Learning to Read is Depressing

I am trying to learn to read and finding it hard to acquire characters quickly.

My text book starts each chapter with a lengthy paragraph, followed by a vocab list of keywords in Pinyin and English.

I read a new paragraph and can read out correctly around 40% (grade 2 level)

After reading the vocab list for 5-10 mins, I re-read the entire paragraph and have 100% accuracy. After re-reading the entire paragraph 5-10 times, I can read it smooth and accurately.

The problem is.... if you individually pull out the compounds, I can't read it. Nor can I imagine the character in my head at all. It seems the more I re-read the same paragraph, I'm not learning to recognise the characters, I'm simply just memorising a speech and automatically know the next character because I've memorised the sounds.

How are you supposed to properly learn to read? I don't want to write out characters 100 times each.

If you're happy to learn to read and not write, I would say you want to get started on a ton of flashcard work. Show yourself the character and respond with the pronunciation / meaning. You'll get there soon enough - although it's always frustrating working with the runt skills of the litter.

Yes, I'd say character + word flashcards with a good SRS program.

If you keep it up daily, you'll be reading stuff in a year, and you can take it from there.

That's what I did, and it worked well. Flashcarding + reading loads is the way.

What application is used to do the flash cards etc?

Mnemosyne and Anki are both popular, effective and free.

There are ready-made Chinese decks too. If you use one of them to review daily and read some real material (a simple book or a comic) every day, you will see great progress.

It still takes a long time to get good, but you will be surprised how far a year of hard work can get you! I was reading a comic and simple stories after a year, and enjoying it immensely.

Do you ever write? It's stupid to write a character too many times, but thinking about a character and writing it at least once is good for you.

. It seems the more I re-read the same paragraph, I'm not learning to recognise the characters, I'm simply just memorising a speech and automatically know the next character because I've memorised the sounds

One other small tip for solving that problem:

-make a fairly small flashcard pile (say 20-30 words)

-and include in that pile a few words that have the same character. Therefore, if you can't seem to remember the character 报 put in in the pile in a maybe in two or three different places (and I think it helps to put it in both the front and back position):报道 (report)，报纸 (newspaper)，天气预报 (weather forecast). (Note:when deciding which words to choose, I'd often look at 报 in a dictionary and would try to find the most common and useful words that also use that character).

-Then, practice with the pile once or twice a day until you can pretty easily remember that character. Then, move on and make a new pile, and come back to that pile in, say, a week or two, just to make sure you really remember that character.

If you've got Plecodict, I'd use that - it's an extremely solid flashcard program and has the massive advantage of proper dictionaries. If you haven't got Plecodict, Anki, ZDT, etc. But I'd get Plecodict.

Learning to read is hard, you are not the only one.

It is great that renzhe says that after 1 year he can read. Just to let you know, that after 3 years of daily study, I still can't read so don't be hard on yourself.

They all give good advice, so I suggest trying it out and go with what works for you. The one thing that I know for sure is if you want to succeed, you can't quit, so choose something you can stick with and if it stops working than try something else.

I'd second Plecodict. It's great not having to carry around a stack of flashcards everywhere i go! Glad i took the advice of other forum members and bought it!

I'd just third doing flashcards with Pleco, for those occasions when you don't have a computer or paper flaschards handy, like when you are sitting on the toilet. You have to seize every moment when studying Chinese.

Another plus point for PIeco (I should maybe just rename the forum Plecocheerleaders.com) in this case is the very nifty reader module. I hadn't actually spent any time with this till last night, but i was pretty impressed. Exactly what you need for periods of 'assisted reading'.

But basically what you need is flashcard work. What should be on the flashcards is a different matter - I'd say words, others will say sentences or characters. That plus a reasonable amount of challenging but not frustrating reading.

Perhaps writing the character as little as 6 times would help your retention.

I find it really difficult to retain characters unless I've written them out several times. But sometimes you can make do with just remembering radicals or certain smaller units within the character, and forgetting about the rest.

It is great that renzhe says that after 1 year he can read. Just to let you know, that after 3 years of daily study, I still can't read so don't be hard on yourself.

Don't get me wrong -- reading has many stages, I was reading mostly comics at that point, serious stuff came later.

Still, when you're at the point when you can read native material (even if it's simple), your reading tends to pick up relatively quickly, as you get far more exposure than by just writing the character over and over or doing flashcards.

My advise is to keep the frustration factor low. Maybe your textbook is not adequate and you need something more gradual. In any given text the ideal proportion between known words and unknown must be kept in a relation of 90 to 10. This 10% is what will keep your vocabulary growing. The 90% will keep you reading.

For traditional characters I recommend these reader in 5 volumes (although it has a supplement in simplified):

http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Chinese-Reader-Part/dp/0300020600/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1250592103&sr=8-1

Note: "This reader is getting a new edition that will be in simplified characters with traditional characters playing the role that simplified characters did in the original version. The content has also been updated and many new features added. The new product is called ENCOUNTERS CHINESE, also by Yale Press, which will incorporate the new BCR."

I love the 汉语风 Chinese Breeze Graded Reader series. They are short fictional story books not written for kids, but for adult learners. There is a murder mystery, software espionage, love story, stupid boy chases girl story, a sad story about some geese, etc... probably in English they would be a bit boring, but I got a total buzz out of reading them in Chinese an understanding them. They are interesting enough where I want to read them. I generally read a few pages a night before bed (better than a sleeping pill, reading chinese knocks me out!!)

So far they have 5 books with 300 characters and 2 books with 500 characters. Even though I have read them each a couple times now (because they haven't released the 750 or 1000 level books yet), I still find they help me a lot. They have me reading faster and I find grammar that I only just learned in a 300 character book.

So even if these are way 'below' your level, they are actually enjoyable reads. They also have a cd with mp3 files in two speeds, slow and normal.

I also use Pleco, but I credit these books with helping my reading more than anything. Now I am practicing for the HSK Basic exam and the reading section is by far the easiest for me (grammar is killing me).

Now, after saying all that, I am desperate for similar style readings at the 1000 character level if anyone has some suggestions!

Thanks for all the advice everyone.

I decided to use Anki as it as Jyutping rominisation which I know well.

I find the Pleco dictionary is useful, but the flashcard tool seems limited to single words (i.e. you can't add phrases or sentences) which is a bit of a bummer. Sure is nice to add a word right from the dictionary though.

(As everyone knows by now) I like the idea of starting with children's books, but using a _series_ of real children's textbooks. This gives one a minutely-graduated path upward. Personally, when I combine this reminder of childhood-related structure and happiness, with the challenge of answering to the "2009 goals" thread, it works, so far.

The PEP Yuwen series (textbooks, coordinated storybooks, writing practice books, etc., but no audio that I'm aware of) for Chinese children in China through the sixth grade, about 2500 characters, is viewable at their website (free). That publisher's series (for sale) extends through high school. The studychineseculture.com website doesn't stock it but will collect them for you if you ask. (Not all volumes are available year-round.) The textbooks are so beautiful, I was unable to settle for my downloads. This series is voluminous.

Another series also without audio, that has a lot of coordinated reading books, is produced by the Singaporean Ministry of Education for Chinese speaking children in Singapore. They're sold by ChinaSprout, and are also all-Chinese. There's little at that website to instruct you on how the pieces of the set fit together, but I bought samples: Textbook and "Activity Book" (workbook)- very good, lots of usefully explanatory illustrations, "Super Scholar" and "Super Scholar Higher Level"- these look like simply an expansion of the textbook/workbook: the same type of work at the same level, "Comprehension Champion"- short texts with quizzes, looks good , but the grand prize... coordinated story books, lots of them. On the ChinaSprout website, look under "content-based". They have scanned pages for each level showing some text. The text, workbook, and storybooks are in color, the others b&w. I know almost 1000 characters and have finished two years in my children's series (NCCfC described below), and I know every character in the first-grade level of these (above) storybooks. Though not effortlessly, I can read them, so they are exactly as I had hoped. To summarize: anyone still at elementary school level could check out these storybooks to get oriented, adding the other bits as needed. [edit 11OCT09: Courseware/audio for this series exists. It requires more Windows-bits than I want to install on my Linux system, so I haven't tried it. http://www.iflashbook.com.sg/iflashbooken/ [end edit]

edit: here's some that's free xuele

For anyone wanting a series with audio, I disliked two series I sampled because the voices were those of children, pinched and squeaky. But New Concept Chinese for Children (BLCUP) uses an adult female (later an adult male also), and these are beautiful voices. (I believe they also appear in NPCR.) Because they come with CDs, and are priced for foreigners, these are much more expensive. This is the series I'm using, but it doesn't offer any *additional* coordinated reading books. (Its workbooks, included, have slightly higher-level stories intended to be read to the child by the parent.) So, eager for stories, I'm happy to add some from the other sources above.