Improve Your Chinese Reading Skills

This section is emphasized on Chinese reading skill improvement.

Reading is an important way of vocabulary extension and information gaining. An intermediate Chinese learner should get rid of bad reading habit and raise reading speed. Try to read phrase by phrase instead of character by character. Maybe some new words prevent you from continuing reading. One way to overcome this problem is to guess the meaning by context.

How to improve your Chinese reading skills? You may try the following methods.

Extensive Reading

Read large quantities of material or long texts for global or general understanding, with the intention of obtaining pleasure from the text. Further, because reading is individualized, please choose the materials in your interests. Extensive reading is aimed at increasing your exposure to Chinese, consolidating previously learned and raising your reading speed.

Recommended practice period: 20 - 40 minutes / day

Recommended reading material:

Chinese Novels

China's four greatest masterpieces:

• 西游记 (Journey to the West)
• 三国演义 (Three Kingdoms)
• 水浒传 (Outlaws of the Marsh)
• 红楼梦 (A Dream of Red Mansions)

Chinese Proverbs, Idioms, Stories

• The Peach Blossom Fan
• The Stories Behind 100 Chinese Idioms
• Bilingual Series - 100 Ancient Stories
• Tending the Roots of Wisdom
• Chinese Proverbs

Intensive Reading

Different from extensive reading, intensive reading is reading in detail for a complete understanding of every part of the text. What is intensive reading for? It is for vocabulary improvements concerning fine differences between similar vocabulary terms.

Recommended practice period: 4-5 passages / week

Recommended reading material:

Text-books with detailed explanation on word usage, grammar.

Compact short stories

• Reading Chinese Through Humorous Stories
• Chinese Idioms and their Stories