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wushijiao -



Quote:

attack the challange every moment, every second you can afford, continue to look things up every
few words like your doing

I agree with that. Everybody has given great advice, but the key ingredient, I think, is keeping
up the intense stamina required for the months and months of arduous studying through the phase in
which textbooks become kind of boring and useless, but newspapers/TV are a bit too difficult to
understand. Once, about three years ago, I was reading 中国大历史 at a slow snail’s pace,
looking up between 10-25 words per page. I got so frustrated that I threw the book as hard as
possible at the wall, denting the book pretty good. So, I understand how you feel.

Anyway, about two years ago, over the course of a few months, I felt like I started to get out of
that plateau. A lot of the things that helped me, I wrote down here:

http://www. /showth...83%96%E5%AD%90

Also, you might want to consider studying for an HSK. I’ve never done too well on standardized
tests, and so I didn’t even consider taking the test. But then I happened to buy a few HSK
materials, and I think that the studying process really helped. If you are like me, you might have
some real weaknesses concerning grammar or vocabulary that you may not be aware of (unknown
unknowns). I think studying for the HSK can help bring these to light, and help you improve. For
example, once I studied for the HSK and formally studied common sentence patterns and how Chinese
clauses worked, my ability to understand newspapers and to speed read improved dramatically. (At
the time, I had fallen under the myth that Chinese grammar was "easy, just SVO with no verb
endings or declensions" and other such stuff, and therefore wasn't worth taking seriously).

Also, keep in mind that newspapers contain spoken slang, Internet slang, formal Chinese, some
classical Chinese, abbreviations, and the vocab differs from subject (celeb sleeps with celeb) to
subject (nuclear disarmament). So, newspapers are, in a sense, the most difficult type of texts
for a foreigner to read.

加油！



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dporter1465 -

What I'd really like to find is an online Chinese news source that provides BOTH short,
interesting articles and audio recordings of the same (eg news broadcast). That way one could
practice listening and reading together with the same text, which would presumably be a big help
for both listening to the radio and reading newspapers. Has anyone seen anything like this out
there?










imron -

See here.










赫杰 -



Quote:

赫杰: I know what you're saying. instead of pushing myself to recognize every frickin character,
I should instead focus on the meanings. but, maybe it’s because im a little bit of a
perfectionist, I just hate myself for not knowing a character, and I just can’t sleep until I
find out what it is. ill try to go through an article without touching a dictionary next time!!!

ai ya, I saw this and I was like, ummm, why did he say this? because I even said:



Quote:

continue to look things up every few words like your doing

I think it is because my third point is not very clear, damn English



Quote:

3) don't translate what your reading to English, let the words fill your head with images and
feelings, be as vivid and imaginative as possible, just like when you use English (or whatever
your mother language is), you speak from feelings and pictures, not from another language

what I mean by "do not translate what your reading to English" is, "do not translate (in your
head) what your reading to English", just allow the words to paint pictures and scenes in your
head, of course when you come across characters/phrases you don’t know then by all means look it
up. but im just saying, what helped me is the next time I saw the word that I looked up, I did not
look at it and immediately think of its English counter part, but thought of whatever the message
and meaning it was trying to convey. so don’t stop using the dictionary!! I still use it a lot
when reading articles, perhaps now not so much to look up meanings of words, but at least to check
their tones.

I am quite the perfectionist as well, I think you have to be if you want to have good Chinese.
this is not supposed to be easy, so go ahead and start feeling dejected, the trick is to keep
fighting and not giving up, just like wushijiao awesomely put it in another post, learning this is
like a rollercoaster or mountain, climbing up is hard hard hard, then (usually all of a sudden)
you will realized that you have cleared the top and can relax as you sail down, then if you really
care about your Chinese, you will find another mountain and repeat the whole process again, fun
aint it?










babygodzilla -

lol damn english... it sucks! no, just kidding.


well actually if i keep looking up every single word and character that i don't know, ill probably
be doing that at least once a minute, and then it'll take me a month to get through whatever i'm
reading... so if I can't guess the meaning I'll look it up, otherwise i'll just skip it for next
time huh?

anyways, i just bought some Doraemon comics. they make me feel better cause i can actually read
and understand most of it!! HA HA!!










gato -



Quote:

well actually if i keep looking up every single word and character that i don't know, ill probably
be doing that at least once a minute, and then it'll take me a month to get through whatever i'm
reading... so if I can't guess the meaning I'll look it up, otherwise i'll just skip it for next
time huh?

Try underlining words you don't know but don't look them up until you have a dozen or two or them.
Then look them up en masse. Call it the assembly line dictionary lookup. It'll save you time
whether you're using a paper dictionary or an electronic one. If you're using PlecoDict, you can
store every word you look onto a flashcard list with just one button tap. If you don't have have
PlecoDict, it would still be a good idea to keep a notebook of all words you look up so you can
review. Practice makes perfect. After 30 days straight of doing this, you'd already know a lot
more words even if you are just learning few dozens a day.

Remember that the 1500 or characters cover 95% of texts rule is really only meaningful for native
Chinese speakers who know many of the words already and just need to recognize them in the written
form. Foreigners who are starting with a very small vocabulary (written and spoken) should
concentrate a lot more on learning words instead of characters.










atitarev -

I am staying away from reading articles in Chinese for the moment ( I read a few from News in
Chinese, though), sticking to simpler reading, although I am OK with reading them in Russian,
English, German and to some extent Japanese - yes, NJStar or Wenlin are a great help to go through
an article.

Does someone know where you can get exact copies (Chinese/English) of articles.

I use CNN, BBC, NHK (Japan) and sometimes China Daily to read multilingual articles but often it's
hard to find exactly the same contents when you switch to another language!

That would be awesome - having 2 online articles - English and Chinese. Does anyone know such news
sites?

Is National Geographic available online in 2 languages? I am incredibly slow looking up
characters, would prefer an online version, so I could use electronic dictionaries.

I am in the same boat as babygodzilla with Chinese but I am not discouraged.










gougou -



Quote:

If you don't have have PlecoDict, it would still be a good idea to keep a notebook of all words
you look up so you can review. Practice makes perfect. After 30 days straight of doing this, you'd
already know a lot more words even if you are just learning few dozens a day.

On a related note, I once was recommended to make a dot next to the dictionary entry of all the
new words I encounter. Once a word has two or three dots (depending on how eager you are to
increase your vocabulary), you go and add them to your vocabulary list. This way, you avoid the
obscure impressions some reporters think will give their articles an aura of professionalism...

Haven't gotten around to starting that system yet, but it sounds like a good idea!


Quote:

That would be awesome - having 2 online articles - English and Chinese. Does anyone know such news
sites?

I read the Financial Times in Chinese.Apparently, most of their articles are translations from the
English articles, link to which are provided. I have been looking up the occasional sentence I
didn't get in the English article; the translations seem to follow the original quite strictly.










atitarev -



Quote:

I read the Financial Times in Chinese.Apparently, most of their articles are translations from the
English articles, link to which are provided. I have been looking up the occasional sentence I
didn't get in the English article; the translations seem to follow the original quite strictly.

Thanks, Gougou! I see, you use the 查看英文原文 button.

Cool! Do you you know non-financial sites, e.g. general news, which has the same functionality?










wushijiao -



Quote:

Does someone know where you can get exact copies (Chinese/English) of articles.

Danwei.org often has interesting articles translated into English (some by forum members here)
with links to the Chinese original. I suppose you could also try that if you're not to into
business topics.

http://www.danwei.org












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