How to improve my Chinese reading/writing

By the way, how did you crack that nut? I am working on it at the moment, but the nut is still definitely holding out. I’m just reading kids books, watching the subtitles on the tv. Anything in particular that worked for you?

I went to Mandarin school full-time for 1 year and part-time for 1.5 years, no easy way to do it. I had already learned to speak from self study and practice with my colleagues but reading and writing needs some dedicated study. I worked for about 5 years before going to school, I should have done the school part earlier or at the start.

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Bummer, I was hoping to hear about a magic woke up one morning with the ability to read and write Chinese secret. No easy way sounds about right though.

Guess I will slog on in my spare time and own efforts anyway. Any idea of a good place to chat online in Chinese by the way?

I would suggest looking to your hobbies and joining a group of locals in which they won’t cater (too much) to your language handicap. If you already have a basic understanding of the language, I think the best way to improve is to talk about something you enjoy and you’ll pick up some things along the way.

Thanks, although I am not stuck with talking I already only speak Chinese at home with the family. Its just my reading and writing is not good, or rather not really existent at all. So I was wondering if there was a good way to practice communicating in writing with other people. I am boring my missus to death with questions about reading and writing so I need new victims.

There’s no easy way, IMHO you need to go to some kind of structured class and put in the hours, it will also improve your listening and speaking markedly.
I don’t know of any online apps to utilise.

Now I would say trying to learn the handwriting is 90% a waste of time, so maybe there are better classes or methods available where you don’t have to slog through the handwriting, which you WILL forget anyway.

Learning Chinese is a massive challenge as an adult precisely because of the amount of time needed to master reading and writing . You cannot learn it by just speaking the language, unfortunately it is the most difficult language to master in the world in this regard, estimated to take more than 5 times the time to master than another European language!

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Good to know that about the handwriting, thanks! and yea I also noticed that the main thing holding back my speaking and listening now is my illiteracy. even reading books for four years olds I am learning new vocab, not a good sign… ha ha

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Reading skills are also important to help correct pronounciation errors. It helped me a lot although some may have become fossilised in before that.
Being able to read makes one a lot less anxious and reliant on others , for instance when you get phone msgs or letters in the post.

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Ah, forgot to add to request to be added to their LINE group. They always have a LINE group, if they don’t, they aren’t legit and you shouldn’t be talking to these weird people :smiley:

It may be a lot of messages and you might get stuck translating a lot, but at least it’s relating to one of your hobbies, so you’ll actually want to know what’s going on.

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It’s much better to get a structured class because there is so much slang and short hand used online and by Taiwanese in general.
Its still useful to join some groups though, yes.

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Ok that makes more sense now. yea that sounds like a good idea, I am going to do that Thanks!

Yea, I think, ill follow the kids school books next year, and mull the class idea for now. I’m a truly terrible student…

The book “Reading and Writing Chinese” by William McNaughton was a great help to me.

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Nice, I’ll check that out, thanks tempo!

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When you get to the advanced intermediate level, “Thought and Society,” a textbook published for the ICLP program at NTU, is great for learning written constructions in Chinese.

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I haven’t even got to the “promising beginner” level yet, but just in case the day comes when pigs fly, I’ve bookmarked your post.

The ICLP actually puts out a whole range of texts, from basic to advanced, most of which are very well-designed and useful. And because they’re written in Taiwan by Taiwanese teachers, you don’t get a lot of Chinese constructions that aren’t used here, which can be a problem with textbooks by Chinese authors.

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Problem is: are they updated? Not like the Audio Visual that the only updated thing for the last 30 years is the price?

Updates would be nice, it’s true, but most of the material holds up pretty well, and is more useful than most of the stuff out there.

I’m going to get me “Chinese Moral Tales”. I’m curious how they compare with European equivalents.