Best ways to read Chinese Language

Without a doubt, reading a lot of maters in every language, including Mandarin Chinese. There’re tons of essays and research documents published to confirm or illustrate the worth of reading. But I must deliberately emphasize mandarin reading.

This is because, as a teacher, have heard I only want to learn speaking Chinese or speaking is enough for me and I do not want to learn mandarin characters so many times. This is not great for a learner with a long-term aim, because it’ll lead to a type of illiteracy, one who can just speak but not read mandarin. 

I must state that mandarin characters are much related to Chinese reading. Reading Chinese is indeed used anyplace in China, from a quick message to a working mail from a menu to written news, from directional signals to a written notification, etc.

Since there’re mandarin characters everywhere in China, differing from other states with phonetic writing reading Chinese is a survival skill way more than a language skill to some degree. Besides, if you cannot read well, it actually blocks you from several things, like a deeper understanding of China, a better job, and fluent communication with your buddies, just name a few. What is more, in any test, reading also counts for a huge part.

For example, HSK has reading parts from level one to level six. Besides those evident advantages – opening your horizons, enlarging your Chinese vocabulary, etc. – better reading ability is very much favorable for your work or studies. It’ll surely provide you several opportunities.

Advantages of Learn to Read Chinese 

• Reading Mandarin Chinese is the best tool to improve and increase your vocabulary 

Without reading ability it is next to impossible to actively again new vocabulary on your own. The procedure of getting vocabulary needs you to memorize a new expression as well as the corresponding meaning. While reading you’ll encounter a new word, you’ll look it up in a CCHATTY Chinese dictionary and you can make a flashcard to revise it later. 

Sure, you can watch films or listen to conversations instead, but reading gives you a lot more control over your progress. Natives Chinese speakers do not think about grammar laws when speaking, they just have a feeling of what sounds good. 

• Reading Mandarin Chinese also tremendously enhances your grammar 

Using the textbook-based approach most teaching sources follow, grammar is a bundle of individual laws that are memorized in the abstract. But, you’ll realize that you would not actually be able to put grammar to utilize when speaking Mandarin. 

Native speakers do not think about grammar laws when speaking Chinese, they just have a feeling of what sounds good. And extensive reading ability can get you there as you’re exposed to contextualized language. After a while, you’ll begin to cultivate this feeling for the right grammar.

• Reading Mandarin Chinese improves your writing abilities 

To a great extent, mandarin writing is done on PC and mobile phones. For this, you do not actually have to know to handwrite Chinese. Rather, it’s enough if you know the form of every character as well as its corresponding Pinyin. Put more simply, writing mandarin is widely dependent on your abilities to read Chinese. Besides, it’s no secret that avid readers are the best writers!

Ways to improve reading in Mandarin Chinese 

Just I mentioned above, the ability to read in mandarin is favorable and pragmatic, so how can we reach a top reading ability?

Here’re we’re going to provide some great tips.

For Beginners 

Main goal – To understand the meaning of the text without any confusion.

Key Suggestions:

• Master 300 basic Chinese words 

In a piece of reading material, the sentence is the fundamental unit. Though words make up sentences, so reading Chinese must be built atop the number of words you understand. For beginners, mastering basic words is a must task. Referring to the needs of HSK 2, it’d take 3 hundred words at least.

• Understanding the right meaning 

The reading material for a newbie is not so hard – it is short, like a short dialogue or a short essay, and the words and grammar are simple but frequently utilized. So in order to lay a strong foundation and foster a quick sense of further study, you would better know the materials completely and once you have mastered those basic laws, you’ll finally find out that it’s still some sort of organization even in long and complicated stuff in the future.

For when selecting appropriate words to fill out the blanks in HSK, you can also rapidly get answers once seeing the items because you’ve already digested it in situations where this word should be or with which Chinese word can be combined with after your longer-lasting regular practice.

For intermediate learners

Main Goal – To understand the main concept of reading material, and get the cultural points behind these also catch relevant details.

Key Suggestions:

• Tray to Master when you are learning Chinese in chunks 

When studying in the intermediate, step back and learn mandarin in chunks. This is because of the more complex contents, more twisted context, mixed grammar marks, etc. if you still try to focus on understanding every mandarin word, you might go far from the real idea the reading material wants to express.

Therefore, at this time, you’d try to master the frequently used structures and combinations in chunks. As we all understand, sometimes a mandarin word in a group will show a different meaning compared to when it’s used along. In this technique, when coming to complex and long material, catching the chunks will be further helpful than following every single word. Consider the reading as well as comprehension part of HSK.

It is very hard for you to read and pick a corresponding option in such a short period. Though, if you’ve fostered a habit of remembering in chunks, you’ll rapidly choose the right answers when seeing the corresponding partner.

• Get the basic idea and filter out irrelevant details 

Actually, we still recommend perusing all the materials, but at this level, the procedure will be quite very time-consuming, which intimidates a lot of students. In a fact, you can scan the complete material first to get a brief image about what it’s, and then peruse it to understand the specific expressions and the logic behind this.

During this phase when you’re looking at the details, you’d pay further attention to the parts related to the key topic and filter out irrelevant info, which will enhance your reading skill to a huge extent. This plan is fine for the enhancement of your comprehension and the pace of doing a reading exam, where the passage can be long but the time period is limited.

For advanced learners

Main Goal: Catch the gist rapidly, understand the profound culture behind the materials, and goal to communicate with the tradition rather than just focus on grammar or words.

Key Suggestions:

• Extensive and Intensive reading 

For advanced learners, grammar and words would not be the hub of their reading. They pursue things like the latest theory, expertise knowledge, etc. At this point, both extensive and intensive reading should come together. According to the cognition and skill advanced learners have already formed, they’d select material that is valuable of extensive and intensive reading. At this time, advanced learners should keep acute info, which is more crucial than digging deeper into every material.

• Find a specific area of study

As an old Mandarin Chinese saying goes – studying is like sailing against the current, either you keep forging forward or you keep falling behind. Since advanced learners have already reached a top-level, making development on language might be hard for them.

In this way, they’d focus on a certain topic or area – reading a series of expert materials, for instance, if you’ve any interest in Chinese culture, history, traditional medicine or tea culture, etc. reading specific content will not only allow you to get a deeper understanding but also enhance your comprehension capability, and maybe even assist you to make friends who’ve same interests.

Learn More Chinese characters 

The primary way you can enhance your reading in Chinese mandarin is to learn more characters. The more mandarin vocabulary you’ve, the easier it is going to be to read. Mandarin is a strange language in comparison to others where I find early word memorization can really assist. Usually, I prefer an extra natural approach via taking in vocabulary as I interact with it, but learning characters can actually help to cram in a few memorization hours to put you ahead.

The more characters you understand, the easier it will be to read. If my goal was to enhance our reading, and I was not looking for specific vocabulary then I’d start by downloading the HSK1 vocab, which consists of 150 Chinese characters and trying to learn them. Then I’d download HSK 2 and continue in this way until HSK 6, downloading additional modules as and when I required them.

Also when you are learning the Chinese characters, ensure you learn what makes up the mandarin characters, and just do not memorize the shapes. So learn which part provides the meaning which part provides the sound. Learn what a radical is, so if you do not understand a character it can help you to know the meaning anyway.

List New Chinese words and rewrite the passage with them

After years of teaching, I can tell you that the main to becoming fluent in a language is repetition. No matter how fine you’re learning a language, you have to repeat new phrases and words. The difference is that if you are great, you can repeat fewer times, if you are bad, you’ve to repeat several times.

How you can memorize the new words and phrases you have just read? Highlight or underline them, write them down in your notebook, get the Pinyin, get the meaning and find some instance of using a word. You’d review them by just reading via them many times, but this can be extremely boring and inefficient.

The best way is to rewrite the story with new Chinese words, see if you can utilize them rightly, and at least make some sentences with them. Those phrases and words will go through your brain again and again when you do that. By the way, do not tell me that you can’t write to speak with natives because you’re not Chinese – we’ve fast internet in China too!

Get Some Great examples 

Use the internet to get some instance and ask natives to correct you. Even if you have all sorts of methods, I am sure you still have some phrases and words you cannot understand, Google them. Find the meaning this way and compare them. 

This also works you are trying to write a text and you are not sure which word to use. Search 2 words, using them in separate sentences, and then pick the one which has hundreds of thousands of pages on Google rather than a few.

The most efficient method of checking your perfection is to find a Chinese teacher to assist you to check. And, the way best method in my opinion: post your questions on CCHATTY.

Read slowly and read quickly 

To ready slowly means you’d understand all in the book you’ve chosen for your intensive Chinese reading. But if you want to enhance your reading abilities rapidly, do not read-only 1 book or read a lot, as much as you can. If you do not have a lot of time, do not worry just reach quickly. You do not have to learn every word and sentence you can just need to get the actual meaning. Doing that helps you learn the words you already know and assists you cement.

Bottom Line 

Better Chinese Mandarin reading competence takes time. I hope these suggestions can make a huge difference to your Chinese reading skills. Still do not forget the basic criterion – touch slightly beyond your present level, because sometimes going too far is as bad as not going far enough.