Reading Pain or Reading Gain? Reading at the Right Level

[Rufus]

*Edited to include full blog post*
I've been getting a lot of people asking about reading at the right level. I just wrote a blog post to answer this very question.
 
“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. There is frequent stopping to look up words and re-read sentences to make sure you understood it.  Although there are more new words per page, research has shown that learners are less likely to learn them because there is not sufficient repetition in context and because they are reading at a slower pace the reader ends up reading less words.
Reading Pain
Below 90% comprehension (one unknown word in 10), the reading becomes frustrating and slow. I think we’ve all be 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 to truly learn the words and your comprehension suffers so bad that you don’t even understand what you just read. Most people find this to be a de-motivating chore.
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’s probably 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 explained and 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 experienced working through easier text. He managed to learn a lot more…even if he dabbled in that Jack Welch book from time to time.

[icebear]

Starting posts like this would be more worthwhile if you posed a question/thought to the forum that adds some value on top of the blog post. Otherwise its too blatantly self promotional. Note that I'm not saying anything about the content of the blog post itself, just that I (and I believe others) find the practice of simply cross-linking (without adding anything else) annoying. The blog post is well organized and conveys the information clearly enough, although I'm at a loss for how the information is any different from that offered in another post on this forum recently. Just my 2 cents.

 

Regarding the actual method (extensive reading) - my experience is that well below 90% can still feel extensive, so long as the number of unknown characters is relatively low. If the topic is familiar (eg a certain industry or field) and most of the characters are, its pretty easy to figure out many of the "unknown" words in context. This is actually the easiest way to acquire to vocab, in my experience.

[laurenth]

I sometimes have the impression that the actual percentage level (the 98% percentage comes from the research initiated by Krashen et al, no?) at which you can read extensively must have been calculated about 20 years ago, during the paper age. Since then, there's been a revolution: e-books with instant lookups. So I'd make the hypothesis that the levels at which "reading pain" becomes "intensive reading" becomes "extensive reading" are lower today.

 

 

Now, I'm the first to say that instant lookups generate problems of their own (it's so easy that it can lead to vocab laziness); however everybody can start reading earlier and in greater quantity. We may have gained 5%.

 

[Rufus]

Hi Icebear, thanks for the comment. I'll take note of that. I've included the full blog post and removed the link to try to be fairer. 

 

I took a minute to look at your goals and study routine (which is quite impressive) and that you are an advanced learner. I believe you noted that you have around 2,500 characters or so. When you approach higher levels of language such as yourself, it is easier to bridge a lot of the gaps and infer meaning. So certainly, you are and should be at the level of reading native level texts, because you can comprehend it! But the point is not just being able to read or infer the meaning, it's also to acquire the word in a way you are able to use it. Without sufficient repetition, words are still unable to stick. (just to note, I'm ignoring the difference between words and characters we have in Chinese, but the principle still applies). 

 

All things considered, there is mountains of research around the effectiveness of reading a high level of comprehension. This is especially important for those at lower levels. 

[Rufus]

Hi Laurenth, I'm impressed that you are familiar with Krashen. Indeed he did develop the "Comprehensible Input Hypothesis"  in the 90's that forms some of the fundamentals of Extensive Reading. Fortunately, since that time there has been well over 40 academic studies validating this hypothesis and 36 studies specifically addressing the use of new electronic technology in combination with ER. Combined, there are about 500 academic papers in the last ~25 years in that validate the effectiveness of ER. You can look up a categorized bibliography here: http://erfoundation.org/bib/bibliocats.php

 

To specifically address the question, technology certainly can enable us to quickly look up a new word or character and I think it may help us to read at a slightly more difficult level as you noted. Some ER researchers have suggested that it's possible to read at a 95% level and still experience the gains of ER. Myself and John are inclined to think that it's more towards the higher percentage for Chinese due to the non-phonetic nature of characters. In English, if you come across a word, you can still sound it out, in Chinese you cant. Also, with Chinese its important to get enough repetition in order build the speed of character recognition and recall. When too many new characters are being introduced, this recognition and recall develops at a slower pace despite the quick electronically assisted look-ups. The fundamentals still apply.

 

Sorry for such a wonky answer! 

[戴 睿]

I feel "extensive reading" aka graded reader resources made available to chinese learners isn't as broad as I'd hoped.

I own every graded reader made by Mandarin Companion. I read most of them in under a day, and found that while it absolutely helped my fluency and added a little bit of vocab, it definitely is not something intended to be used as a bridge to higher levels of proficiency. I'm currently awaiting the release of a 500 character+ level graded reader. I find myself in an awkward plateau, stuck between graded readers and native content.

[icebear]

I took a minute to look at your goals and study routine (which is quite impressive) and that you are an advanced learner. I believe you noted that you have around 2,500 characters or so. When you approach higher levels of language such as yourself, it is easier to bridge a lot of the gaps and infer meaning. So certainly, you are and should be at the level of reading native level texts, because you can comprehend it! But the point is not just being able to read or infer the meaning, it's also to acquire the word in a way you are able to use it. Without sufficient repetition, words are still unable to stick. (just to note, I'm ignoring the difference between words and characters we have in Chinese, but the principle still applies). 

 

All things considered, there is mountains of research around the effectiveness of reading a high level of comprehension. This is especially important for those at lower levels.

 

First, I fully agree that there is a lot to be gained from reading at high comprehension, and thus selecting material that will support that. Most of my reading for the last 6-12 months has been extensive and I find the more I do, the more I'm happy to read even more! That's a good sign, both for the students attitude and ultimately for how that affects acquisition and habits.

 

Second, I think your inference (that I may be misreading) that somehow only advanced learners can dive into native material (vs graded), such as newspapers, is bogus. You'll notice in my "habits" post, as well as here, that I clearly said I'm very comfortable with news articles in a certain topic. Other news is generally ok, but slower. Fiction varies widely, depending on how flowery the prose gets.

 

I think even at 1500 characters if one choose just one article a day that was very strongly tied to their professional interests, or studies in university, that within a few months (it isn't overnight!) they would know or be able to infer nearly all the vocabulary in future articles in that same category of news. The fact is most of the vocab, and even the grammar, is highly repetitious. The first few months may be mostly intensive, but soon enough will switch to extensive. Again, I think this is completely feasible at 1500 characters, and after a painful month or two will be very liberating and confidence boosting. The trick is developing the habit of actually doing it for 20/30/60 minutes a day, everyday. Imron has posted some great material on this in the past that at least convinced me to really improve my habits rather than my goals.

 

For those below that magic number of characters (which isn't fixed, of course), then graded readers or children books are helpful. I found children books too mind numbing, so I mostly plowed through a painful few years of text books and intensive reading. 

[querido]

To 戴睿长老:

FLTRP "Reading China", starts at 500, five levels up to 5000, with audio:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/20937-reading-china-graded-readers/

Graded Chinese Reader, starts at 500, five levels up to 3000, with audio:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/42186-graded-chinese-reader-by-sinolingua/

The "Chinese Breeze" series is only up to 750 words (and doesn't appear to be going anywhere very fast), but it covers these lower levels pretty exhaustively, and has audio too:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/17182-chinese-breeze-汉语风）-graded-readers/?hl=%2Bchinese+%2Bbreeze

戴睿长老, if you're interested in listening comprehension too, try the audio and please tell us how you did!

[Edit] About children's books: I spent two solid years in a graded children's book series, up to the 3000 word level. I think the vocabulary and subject matter of readers like the above make them a much, much more practical choice for almost everyone; look for the foundations of practical dialogue if you hope to talk to anyone someday.

[戴 睿]

I'm in a unique situation, in that my listening comprehension probably far outstrips whatever is on a graded reader's audio, but my character recognition lags behind (I spent my first year of study focused on communication skills and not characters, a mistake, I know).

I expect I'll find whatever audio is attached the graded readers I'm reading to be depressingly easy.

[Ruben von Zwack]

戴睿长老: and there is also

- the Chinese Breeze Graded Reader series (they range between 300 and 750 words, so the vocabulary will be too easy for you, although the sentence structures are more complex)

- the publisher Cheng + Tsui who do a lot of Graded Readers on various aspects of Chinese culture: http://www.cheng-tsui.com/

 

But right now, I am most intrigued by Icebear's suggestion of focusing on a certain topic and getting literate on that topic

 

PS - on a side note to the OP, I am not so intrigued to see the second "personal testimonial" style ad. Your series was greeted with enthusiasm on these forums, and given a lot of publicity, so I think we deserve better. Or maybe it's just me, but I find that form of advertising a bit insulting.

[Ruben von Zwack]

 

I expect I'll find whatever audio is attached the graded readers I'm reading to be depressingly easy.

 

I guess it's not much comfort to you, but I would be so jealous of that problem!  

[querido]

戴睿长老:

I also think you should feel lucky, as I made the opposite mistake (as I think most people do).

Here's a random sample at 5000 (reduced to mono and compressed to .mp3). Is it easy for you? :-)

Sample_5000.mp3

Edit:

Does anyone else below Advanced think that's easy?

If it isn't easy, I'm just saying, there *is* a graded path up to there.

To 戴睿长老: sorry for talking about listening in a reading thread, but usually the opposite happens (readers invade listening threads, sometimes without even realizing it).

[Rufus]

Thanks for the comments icebear. Do note, diving into native texts can be a good or bad idea, depending on your level. It's important that all of this is taken from a perspective relative to the learner. I must say I am very impressed with your regimen and that you appear to be a very disciplined and motivated learner. I would venture to say that you are likely in the top 1% of learners, plus you live in China, and your Chinese skills obviously reflect that. You can benefit from but do not need a tutor or class. In fact, you are at such a level that you can approach native texts. However, reading into your own experiences can even validate what I am talking about. As you noted, diving into native texts is reading pain for a period of time, months even, depending on your level. Over time, you become familiar with it and then become able to comprehend what's going on and really get a lot out of it. But note, you experience small gains as you trudge through the material and only AFTER you gain a higher level of competency do you really begin to get a lot out of the material and begin to infer a lot of meaning. There are a lot of ways to learn a language and they all work, there are just some more effective than others. IF there was content available to bridge the gap between one's current level and reading Chinese articles or books in a specific industry, it would by far be more effective to take a step by step approach through graded texts and I bet my bottom RMB that you'd get there faster than the approach you outlined. The problem here is that such content is not available. 

 

戴睿长老, querido posted some excellent links to material. One drawback with our series is that we just started! I suspect within the next five years we'll have over 100 books at many levels. Another thing needed for extensive reading to be effective is having access to a lot of material to read, and we're talking about reading hundreds of thousands of characters. We've have only 5 books (totaling about 50,000 characters) with more on the horizon, but you need content now. Frankly, I would recommend that you get your hands on every single Chinese Breeze book you can and read all of those at the level 2 and then 3 level. Their methodology is sound and you should get a lot out of reading those. The Graded Chinese Language series by Sinolingua is better for upper intermediate learners. It's largely a collection of articles and short stories with great variance in adherence to strict grading and methodology. Most ER experts don't recommend kids books because there is a lot of kid specific words and onomatopoeia that we don't use in adult life. However, even if the publisher has made a half-hearted attempted to grade the material, it's likely better for you to learn from that as opposed to turning to native level content. That being said, you are in a not-so-uncommon situation of some Chinese learners who can speak but not read. I'd be very interested to learn more about your experience and progress as you build literacy! In your situation, it may be better to follow methodologies that are employed in the Chinese elementary education system where the kids can speak but are learning to read. My son is currently in 1st grade in a local Chinese school and I'd be happy to talk to you about how they do this. They're really effective! 

 

Ruben - duly noted.

[戴 睿]

Yes, I found it to be quite easy haha.

I realize that it might come across as an enviable "problem" to have, but I can assure you it's quite frustrating, because it makes finding a balanced pace of learning extremely difficult.

Still, I'm very grateful for the suggestions. I also think that developing literacy in a focused area sounds very intriguing.

[querido]

To 戴睿长老:

Really? I was hoping to surprise you! Hey, you're in great shape from my point of view! I know you've worked hard! :-)

"Balanced pace of learning"? Just let them be unbalanced until you catch up; my imbalance is in the opposite direction but I know how you feel. Good luck!

[imron]

I've included the full blog post and removed the link to try to be fairer.

It's not about being fair or unfair, it's about what the community finds acceptable.  Generally speaking people don't like soft advertising disguised as forums posts.  You can see from your other topic that the post received quite a few downvotes, and I don't think it was because of the content of what you were saying. 

 

Like Ruben mentioned, your series was greeted with a fair amount of enthusiasm on the forums, and so you'll find people giving you leeway and trying to guide you in to what the community finds acceptable rather than just heaping you with scorn.  If you keep doing it though, you'll run the risk of wearing out that goodwill, and so you need to ask yourself if the extra exposure you might gain is worth the loss of goodwill amongst people who would otherwise willingly promote your product whenever the opportunity arises.

 

The other thing to keep in mind is that blogs are actually quite different from a forum.  People come here for the community and to have discussions and conversations with peers.  Blogs in general are typically much more one sided - even those with comments, it's much more of a one-way conversation between blog owner and blog reader.  It's a completely different way of engaging the reader, and as such, blog-style posts can seem quite out of place on a forum.

 

In general, if you are just making a post to drive up awareness and exposure of your blog, don't.  If you are making a post because you want to engage others in conversation about a topic, then first see if there are relevant existing threads (98% exposure, Krashen's input hypothesis, extensive reading and more have all been discussed here quite a lot in other threads).  Then read those threads and see if what you want to say will add anything to the previous discussion or if you're just repeating previous points.  If you have something relevant and new to add then do so (even if it's an older thread that hasn't seen activity in a while).  If you think there's no appropriate existing topic then consider creating a new one, but when you do, once again remember you'll get a much more positive response if you write it in a way that engages people in a conversation rather than coming across as 'here's a blog post'.

 

 

 

that at least convinced me to really improve my habits rather than my goals.

That's a really succinct way of expressing that concept!  I might need to borrow it in the future and I'm glad you found the advice useful :-)

[realmayo]

Maybe the folksy shtick sells? Regardless, we need to hear from Zach!

[realmayo]

improve my habits rather than my goals

Reminds me of this book http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rip-It-Up-radically-approach/dp/1447236858, i.e. doing to become, or the 'as if' theory.

[realmayo]

Plus are there really enough Readers out there to provide intermediate level learners with reading that is truly extensive, i.e. resources that they won't exhaust pretty quickly? If it's truly 'extensive' they should be reading quickly, my guess is people would either burn through the available material quickly, or -- if they're taking their time -- then we're talking about 'intensive', not 'extensive'.

[gato]

I'm in a unique situation, in that my listening comprehension probably far outstrips whatever is on a graded reader's audio, but my character recognition lags behind (I spent my first year of study focused on communication skills and not characters, a mistake, I know).

You could look at some of the threads on this forum about heritage learners, who often also can communicate better orally than they can read. For example, this thead:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/36343-strategy-to-relearn-reading-for-heritage-learner/?fromsearch=1