#+TITLE: A roadmap for actually learning chinese
#+DATE: 2024-05-21

There are two main aspects of studying a language: listening and reading.  These are the two ways that you can consume content.  Production by way of speaking and writing also takes practice, but is easier to do well once you have a strong grasp of listening and reading.

* Reading

In general, i don't recommend graded readers.  I used grading reading resources for a while and found them beneficial for helping me realise that actually i could read and understand chinese texts.  But as i got more used to them, i started thinking that they were less useful.  One of the big issues is that they often try to keep the vocabulary at a particular level.  That's what graded means.  But as my ability improved, i begin noticing strange turns of phrase that occurred because the writer didn't think the more native phrasing would be a good fit for the target audience.  I tried at higher levels, and didn't notice so much of this, but the concern was still in the back of my mind.  What if i was just not a level yet that i realised how strange these sentences sound?

So now i think that it is better to start on native content as soon as possible.  Children's books are good.  In some ways, they are similar to graded readers.  In others, they are different.  One of the big differences is that graded readers serve to gradually introduce new vocabulary to students of the language, whereas children's literature serves to help native speakers, who already have quite a large vocabulary, solidify their connection between the written and spoken forms of the language.  Lots of children's books have vocabulary that are relatively rare, like names of animals.

I recommend using a learning with texts type program to read.  These are applications which will highlight words in different colours depending on how well you know the word.  I find it very motivating to open a new text and see that most of it has a white background, suggesting with some effort i should be able to read and understand it.

The program i use is called languagecrush.  It costs five dollars per month, and i think it's worth it.  A free program which is also nice is vocabtracker.  I prefer languagecrush because it has nice functionality for splitting and joining characters, which is very useful as often the morphemiser doesn't work so well in chinese.