Reading Chinese is something that not only requires that you know the words, but also that you can combine them into a meaningful whole. If you want to survive proficiency tests, you also need to be able to do this quickly. Most tests are heavily biased towards reading comprehension and reading speed, but how do you improve Chinese reading ability?
Here are some more questions answered in these articles:
- How do I bridge the gap from intermediate to advanced reading?
- How do I improve my reading comprehension score on tests?
- How should I think when approaching difficult texts?
If you you’re new to Hacking Chinese and want more general advice, please sign up for my free introduction course. I will summarise and introduce the most important things to keep in mind when learning Mandarin:
[mc4wp_form id=”7547″]Now let’s get back to how to Chinese reading ability. Below, I have selected a few articles I find particularly important, but don’t forget to check the complete list at the bottom of this page.
- The importance of knowing many words – Any teacher, student or researcher will agree that vocabulary is very important, but few of them will go as far as I will in this direction. I don’t simply believe that vocabulary is king, I believe it’s god emperor as well. Learning many words enables you to communicate and it also makes you learn other areas of the language faster.
- Benchmarking progress to stay motivated – When we set out to learn Chinese, everything we learn is new and we can feel that we improve for each day that goes by, for each time we are exposed to the language. We know this because, in relative terms, we’re learning so much. As we progress, this feeling weakens. In this article, we look at benchmarking and how it can help us stay motivated.
- Reading manga for more than just pleasure – This article is about reading manga (comics) in order to improve your Chinese. Manga serves two important functions apart from being enjoyable in itself. Firstly, it gives us access to language we would otherwise hardly ever see in written form. Secondly, it lowers the threshold for reading books in Chinese. Reading manga just for fun is fine, but if you think about it, you’ll see that it can be very useful as well!
- Reading speed: Learning how to read ten lines at a glance – Reading quickly is useful when taking tests and in any situation where you want consume large volumes of test. However, simply reading a lot is not the most efficient way to reach high speeds, you actually need to focus on reading speed to do that. In this article I discus various methods, tips and tricks, along with some thoughts on goals and problem analysis.
- Learning simplified and traditional Chinese – Learning traditional characters if you know simplified or vice versa is a lot easier than beginners tend to think. Generally, you don’t need to worry, because at an advanced level, learning both is quite easy. This article is about simplified/traditional and how to learn both.
- A language learner’s guide to reading comics in Chinese – This article is a guide to reading comics in Chinese, suitable for beginners as well as those who already have some experience. Reading comics is an excellent way of attacking the Great Wall of Chinese (the daunting effect of seeing a whole page of text and not knowing what to do). It’s also fun, which is arguably the most important thing.
Here’s a list of all articles in this category:
- Student Q&A, December 2024: Learning similar Chinese characters, polyphonic characters, and flashcards vs. reading for building vocabulary
- Chinese reading challenge, November 2024
- Student Q&A, November 2024: Pros and cons of digital tools for Chinese reading, and the struggle to find comprehensible and interesting texts
- Three things I wish I had known as an advanced student of Chinese: The time machine, part 3
- Don’t learn Mandarin pronunciation by reading, listen and mimic instead
- How to use YouTube and other video platforms to learn Chinese
- Three things I wish I had known as an intermediate student of Chinese: The time machine, part 2
- Three things I wish I had known as a beginner student of Chinese: The time machine, part 1
- Chinese character variants and font differences for language learners
- Student Q&A, July 2024: Reading speed, children’s books and Chinese literature
- Chinese character learning for all students
- Interview: Insights from Skritter’s Complete Guide to Learning Chinese
- Real communication: What it is, why you want it and how to get it
- Student Q&A, March 2024: Reading aloud, finding word boundaries, and working actively with reading materials
- Outlier Chinese Character Masterclass review: Understand more, learn faster, remember longer
- 8 great ways to scaffold your Chinese listening and reading
- 12 ways chatting online will improve your Chinese
- How to best use flashcards to learn Chinese
- The 10 best free Chinese reading resources for beginner, intermediate and advanced learners
- Student Q&A, November 2023: Reading Pinyin or characters, comprehensible vs. compelling content and reading tools
- Student Q&A, October 2023: Expanding vocabulary quickly, learning by watching videos and nailing dictation tests
- Should you throw away your Chinese textbook?
- Hacking Chinese Podcast three-year anniversary Q&A
- Insights from the new HSK 7-9: Interview with Sara Jaaksola
- How narrow reading and listening can help you bridge the gap to real Chinese
- Hacking Chinese Podcast two-year anniversary Q&A
- How to become fluent in Chinese
- Are authentic texts good for learning Chinese or is graded content better?
- What to read to improve your Chinese and why
- How to start learning Chinese again after a break
- Learning Classical Chinese is for everyone (no, seriously!)
- The building blocks of Chinese, part 6: Learning and remembering compound words
- The building blocks of Chinese, part 5: Making sense of Chinese words
- Why spaced repetition software is uniquely well suited to learning Chinese characters
- The best Chinese reading practice for beginners
- 6 challenges students face when learning to read Chinese and how to overcome them
- The building blocks of Chinese, part 4: Learning and remembering compound characters
- The building blocks of Chinese, part 3: Compound characters
- The building blocks of Chinese, part 2: Basic characters, components and radicals
- The building blocks of Chinese, part 1: Chinese characters and words in a nutshell
- Chinese language logging, part 3: Tools and resources for keeping track of your learning
- The benefits of using Wikipedia to look up words when learning Chinese
- Lost in transcription: Saylaw, Ice Island and Aristotle
- Chinese language logging, part 1: Why and how to track your progress
- 6 things in Chinese that are harder to learn than they seem
- 20 tips and tricks to improve your Chinese writing ability
- Are simplified characters really simpler to learn?
- An introduction to extensive reading for Chinese learners
- Training your Chinese teacher, part 4: Writing ability
- Should you learn to speak Chinese before you learn Chinese characters?
- Learning Chinese words: When quantity beats quality
- When spaced repetition fails, and what to do about it
- Text adventure games and how to use them in the Chinese language classroom
- How to figure out how good your Chinese is
- 5 levels of understanding Chinese characters: Superficial forms to deep structure
- How important is reading speed on tests like HSK and TOCFL?
- How to look up Chinese characters you don’t know
- Can too much guidance make you learn less Chinese?
- New course: Unlocking Chinese – The Ultimate Guide for Beginners
- The nine principles of learning (and the mistakes from failing to follow them)
- Review: Mandarin Companion: Easy to read novels in Chinese
- 101 questions and answers about how to learn Chinese
- Why using a good dictionary can be bad for your Chinese reading ability
- Reading is a lot like spaced repetition, only better
- Focusing on Chinese tones without being distracted by Pinyin
- 866 digital textbooks for expanding your Chinese
- New text game for Chinese learners: The Magistrate’s Gallery
- Five text games for Chinese learners
- Chinese reading speed revisited
- Advanced listening and reading with Skeptoid Chinese
- Let’s play 迷霧中 (Into the Haze)
- Into the Haze: A new text adventure game for Chinese learners
- How to become a Chinese-English translator and what it’s like to be one
- 10 ways of using games to learn and teach Chinese
- A student’s guide to comprehension-based learning
- The benefits of a comprehension-based approach for teaching and learning Chinese
- An introduction to comprehension-based Chinese teaching and learning
- Learning to read handwritten Chinese
- Escape: A text adventure game for Chinese learners
- The benefits of using 语文/國文 textbooks to learn Chinese
- Learning Chinese through comprehensible input
- Can English learning materials help you learn Chinese?
- Why you should read Chinese on your phone
- Bite-sized learning isn’t enough to learn Chinese
- Review: Mandarin Companion graded readers (Level 1)
- The best Twitter feeds for learning Chinese in 2015
- Hone your Chinese writing ability by writing summaries
- Using Chinese textbooks to improve reading ability
- The new paperless revolution in Chinese reading
- How knowing your best performance in Chinese can help you improve
- How translation to another language can help you learn Chinese
- How to find the time and motivation to read more Chinese
- Learn to read Chinese… with ease?
- Easing yourself into reading novels in Chinese
- A language learner’s guide to wuxia novels
- Wuxia, a key to Chinese language and culture
- 25 books I’ve read in Chinese, with reviews and difficulty ratings
- Chinese reading challenge: Read more or die
- Learning to read aloud in Chinese
- Reading aloud in Chinese is really hard
- Phonetic components, part 2: Hacking Chinese characters
- The Cthulhu bubble and studying Chinese
- Measuring your language learning is a double-edged sword
- 31 Twitter feeds to help you learn Chinese
- A language learner’s guide to reading comics in Chinese
- Approaches to reading in Chinese
- The 10,000 hour rule – Blood, sweat and tears
- Learning simplified and traditional Chinese
- Can you become fluent in Chinese in three months?
- Chinese reading speed: Learning how to read ten lines at a glance
- Reading manga in Chinese for more than just pleasure
- The Chinese-Chinese dictionary survival guide
- Benchmarking progress in Chinese to stay motivated
- Memorising dictionaries to boost Chinese reading ability
- Learning Chinese through social media