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

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

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

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

Extensive Reading

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

Intensive Reading

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

Reading Pain

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

The Right Level

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

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

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

Jared Turner

*Name has been changed to protect the innocent

When I first moved to China, I didn’t speak any Chinese, however I was determined to learn. I had a lot of encouragement from friends who did speak, I ground through the daily tasks of life that required some Chinese, and later I bought a textbook and started waking up an hour earlier every day so I could study before I went to work. Characters looked like spooky animals and many friends had said things like, “you don’t need to learn to read Chinese,” or “learning characters will slow you down,” but a good friend of mine encouraged me to begin learning and made a good point: “If you can’t read, then you’re illiterate!”

About two years into my China life, I still couldn’t hold down a conversation. My studying went in spurts and starts. I knew a lot of words and characters, but putting it together was a challenge. I was only able to communicate in short words and phrases. I felt like a primitive caveman who had to use grunts and hand gestures just to get my meaning across.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jared Turner

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

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

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

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Jared Turner