words that were within the 150 character standard. Then my eyes fell upon it.
“Horse!” I exclaimed. “Look, we have 马上 on the list, so we can use horse 马!”
“Of course we can use horse!” John exclaimed.
“Well, horse is an animal, so there!”
“Right, but we don’t have any other animals we can use!”
This is one of my favorite Breakthrough Level stories thus far. It has a fantastical theme to it, somewhere along the lines of Alice in Wonderland, a heart-warming story with a twist ending.
In the story, a boy named Nanan 南南 goes searching through the mountains near his home in search of flowers for his mother’s birthday. As he gets further into the mountains, he come across an ancient house with an old lady who beckons him inside. She asks him to help her find “Hua Ma” and if he does, she will give him some special flowers for his mothers birthday. When he leaves her home, he finds himself inexplicably transported to the tropical and distant island of Hainan while the old lady and the house have disappeared. Unsure of who or what Hua Ma is, he sets out on a quest to find him, realizing this mysterious Hua Ma may be his only chance to find his way back home!
In a favorite scene from the book, we have a fun word play with three characters 马 (horse), 妈妈 (mother), and 吗 (question particle) all which are pronounced ma. Here is an excerpt.
Get this new story for yourself or to help that friend who you think is ready to start reading Chinese. We hope that this new level will help an entirely new group of Chinese learners being building their proficiency at an even earlier stage and inspire them to reach to greater heights! Chinese really is a language you can learn. You can do it!
Steven Kaufmann is a world renown polyglot (a person who knows and is able to use several languages) who speaks 20 languages. I had the privilege to interview him for our podcast and talk about his story of learning Chinese and his perspectives on learning languages in general. Chinese is his 3rd language he learned back in the 70’s as a Canadian diplomat to China. Many people will find his unique perspective on the challenges of learning Chinese in comparison to the other languages insightful. The following is an excerpt from the interview. You can listen to the full podcast and interview here or listen on the player below.
Jared: Steve, thanks for
taking the time to talk today! Could you introduce yourself?
Steve: Jared, very happy at any time to
discuss learning Chinese. It’s a subject that I’m fascinated by, it was major
influence on my life. My name is Steve Kaufman, I’m a grandpa, 73 years old,
and I live in Vancouver, Canada. Throughout my professional life, I’ve had
reason to learn various languages. Right now, I’m involved with my son in a
project called Lingq which is a language learning platform.
Jared: How many
languages do you speak right now?
Steve: Well, I have varying sort of levels
of proficiency in call it 20. But 10 or 11 of them I could jump right into and
hold a conversation in. The others would take a bit more warming up or
improving before I could do that.
Jared: Steve, start at
the beginning. Why did you start learning Chinese?
Steve: It started in 1967. I had just
joined the Canadian diplomatic service as Canada was getting ready to recognize
the People’s Republic of China. They needed to train up some people in Chinese
and I had just graduated from university in Paris which was all in French. I
was quite confident that I could learn Chinese. A lot of people didn’t think
they could do it.
Jared:You went to Hong Kong to learn
Chinese, right?
Steve: Yes, I was hired by the Canadian
government and I then had the choice to go to the Defense Language Institute in
Monterey, California, or to Hong Kong. I couldn’t go to Taiwan because that
would have been politically unacceptable to mainland China. In those days, the
Cultural Revolution was going on in China and going to Taiwan was not going to
work. I chose to go to Hong Kong at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in Kowloon.
All the instruction was one-on-one,
no classes. I’m a strong firm believer in one-on-one. We had three hours a day
with three or four different teachers. They were very much into the drill
approach to learning languages. Then I would spend the rest day on my own. It
was the rest of the day that was really important.
Jared:What kind of progress were you
making at that time and what other things were you doing to learn Chinese?
Steve: I did a lot of reading. Initially I
put a lot of effort into learning the characters, at least one hour per day. I
literally put in six seven hours a day including the three hours with my
teacher. But eventually, I said I didn’t want to do the drilling anymore I just
wanted to talk in class and they agreed to do what I wanted to do. After 3 months
I could pick my way through a newspaper, then a few months after that I read my
first novel. I pushed hard.
It’s important to
remember that this is before online dictionaries and before all of the
wonderful resources that we have now. I would scour the bookstores for books
with glossaries behind each chapter. I refused to look anything up in a Chinese
dictionary because it was so time-consuming, and, as with any dictionary, no
sooner have you looked up the word and closed the dictionary you’ve already
forgotten what you looked up.
Jared: How long did you
have the opportunity to study Chinese in this way?
Steve: I went through it as quickly as I
could. I think I put more into it than the diplomat students studying with me
and I certainly read more and listened more. But in 10 months, I passed the
British foreign service exam, and I had my British foreign service Mandarin
Chinese certificate.
Jared: What happened
after you finished your language study?
Steve: Then I went to work for the Canadian
Trade Commissioner office in Hong Kong where we Canadian businessmen regularly
visited on their way into China. Typically, I would help Canadian business
people, sit in on their meetings, help with interpreting, and offer any
background information that might be helpful to them.
The other thing that we
did was to scour the Chinese press to see if we could learn anything that might
be helpful. For example, we may look for information in regards to grain
supplies in China which might influence Canadian wheat sales to China. We also
kept track of the Cultural Revolution and other political developments. I did a
lot of reading of the Chinese press just to stay on top of what we could learn
about the situation in China.
Jared: That sounds like
it was a very interesting time to be in and around China.
Steve: Oh, yeah it was very interesting. People
don’t realize that you had all these people trying to interpret what was going
on in China at the time. You couldn’t just go into China and travel around. It’s
amazing to me now that I can just go into China, go to any hotel, talk to
anybody I want, jump in a train. In those days you couldn’t go anywhere without
someone from the China travel department traveling with you You weren’t free to
move around. If I wanted to go to Shanghai or somewhere else, it was a big deal
when they gave you permission.
Once we established diplomatic
relations, I was with the first group that went to Beijing in October 1970,
which was quite extraordinary. I remember at that time it was getting cold and
the peasants would bring in their cabbages and dump them into big piles on the
sidewalk to sell. That was their distribution system and people would come and pay
for the cabbage. I can remember in the hotels in Beijing, you could get either
red or black caviar for 1 RMB, a mountain of caviar, sturgeon caviar or salmon
caviar. It was a different time and it was so cheap to eat and it was amazing. But
it was during the cultural revolution and everybody was dressed drably and the
average living standard was quite low.
Jared: Have you been
back to China since your diplomatic days.
Steve: Yes. I traveled there quite often
in the 70s. Not much changed until in 1979 when I was at the Peace Hotel in Shanghai.
All of sudden, there were these older gentlemen wearing ties and playing jazz. Another
time in Beijing, there was a dance with girls from a dance academy and we were
allowed to dance with them. There were these little indicators that things were
loosening up.
This was the beginning
of the thaw. I didn’t go back to China for over 20 years until I visited in 2002
and I was absolutely amazed.
Today you can jump on a
bullet train from Beijing and there are massive factories and modern highways. There
is no one in the 70s who could ever have predicted that one day China would
look like this.
Jared: What do you think
really helped you improve your proficiency in Chinese?
Steve: First of all, reading. I believe
you need to know a lot of characters. I don’t know exactly how many characters
I can recognize, but it’s enough so that I can read a book. There will be
characters that I don’t know, but I’m still comfortable reading the book. Reading
is a tremendous way to increase your vocabulary and to gain familiarity with
the language. I’m a great believer in the power of reading.
The other is listening
because the listening prepares you for speaking. It also gives you momentum for
your reading because are then able to sub-vocalize. If you have listened to something
a lot, you’ll be better at sub vocalizing as you’re reading. I think that the
other students studying with me did as much talking as I did, but I did an
awful lot more reading and listening.
I feel like my tones are
not bad in Chinese, but a lot of people struggle with tones. I attribute that
to the xiang sheng 相声, something one of my
teachers exposed me to. I had a cassette tape from a well known performer.
Although I couldn’t understand it well, there was something about it that I
enjoyed. They exaggerated the tones and it’s very lively and engaging, almost
like music. You have to listen the stuff that grabs you and that has high
resonance.
I passed the British
service exam after one year and most people struggle to do it after two. I
attributed that to the sort of focus on listening and reading. I have a library
of Chinese readers that I would buy. If I saw one and the book store, I’d buy
it. If there was any audio material, I’d get it.
I was attracted by the
idea of learning Chinese because it’s was so exotic to me at that time. As I
got into the language, the history of China just grabbed a hold of me. I just
found it fascinating. It’s like if you’re at a feast and you can eat all you
want and you’re not going to get indigestion, you just keep eating. What’s going
to prevent me from just keep going?
If I weren’t chasing other
languages to get a bit of a taste of what those cultures are all about, I would
want to get deeper into Chinese. I got a rush when I started learning Korean. Now
I’m into Middle Eastern languages like Turkish Arabic, and Persian. It’s
endless. I get into the history and there are so many different things that I
would love to get into in more depth but there’s only so much time in the day.
Jared: You developed a high
level of proficiency in Chinese. How did that impact your life going forward?
Steve: I think it’s important to note that
I first became very fluent in French. The experience of converting yourself
from someone who only speaks one language to becoming genuinely fluent in a
second language, gives you confidence that you can do it. Later, for a variety
of reasons, I ended up going to Japan. I had no doubt that I could learn
Japanese, so I learned Japanese entirely on my own with the benefit of being
able to recognize many of the characters.
Learning Japanese opened
up opportunities for me in the wood industry. On two different occasions, major
Canadian lumber exporting companies hired me to run their operation in Tokyo. Then
I got to know the Japanese timber trade very well and eventually set up my own
company in 1987 aimed at the Japanese market. You never know what’s gonna lead
to what, I always say that.
Jared: How did you get
into learning all of these other languages and what are some of those languages?
Steve: In some languages I’m better at
speaking, in some I’m better at reading. If I go in order of proficiency, it
would be English, French, Japanese, Mandarin, Spanish, then Swedish. Swedish
was very important for my lumber business because for a long time we would buy
wood in Sweden. I also have German, Italian, Cantonese, Portuguese which I
don’t really speak as well. However, if you speak Spanish, with a minimum of
effort you can learn Portuguese. These are the languages I learned during my
professional career.
Then starting13 years
ago as we started LingQ, I got into the second wave of languages. Korean and Russian
were next. My approach to language learning is to focus on immersing in listening
and reading, acquiring vocabulary and then visiting the grammar.
When I pick up some of the
books that people use today, it’s full of all these complicated grammar explanations,
but I never refer to those. The basic parts of speech, noun, verb, adjective, I
understand those, but beyond that I don’t use grammar. However, there are
patterns.
The idea that you have
to first learn the basics of grammar is completely wrong. I don’t care who
tells me that they learned the basics of grammar first; I don’t believe it. It’s
impossible to learn the basics by seeing this theoretical explanation of the
language. All of those explanations only make sense once you have had enough experience
with the language, so that you have something to refer to.
To me, it begins with
listening and reading simple stories, simple material that needn’t be
completely brain-dead stuff. It needn’t be “hello, how are you?” or situations
where a lot of books start you out at the airport going through customs which
are totally unrealistic scenarios. It can be anything, such as I went and had a
cup of coffee, I met Joe we talked about this. It can be anything almost, but
shorter with an emphasis on the most common verbs.
Once you have
experienced the language, you now become curious, what does this really mean? I
see all these words but I can’t really make sense of it or how does this
pattern work? At that point you can look up a grammar points. Grammar is a bit
a sort of a reference thing you have at your side but it’s not something in my
view that can be taught up front. Your brain has to get used to the language.
Some people disagree
with this and someone once said “Yeah, but you couldn’t do that for Russian!”
I said, “Oh yeah!”, then
I decided to learn Russian when I was 60. After having learned Russian, I went
and learned Check, Ukrainian and Polish, and to some extent Slovak. Then
because we buy a lot of wood in Romania, I had to go visit Romania, so then I
learned Romanian which is not that difficult because a lot of the vocabulary is
identifiable from other Romance languages.
Then my wife and I were
going to visit Crete so I decided to learn Greek. Then I said, I don’t know
much about the Middle East, so why not learn Arabic. Then I said, “geez, if
I’ve learned the Arabic script and there are so many Iranians here in Vancouver,
I should really learn Persian because I run into people who speak Persian”. Then
my wife started watching Turkish serials on Netflix, so I got interested in
Turkish.
Anything can trigger the
interest and once the interest is triggered, then the language itself becomes
the attraction and you just want to get into more and more of the language.
Jared: What kind of
advice would you give to someone who’s learning Chinese today?
Steve: First of all, realize that you are
dealing with a very rich culture, history, a fascinating world that’s actually
quite different from ours. There’s a whole world there to discover. It’s 22% of
humanity, you’ve got to allow that to get you excited.
Then the second thing I
would say is, invest a lot of time in the characters. Because reading is a big
part of learning. Now I know there are people who learn to just speak by
listening and who can manage. But it’s so much easier to acquire vocabulary
when you can read. If you can read, then you can see how so much vocabulary in
Chinese consists of different characters arranged in different ways. Actually,
vocabulary acquisition in Chinese is easier than in many languages, because of
the characters. Once you overcome the obstacle of actually learning the
characters your vocabulary can grow quite quickly.
Then the other big
stumbling block in Chinese is the tones. You can look at the individual tones
for each individual character, but it’s hard to remember that when you’re
speaking. You have to learn in phrases, chunks of phrases.
You have to listen a lot.
Then you have to trust yourself when you speak and don’t try to second guess
what-tone-is-this and what-tone-is-that, just let yourself go. That would be those
three things.
Don’t spend too much on
the fancy grammar terms that have been meant to confuse people about Chinese.
Chinese grammar is the easiest grammar of any of the 20 languages I’ve learned.
It’s very difficult to make a grammatical mistake in Chinese. It’s the polar
opposite of the Slavic languages. I don’t know any more complicated grammars
than Georgian or Finnish, but Chinese is very easy.
Jared: You have a very
good knowledge of many languages. From your perspective and not just difficulty
for you, what is the difficulty of Chinese in comparison to other languages.
Steve: Every language has its difficulty. In
the case of Chinese, you have to learn all the vocabulary because there is no
common vocabulary. I’m talking from the point of view of an English speaker or
even a speaker of the European language. You’ve got to learn all the vocabulary,
there’s no freebies. If you’re an English speaker learning French, 50% of the
vocabulary is more-or-less already known to you.
Learning Chinese is more
of a question of time. You have to work at it every day and put in the time, but
if you get a toehold on characters, then you start reading things of interest
and see these characters over and over again until it’s like anything else. We
have to trust the fact that our brains, with enough exposure and with enough
stimulus, will do what the brain is set up to do; learn.
Chinese has so many
homonyms that comprehension can be a problem. But on the other hand, the
grammar is very easy and straightforward.
I would say that tones
are a problem, but for any language you speak, you have got to get a feel for
the intonation of the language, so the real obstacle is the characters, which is
really a matter of time. Other than that, I don’t think Chinese is particularly
difficult.
For instance, I’m never
concerned that I’m gonna make a mistake when I speak Chinese. Whereas when
you’re speaking, for example, a Slavic language, you’re forever second-guessing
yourself on the case endings. Even in speaking a Romance language, you’re
second-guessing yourself on the gender. Whereas in Chinese you can’t get go
wrong with that, you can say it in 5 different ways and it’s still okay.
Jared: Steve I really
appreciate you talking with us. If people want to find out more about you,
where can they find you?
Steve: I have a YouTube channel called, “Lingo Steve” and I have a blog which is www.thelinguist.com. Together with my son Mark, we created a language learning platform community website called Lingq.com. I hang out there on the forum and I’m busy learning languages like Turkish, Persian and so forth. We offer some 33 languages including Mandarin, of course and Cantonese.
Basic play
Making a Call
Legal Calls and Illegal calls
Calling a Bluff
Ending a round, beginning the next
Using Chinese to Play!
