Thank you for the two reading suggestions.  Have you any suggestions for the level beyond Level 4 of New Practical Chinese Reader?

Thanks John, this is a very detailed article. I have not heard of the textbook "Road to Success"; I'll have to look for it. I have enjoyed the textbook series "Chinese Made Easier." I thought it explained things really well.

I am currently at an intermediate level in Chinese. I have enjoyed reading some of the graded readers that are out there for adult Chinese-language learners, particularly the series from Chinese Breeze and from Mandarin Companion. I read them on my Kindle app (Amazon's e-reader). I have also been reading "Tales and Traditions 1," the first in a series of books for Chinese-language learners that presents some of China's traditional stories. I love it because it takes famous 成语 and gives the story behind them. It's written at a great level for intermediate learners. Lastly, I just bought a book called "Graded Chinese Reader 3," published by Sinolingua. It's written at a 1000-character level. I haven't started it yet but it looks good. They have others written at the 2000-character, 3000-character, and 500-character levels.

I find that I am not yet able to read material written for Chinese speakers. It just uses too many unknown words and phrases. The graded readers use a controlled vocabulary, and have a glossary at the end to define any words that the reader may not know. Do you have any suggestions on easy Chinese-language reading material?

I particularly like your suggestion #2, to list new words and rewrite the passage with them. I find it really helps my recall ability to try to reproduce the passage or dialogue.

Thanks for the information!

Good article. I'm happy you didn't suggest reading chinese children books. I think that is not the best way to learn the language.

I've read 3 chinese native speaker books last year and just started another one last week. Plus I pick up a copy of 读者 now and again and read some of that magazine articles.

I also suggest reading chinese language news stories on a mobile phone. The society 社会 section is always quite interesting and you can pick up lots of vocab not found in road to success or the practical chinese reader textbooks.

I agree with learning each character and its meaning. I found that was a huge help for my chinese reading.

I think you can start to read some chinese novels which are not designed to be read for foreigner students. If you start to do that, your Chinese will start to jump to another totally new level. You might need to write down questions you don't understand and ask native Chinese speaker. After doing that for a few month, you will see your Chinese is really different. Good luck!

You will choose the novel which is not very hard, old and you are interested in.

John

That's very helpful！

“reading chinese language news stories on a mobile phone”