Reading Pain or Reading Gain? Reading at the Right Level

[戴 睿]

The fact that you can read quickly simply means you can read more, and therefore be exposed to a greater number of new words.

I think this is the issue I'm trying to address. You start reading quickly, because your brain so easily begins processing batches of characters it's already familiar with, and then the "more" content that your talking about just doesn't exist. The increase in vocab in a lot of these graded readers is really limited, and they aren't effective at bridging you to the readers a level above.

I don't think that the available graded reader series are good at bridging learners into different levels. If anything, they have seemed more useful as solidifiers. You do intensive reading, learn new vocab, and then do extensive reading to develop fluency and move that vocab into your active usage pool.

I wouldn't claim any of this as solid facts, more like observations I've seen in my personal study.

[imron]

Split the discussion about People's Education Press content out here.

[Rufus]

I appreciate the discussion that is going on here but I think some may be looking at this from the wrong perspective. Many of the commentators here are people from the top looking down, i.e. those who have already gained a competency in Chinese, oral and written. Such is evidenced by comments such as being able to read a level 1 graded reader in a day and even being able to approach native texts. 

 

To the beginner and elementary learner, these Level 1 graded readers, simple as they are, can seem like a mountain and take some 3-4 hours to complete, even if they know 95% of the characters. I know this because we've tested them. The Level 1 Mandarin Companion readers have been written just about as simple as possible. Each book has undergone dozens of revisions in attempt to just make it as easy as possible for a beginner reader to read and comprehend. Even if a sentence is totally correct, if we find it trips up a reader or is a bit difficult, we try to make it simpler. 

 

I agree that Graded Readers probably need to be lengthened significantly.

Nope. Sitting at 8-10k characters per book, the Level 1 readers are right at optimal length. Too long, and it causes fatigue to the level appropriate reader. The graded reader gives achievable wins to those at this level. This is based on empirical research of over 3,000 graded readers and a number of studies on the matter. 

 

A lot of this stems out of best practices in ER which I'll be writing about in the future and I don't have the time or energy to go through right now. Without trying to plug ourselves too much, you're invited to follow the blog and get more fodder for discussion. 

[戴 睿]

Are those 3000 graded readers that compromise the empirical evidence your talking about written in English or Chinese? Does the difference matter? How does the science behind ER change slightly when dealing with a non-phonetic character system?

[icebear]

Many of the commentators here are people from the top looking down, i.e. those who have already gained a competency in Chinese, oral and written. 

Many who have made mistakes for years and finally corrected them, in some cases. Every year there are beginners on this board looking for magic bullets, but in the end I'm certain that the best predictor of Chinese ability for an adult learner is total actual time invested - with consistency of time invested also important.

 

By that I mean time spent with text books, podcasts, IR, ER, whatever - but not spent hypothesizing which approach is absolutely the most efficient or agonizing one's own habitual (not innate!) shortcomings. I was guilty of both for a long time. My impressions are that many other long term members on the forum would relate. 

 

More ER resources would be great. Please produce them, at all levels.

 

Until there are sufficient supplies to cover several thousand of hours of reading, learners at all levels cannot rely on pontificating to improve their Chinese. At some point that will surely be the case, but not yet - which is clearly good for the space you are trying to position your business in.

[Ruben von Zwack]

Graded Readers and dealing with native material even at an early stage aren't mutually exclusive of each other. I read both, I'm sure everyone does, and I'm very happy the graded readers exist.

 

I wish you all success, Rufus, and I am looking forward to you publishing even more of them!

 

About the native material, it's just not realistic, at least not for the type of learner that I am, to spend hours on one single text. In an ideal case, I see a text that I am genuinely interested in, and that is short. Like when I stumbled upon the sad goodbye message from 玉兔 the Lunar Rover yesterday, or a week or two ago, when someone here posted the Chinese reply to the Japanese president's World War I comparison.

But those are lucky cases, and my normal encounter with native material is, I navigate a Chinese website which is not interesting per se, and full of gazillions of new words, and I am more or less guessing my way through.

 

About the reading experience, or the speed, with a Graded Reader:

It's not just the vocabulary. I sat through a Chinese course at uni, so in a way I knew (or should have known) a lot of vocabulary. But still, last summer, when I made a first attempt at a Chinese Breeze 750 word, the sentences just didn't make any sense to me.

It's hard to measure this sort of problem in absolute terms and numbers, and I think it's overlooked between all the character- and vocabulary-counting.

[icebear]

About the native material, it's just not realistic, at least not for the type of learner that I am, to spend hours on one single text.

I feel the same way. This is the advantage of news articles - 500-2000 characters each, endless supply once you get a feel for browsing/searching out content you enjoy (that is the tricky part!), and highly repetitious if you are careful about reading on the same topic regularly. Once you are acclimated to the vocabulary, shorter articles can be skimmed in a few minutes. Longer articles are easy to skim the first and last paragraph and decide if you want the full course.

 

The short stories in the elementary textbooks Querido linked in the PEP thread seem promising, also - intended for a young student to digest quickly.

[Silent]

 

But still, last summer, when I made a first attempt at a Chinese Breeze 750 word, the sentences just didn't make any sense to me.

It's hard to measure this sort of problem in absolute terms and numbers, and I think it's overlooked between all the character- and vocabulary-counting.

Absolutely a valid issue, an issue that also appears in one's native language. A different subject or author will result in different vocabulary, different grammar, different assumed knowledge and overall different writing style. In the extreme,  a highly educated engineer and a highly educated lawyer may have a very hard time to read each others research papers even if they are in the same native language and have a relatively low word count compared to their vocabulary base.Vocabulary is important in size, but also the correct vocabulary but many other factors play a role too.  

[Francis101]

I have recently just started learning Chinese. (Less than one year) The beginning of my studies were focused completely on speaking and listening skills with absolutely no character study or written practice. I have noticed after I have started studying characters (common radical lists, basic character lists, and characters that interest me) that my speaking and listening abilities have improved dramatically. Chinese Readers are also definitely a part of that growth in my ability. After starting reading a Chinese Graded Reader at my level (Absolute Beginner) I noticed the immediate benefits not only to my character acquisition but also to my listening comprehension as well.

 

I also appreciate the efforts of Rufus allowing more opportunity for people to learn Chinese outside of a China. I say this because I had no idea about graded readers until I started reading about posts about Chinese Breeze and Mandarin Companion. These books have really helped me "crack" the character learning barrier that some many beginning learners of Chinese face. Chinese characters seem like a massive unobtainable thing but Chinese graded readers put them into reality for me. It is pretty cool now to be walking down the street and picking up characters off of Chinese Take Away signs and pointing them out to my friends. All in all, I am looking forward to getting my hands on more Graded readers and starting to branch up to a higher difficulty level as well.  

[Rufus]

Thanks for sharing Francis! I experienced similar results when I started reading in Chinese. Keep it up! 加油！

[tysond]

I am finding that reading graded readers "below" my level seems to be quite helpful. 

For example, 500 char readers are very easy for me in terms of character recognition (100%), or vocab (99%+).

But I still can't read "well" at this level - for example, I have trouble reading if tired or if there is English TV on in the background, which is a sign that I'm using a lot of brainpower to process the sentences.

 

So, they are still very useful to build faster recognition of blocks of words, sentence structure, etc. 

My goal while reading is to improve speed of processing and understanding sentences. 

It also has a benefit of solidifying very frequent vocab.

 

This skill boost helps a lot in the other reading I do because it frees up brainpower to focus on new vocab, unfamiliar grammar and unfamiliar writing style (and hopefully one day, handle distractions).

[imron]

This is a point that I've been making for quite some time, that reading is more than just knowing vocab. Vocab acquisition will only get you so far, but to improve your reading you need to practise reading.