Graded Readers for Intermediate learners

Good find!

Middle school students must have a knowledge of around 2000 characters or so. Maybe more. One of my students, who is 初二 claimed to only know around 1000 characters, but I'm sure she knows more than that. I also heard that an "educated" university graduate will know somewhere around 5000 characters. Does anyone know how many characters actually exist? I've heard upword around 90,000, but that about 80% of those are sitting around in some patent office collecting dust.

I'm currently reading 小乌龟卡尔(Carl, the little turtle).

One of my students who is in kindergarten had a similar book with short stories. The problem I've had with those books, however, is that each character has the pinyin above it, and while this is very helpful, I also have a tendency to look more at the pinyin than the character, which doesn't help.

I guess it's a matter of style but the difficulty I have with children material is to find the right balance of ease-of-read vs topic interest. I'll spend time in bookshops when I'm in Shanghai next month though. And as s.o. mentioned in another thread, characters are an issue but it's not the number of characters so much as 2-character combinations (i.e.words).

I have (had?) a book for kids on energy, no Pinyin. Just when I reached the level to decipher it, my son destroyed most of it. It was very interesting, though, to learn such "facts" as "nuclear power is the cleanest of all energy sources" ;)

henning, the advantage you have over a child is you can be critical about "facts". to address the pinyin issue, you can get books from Taiwan and ignore the bopomofo ：-） oops, you'd have to figurate those 繁体字 though

。。。figure out

Regarding appropriate content, I find the children's stories that end in a chengyu are best. They've dumbed down the Chinese to my level, but end with a useful chengyu that I can use in conversation. (Sorry, this computer doesn't have Chinese capabilities.)

What I can't get over is how even the 小学 texts seem to be upper-intermediate to advanced. I have some printed children's books that I use for study, and it's the same story. Please tell me that small children aren't actually reading at that level. I do recommend that everyone should add some children's book material to their study pile. You'll learn a lot of vocabulary about concrete objects and day-to-day activities, which is less often encountered in more abstract articles for adults. For one thing, Chinese certainly seems to have a lot of specialized verbs with the 扌radical (such as 捧, 抬, 掀, 捞, 掏, 摘, 拾 and a whole bunch more).

just to get an idea of the number of characters used, I just run a little script on a) today's xinhuanet.com homepage, b) today's people daily homepage, c) all CSLPod advanced lessons (70 short news articles from different websites on various topics). Results: a) total 3330 汉字, unique 1212, more than once 595 b) total 9374 汉字, unique 1960 , appear more than once 1134 c) total 49719 汉字, unique 3588, more than once 2622 Analysis This is only counting characters, not words, and covers a number of topics but all within news and without any depth. When reading news the first sentences tend to be loaded with vocab that then gets repeated or the same characters used in different combinations (synonyms etc.). But in a book you're likely to get a much broader / richer set of vocabulary. So 3000+ with corresponding vocab seems a minimum, even if the topic is really narrow. I actually ran the same analysis on 60+ CSLPod intermediate lessons + banter, which cover a much smaller vocab set but goes about explaining it in simple terms. Results aren't much different : c) total 40000 汉字, unique 2912, more than once 2251. That could be considered the equivalent of a children's book.

today was my first full day in Shanghai, I had to visit the bookshop on 南京路 and picked up a few manga 漫画 (mànhuà）- that's before Vera showed me the largest bookshop in town. Anyway, I find these 漫画 a little more motivating than children books, only drawback is the characters are handwritten but that's good practice. I got 3 volumes of 150 cm Life from Japanese author 高木直子, 不露怯！举止的优雅 (bú lòuqiè! jǔzhǐ de yōuyǎ) and 不喜晕！结婚进行 (bù xǐyūn! jiéhūn jìnxíng). Ok, they're a little girly but very 嗯怎么说，spoken / oral!

A cute little Chinese children's book I found on John's blog some time ago. http://www.flickr.com/photos/jpasden/sets/72157594376071750/

I think reading comics is a really good idea, Goulniky. I remember doing that when I was learning German and it definitely paid off. Also, you can immerse yourself more in the storyline with less vocabulary, which makes the reading lighter. Let us know what titles you like and recommend :)

Well I think I've stumbled onto the best one, right here in a book shop in Australia. An Intermediate Chinese Reader by Qiao Zhang 1997 University of Otago Press ISBN 1 877133 33 7 25 original articles of pogressive difficulty, aimed at adults with an interest in culture, who have studied for one year or learned about 500 characters. Each short article is followed by its "new" vocabulary and a few exercises. Simplified and traditional character versions sit side by side, both in a nice font. In case you freak out at any stage, at the back of the book you can find them all in pinyin and then in English, followed by the complete list of new words. The content is such that I would have bought it to read even if it had been only in English. It sure beats reading about fluffy bunnies and snails who wear trousers and chew gum.

Has anyone tried DeFrancis' Beginner/Intermediate Chinese Readers? Any thoughts?

I really like Calvin and Hobbes (卡尔文和跳跳虎, I link to John's Sinosplice because it came up in my random search in Chinese...good job John!) in Chinese... and I found my first one of those cartoon books in Shanghai as well. Very good reading even if you are at a low level (but maybe helps if you already know a lot of what Calvin usually thinks and does), but even at a high level you learn words of everything from laser gun and north pole to sludge monster and burp, all put in context of a mom & dad raising a kid. As for wondering "do kids really know that many characters?": probably more so if books are read to them they know a lot more words. Yet even as reading goes, I remember reading everything from Narnia to Wizard of Oz to others even in 2nd or 3rd grade, and I'm not a very high level of reading. It seems a lot to us how much they can read, but remember, they had already been exposed to the language 8-10 years and don't look at it as "hard" but as the only way they have to communicate with the world (while reading Japanese comic books in Chinese at the bookstore...believe me, in Shanghai there were tons of them just sitting around the kids department of the big bookstore... all reading comic books I couldn't even understand if they were in English) -R

I agree with aeflow in that Chinese children's books often contain somewhat ridiculously difficult words that the children would never actually use; it just becomes a part of their passive vocabulary at a rather young age. For me the best practice was getting a QQ account, choosing a "Chinesey" name,and then chatting with random people, trying to make them think I was Chinese. With enough practice, they often didn't believe me when I told them I wasn't Chinese! Ha!

Another cool aspect of reading children's stories is that you're generally reading up on some deeper culture references that would never be taught in any textbook. When was the last time, for example, you say an English Language textbook that talked about Thunder Cats, He-Man, Popples or Alf? Reading and understanding children's stories can often give you something "nostalgic" to talk about with the locals.