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

Finding: “Reading for Pleasure” is important

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Profound Insight

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Compelling (not just interesting) Input Hypothesis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

– Dr. Stephen Krashen

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

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

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

The Vicious Cycle of the Weak Reader

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

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

The Virtuous Cycle of the Good Reader

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

 How to Create Good Readers

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

1) Read books you can understand

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

2) Read books you will enjoy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read one or two chapters and predict what will happen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I expect you to send us your sequel!

Read one chapter then tell somebody else about it.

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

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

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

Role play scenes from books and add missing dialogue.

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. “Studying is more effective than reading.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. “Quizzes and comprehension checks are important.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Power of Reading

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

It’s Never Too Late to Learn

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

What’s your story?

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

– Jared Turner