Beginning to Read in Chinese: 小红帽 and Other Fairytales

Once in a while my 3 year old son comes with a Chinese book and orders me to read it to him. I sort of try to skim through the page and then tell it in German. Funny thing is, those books are 90% translations of German or British kids' books. Besides, I am following goulnik's 88news, although there is still a huge backlog (I have so far read through the 100 newest lessons - but there are about 205 lessons altogether). Also the Data Warehouse book is pretty cool. Whenever you know the content beforehand it gets a lot easier. I agree, reading really helps to let those sentence structures sink in. Kids' books are especially helpfull for getting a grip on complements.

The news from creaders.net and sina.com.cn and the like - the ones with pictures, predominantly (yes, I'm that shallow). Because one has to. Some chick lit in the style of 'Shanghai Baby'. Because it's easy. A book on 日露戦争(日俄戰爭) I picked up in DongBei's Port Arthur last year. Because I'm deeply interested in the subject matter. Back to the media, in fact, I am changing my tactics and forcing myself to read everything on my news feed. There are several reasons for that, namely: - To break the (still existing!!!) psychological barrier to back off when I see a Chinese text. - To learn to scan Chinese texts and get the gist out of them as I would when reading in other languages. That's why news items are so good: they are short and generally to the point; also not being deeply interested in most subjects, I don't have to get EVERY single word and even every single sentence. I keep looking up things but the main goal is not to squeeze out all the vocab but to gain fluency in reading. That includes jumping over the hard bits to move on in the article. And the rest of the article may well contain the info to clarify the hard bits. So I am seeking for a lot of exposure with minimal vocab look-up, trying to guess as much as I can from the character meanings and the context. (Which I find very doable at this stage, having completed my 6,000 character challenge...:-) ) - To get exposure to all sorts of topics - from international politics to celebrity gossip and popular science. This ensures a constant stream of new vocab and allows me to practice all those funny characters I've learnt... In other words, I heartily recommend reading the news to anyone on any level.

furyougaijin, we follow opposing tactics here I guess: I look up all the time, even though it slows me down significantly. Whenever I am not really 100% certain what a word means or how a character is pronounced I look it up. In my experience inferring from context is risky business - for me way too often the inferred meaning was totally wrong. Not only in Chinese. Also in English.

I also mostly read the news, but in a Chinese newspaper with a North American focus. I try to find a topic that I know and stick with it; after the first article I can usually understand the characters and, because it covers a familiar topic, the meaning can be "reverse-engineered. I think that's one reason why the above fairy tale works; you already know the story.

I've tried reading news in Chinese but I find it very difficult, probably because I simply just don't know enough characters. It becomes too frustrating and then the different news websites are really scary, too. They're packed with information and I just don't know how to navigate them. The only one that doesn't make me run away screaming is Dave's News in Chinese because I can actually figure out what's going on. (That is, I'm able to find the entertainment section...) When I read a text I always try to do it without a dictionary first. If it's a fairytale or something else where I know the story well, I find it's not impossible to infer the meaning of a character even though it's the first time I meet it. Then I always check with a dictionary later to make sure and to get the pronunciation. If you can infer the meaning it makes it easier to look it up, for example in the story about Little Red Ridinghood I figured out that 姑娘 means girl and 猎人 means hunter without knowing the Chinese pronunciation and just looked up 'girl' and 'hunter' in my dictionary. That's a bit easier and faster than first identifying the radical and then counting strokes etc.

I absolutely love the dictionary Babylon. It's perfect for reading Chinese texts online, simply right-click on the word and a little window with several translations, compounds, and pinyin pops up. I'm sure there are other dictionaries like that available. It really comes in handy when reading longer texts, saving valuable time.

Regarding online tools, but I believe they are both tools and crutches. They are tools because you aren't burdened with looking up 300 characters in a 400 character article/story; they are a crutch because that's not the way you actually read. Also, tedious as it is, I think some good old fashioned dictionary work is essential to learning Chinese. It's the best practice for discerning radicals and learning morphology. My next project for the past two years has been to memorize the radicals, so that I can use a dictionary like Chinese do.

@tvan: I agree with the 'crutches' definition and have actually banned all automatic look-up tools from my reading routine. However, regular on-line dictionaries do the job of providing the info without the tedious look-ups. And radical learning, in my opinion, is better done as a separate project (2-3 days should be enough :-))) ) than combined with actual reading. @henning: I do remember we discussed these approaches previously. It all comes down to one's character, I guess. To me, the speed and efficiency is vastly more important than the estimated 0.1% loss of info due to a possible misunderstanding that may occur with relying on context so much.