All the above suggestions are great if you’re learning to read and write Chinese. However, doing this is a major undertaking that takes years and a lot of dedication. For me, it’s not a priority and my knowledge of characters is pretty much stuck where it was a year ago.
What is a priority for me, however, is learning how to speak the language well. I would love to see advanced vocabulary materials entirely in pinyin. I know, I know, you can’t transpose characters into pinyin and it remain completely intelligible, but that’s because written Chinese is pretty far removed from the way people actually speak Mandarin. To be of value, it would have to represent spoken Mandarin pretty much exactly - a kind of "xīn B
[quote=“ironlady”]What I’d like to do is to provide what’s called “extensive reading” practice. The materials might be a bit contrived in their repetitive nature – hammering basic words and structures – but a beginner can get a real sense of achievement being able to read a real story/book/whatever entirely in Chinese. I taught high-school Spanish and had my kids read specially written materials of this type in Spanish, and they loved being able to read and understand even at their level.[/quote]It’s a great idea to do this for Chinese. People – including me – certainly need more practice reading the most common characters with their most common meanings in a variety of interesting contexts. (I don’t suppose you have time to write any stories using just the most common 500, do you ).
I agree that depth, rather than breadth, is the way to go for a beginner in any language. Acquisition of new language becomes much easier once you have the basic “core” really under your belt.
I’ve only just started serious study of characters (reading, not writing), and I’m certainly not criticising anyone’s effort and achievement, but when I hear of people learning a large number of characters in a fairly short space of time but being unable to understand them in context, I wonder whether their time might have been better spent concentrating on getting a really good feeling for the various senses of a smaller number of very common characters first.
[quote=“ironlady”]There was/is a section of the English Wikipedia in “Simple English”, and the Voice of America also provides broadcasts and print materials on the Web in simple English. They seem to use a limited vocabulary as their basis.[/quote]For another interesting approach to simplified English, have a look at the specifications for Wycliffe Associates’ “Easy English”. easyenglish.info/eewhatis.htm easyenglish.info/about-us/ar … icator.htm
Ogden’s Basic English is another one to look at.
There’s an important difference between these and what you’re doing though. Simple English, Easy English and Basic English are all designed to facilitate international communication. They’re not designed to teach people to understand “real” English.
What you’re doing, on the other hand, is a kind of “stepping stone” towards reading ability with unabridged authentic materials. I think the kinds of features you mentioned are good; the somewhat simplified grammar, the shallower structures and the shorter sentences. But as you’re no doubt aware you wouldn’t want to be using downright unnatural constructions such as those caused by the extremely limited vocabulary of Basic English or the complete avoidance of the passive of Easy English.
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