hellotherebrick - Help with Reading, please !

小学语文（一年级）

find a chinese people online chat with you

i meant...how about a language exchange partner?

A language partner would be great for speaking and listening, but I'm after a book to supplement my attempts to read. Just trying to memorise characters hasn't proved too successful so far...but lots of exposure to, say 300 or 400 basic written characters in different contexts, and repeatedly, might be more productive ( and more interesting, to say the least )

sunmun，the link to your chinese myspace page doesn't seem to work.

Perhaps you should be looking for online text rather than any book or printed text. Online text has the huge advantage that you can load it into an application that has a built-in dictionary, so you can instantly get English translations simply by moving the mouse cursor over each word. For example, Wenlin (http://www.wenlin.com/ ), or perhaps Babylon http://www.babylon.com/ . Paper dictionary lookups are intolerable after you get used to getting definitions instantly. Unfortunately, I don't know of any specific texts (online or in book form) that provide what you're looking for (texts composed using the 300 or 400 most commonly used characters). Anyways, from what I've seen of children's books, Chinese children have a pretty darned extensive vocabulary already. Maybe we need books for toddlers? Perhaps there's an opportunity here for ChinesePod? Text-only lessons without accompanying audio, that repeatedly reinforce vocabulary. Sort of like the "Expansion" section on steroids. Personally, what I did at that stage, for lack of any alternative, was to bite the bullet and start reading material that was way too advanced for me, namely headline news. Very tedious and frustrating at first, with almost every word unfamiliar, but it helps to use an application that provides instant word-definition lookup (eg Wenlin). And headline news tend to have surprisingly repetitive vocabulary and stories that play out over several days, which helps with reinforcement. Ultimately, I suspect anyone who has achieved some measure of reading ability in Chinese started out by biting the bullet in this way and plunging into material that was too advanced for them, during a stage in life when they had abundant free time. If there's an easier way nowadays, I'd like to hear it.

To a point I agree with AE Flow just bite the bullet and delve into text too advanced for your level. Copy and paste the text into something like "Zhongwen.com's online dictionary or the sites AE Flow recommended and just be prepared to put in the time. I also suggest just writing as much as you can. Start off simple, utilize Blogs and message boards to write something like, “大家好，我是一个很想学会中文的老外， 有人愿意跟我聊天吗？”。 I'm sure almost every user here would be glad to join in a conversation, or if you have some Chinese friends you can send them E-mails written in Chinese. You can utilize the multitude of online Chinese dictionaries to check your work and make sure you are using the correct characters. Gradually you will become familiar with the characters , their meanings, pronunciations and tones. Also a good started book I used is called, “汉语拼音学中文”it's great because it has accompanying Pin Yin with the proper tone marks and the level is very basic. It's actually targeted to Chinese kids, but I found it to be pretty useful.

how about these: http://www.newconceptmandarin.com/ http://www.newconcept.com/MarketService/nc_onlinestore.html

to bazza why did you want to look around my chinese myspace? i have nothing much there. and myspace prohibit the link for preventing spam. so that's why you could not open it. my original chinese blog have many long articles. i afraid you whould confuse what i wrote totally

Thanks for your suggestions, everyone. Wenlin looks promising, and I'm going to explore the "New concept" bookstore. Given my Elementary level, it's a pity that there's nothing with an English key to check translations against. Maybe torturing some poor Chinese English learner is the answer :-) There does seem to be a niche here waiting to be filled by some enterprising person, given the ever-increasing importance of China.

I have a few pen-pals from Beijing that I talk to online. I found them at www.penpalparty.com

I think the dialog tab on the CPod lessons is great for reading practice. You can just mouse-over for a translation (except on the advanced lessons). I don't remember if it is a premium feature or just a basic feature, though.

sunmun, why wouldn't I like to look at your chinese page? ;)

Err sounds kind of crazy, so much so that I hesitate to mention it but my biggest kickstart to reading was reading Chinese subtitles on English shows. I just got hold (online) of a bunch of Sci-fi series I liked and watched them in English with Chinese subs. Not really studying because I could do it during relaxing but something just made my brain want to start working on what the Chinese subtitles say. Of course you need to have a base level of Chinese vocab but can start with surprisingly few characters. There are little gems for example Rose in Doctor Who looks in a mirror and says "oh my god I am a chav" you just have to know what the Chinese is ....我是一个不良少女。 (btw it is a English show and chav is English slang). Then I moved on to text chat, and subtitles on Chinese shows it is surprising how much progress you can make without actually "studying" . Anything that encourages you to read fast must be good.

Where did you get Doctor Who with Chinese subtitles?

chrismandarinstudent: I love stories like that! To just one day decide, "hey I'm intrigued by this I'd like to learn it", and then set out to do it by whatever means necessary is AWESOME! You'll never regret learning this language it's enriching in so many ways, and the Characters are a great way to exercise both sides of the brain, which is one of the things I love about them, since they are rooted in pictograms (pictures of objects or scenarios) there is always a visual (right brain) stimulation. The Chinese have always regarded the Characters as an art form which they most definately are. Keep it up! And as I said in my other post 天才！

except textbooks

u'd better find chinese people to talk on line or send emails.

reading newspaper is also a great way/.