Practice your reading with Chinese Readers!

I have lucked upon these wonderful books, P3 Chinese Readers (what a memorable name! LOL!), edited by Yin Dalu, put out by PPP Company, Hong Kong (the Professional Publishing People).

P3 Chinese Readers

I find it hard to find simple, engaging material to practice reading Chinese characters that is not overwhelming (ie the average picturebook in chinese, even with pinyin, can mean a week of looking up vocab) and that is not part of some very involved, structured textbook. Ie painfully educational.

Chinese Reader Green open book

You know, there is a reason why in Grade One and Two, they have those Leveled Readers that your kids bring home: very short simple storybooks that reinforce learning and give a sense of accomplishment. Well, now you can get just such a thing in Chinese. These Readers are glossy little books: about 8 inches square, 13 pages including the inside back cover. They all have bright flat colors with clear classy photographs, and often the addition of drawn characters that interact with the photo settings and objects.

Sample Chinese Reader Orange

Each “story” is only written in large clear simplified characters, and end on page 10. Page 11 is a page by page listing of the text in characters, pinyin and English. Handy to keep your thumb here. Unlike having English and pinyin on the page with the characters, you can’t get lazy and just not read the actual wenzi, BUT you can quickly and easily consult a forgotten word or pronunciation. Page 12 is either a quick quiz on vocab or a grammar note, like “yi, er, san” are used for counting, but “yi ge, liang ge, san ge” are used when enumerating something. Page 13 (inside back cover) has key vocab in character, pinyin and English.

Pang/shou: Reader Orange

Bu Tong! Text by page #

Very clear, simple, and handy to practice your character pronunciation and understanding.

Inside back cover: Orange Reader

There are six levels of difficulty: Orange Readers mostly have one or two words per page, and perhaps a phrase or short sentence at start or end. Extremely basic adjectives, nouns, verbs, numerals, colors and animals are introduced.

Blue Chinese Readers

Blue Readers build on Orange level one, with a phrase or multi-character word per page, and some semblance of a tale. Family members, farm animals, clothing, body parts within proper basic sentences.

Blue Reader inside spread

Green Readers are level three, and introduce longer sentences and a wider vocabulary. Weather, hobbies, telling time…

Level Four is Purple Readers. They have sentences with more complexity: describing people, making comparisons, using adverbs, talking about living in, going to, taking transportation.

Blue Reader text by page #

Brown Readers have longer sentences still, introducing concepts like “not only y… but x as well”, giving directions, explaining “why” you like something etc. Seasons of China, travelling, getting around Beijing, wanting to buy something, what do you want to be when you grow up…

Finally the Red Readers are mostly simplified versions of Chinese tales: Hua Mulan, Zhong Kui Kills the Ghost, Pangu Separates Sky and Earth.

Blue Reader inside back cover

Personally I can mostly read Orange and Blue with no trouble, Green has a few words I don’t know, Purple has sentence structures I am aware of (“this is x-er than that”) but not proficient at using, Brown is challenging, and Red we haven’t bought any of yet.

Chinese Reader Green inside spread

These stapled glossy softcovers are sold individually, but I prefer to get them in sets of six. Each level has two sets of six, giving you a whopping 72 individual books to practice with . They are very reasonably priced, about $12 per set of six.

Green Reader text page by page

You could get them at Amazon.ca until I ordered two sets and several individual copies (to make up my $39 for free shipping, of course!)… they never did send me the individual books. They sent me the two sets and immediately set all these books to “not available” on their site. Sigh. It was too good to be true.

Green Reader inside back cover

They ARE available on Amazon.com, but lately I have discovered that Barnes& Noble has more competitive shipping prices to Canada, and they were delivered quite quickly. (hint, look at the P3 link in the first paragraph for a proper list of the books in each set)

So, if you are looking for a kid or adult friendly way to practice your basic character reading skills, I recommend these. My son, who says “no read Chinese mommy”, actually

Chinese Reader Purple

REQUESTS these books. Of course the fact that they are simple so I don’t stumble and hesitate, and quick to read, with colorful funny illustrations and stories, starring my son’s fave “Xiao Long” dragon does help a lot.

Purple Reader inside spread

Purple Reader text by page #

Purple Reader inside back cover

Brown Reader sample cover

Brown Reader inside spread

Brown Reader text by page #

Brown Reader inside back cover

Bilingual doggy!

Xiao Chien loves litter!

I don’t often think about it, but today I noticed how bilingual my dog is. Xiao Chien doesn’t speak any mandarin yet, but she certainly obeys French. One doesn’t normally think about dogs and other animals being monolingual or bilingual, except here in Quebec where we are confronted with that issue.

First we have to decide on an anglophone or a francophone dog trainer or puppy class… I decided on English, since it just comes naturally to me to say “Heel! Sit! Stay! Give!”. This meant I had to travel all the way across town to a more anglophone area for the classes.

With my last Saint, this resulted in some drama: they have a rule that you can take your dog into the subway and busses if the dog is held in your arms (I assume this is 1. So the dog cannot run away and 2. So the dog cannot do its business on the floor, walls or someone’s leg). Well, my dog was 4 months old when classes started, but 6 months old and a good 50 lbs when the classes ended. We took the bus each class to the other end of town. But the last class, when we followed another passenger on the bus, me holding her (awkwardly) in my arms to climb the stairs, the bus driver ordered us off. “Your dog is too big!” Well, I had informed myself of the transit corporation rules before even signing up for classes so I was pretty sure that I was following them.

What do you mean "Donnez!!" ???

The bus driver then proceeded to tell us he wasn’t going to drive until we got off… frankly I didn’t have the $ for a taxi even if one would take us, and it was about 2 hours walk home. AND I knew I was within my rights. So he informed all the passengers it was my fault the bus wasn’t moving, and then he called his central command, and put it on speakerphone. How red-faced he was, and how vindicated I felt when his commander read the rule of the dog must be in the rider’s arms and not let free on the ground… it didn’t say “Saint Bernards excluded”. ROFL! So we did get home, with a busload of supportive passengers petting my puppy as she sat on my lap, and one very very angry bus driver.

Anyways, both my dogs were educated in English only. But we do a lot of dog-sitting or exchanging walking services with other neighbors. And most of them are francophone. So yesterday I was taking out a neighbor’s “French” dog and said “Assis!” to her, and my dog also sat instantly. Turns out she also understands “couché, biscuit, viens”…

But she will still only give over toys and branches with the order “GIVE!” which is why you will often see frustrated dog owners chasing my dog shouting “donnes! donnes!” to no avail. I utter “GIVE!” once and she drops it immediately! I’ll have to work on her French!

McDuff goes to School picturebook

The idea for this post came while reading Rosemary Well’s story “McDuff Goes to School” illustrated by Susan Jeffers. McDuff is a little white westie whose owners sign him up for obedience class but don’t have time to practice with him. He fails the final exam to their great chagrin, but then the new neighbor on the block steps in. She is from France, and has been training her dog, Marie, daily on the other side of McDuff’s fence… and McDuff has picked it all up… he ends up completing his obedience exam with flying colors in a language completely foreign to his owners! A fun book for children learning French, who speak French, or just to think about language differences. The French neighbor speaks the commands in French throughout the book (without translation, but the meanings are as obvious to the child reader as to the dog), and there is a French glossary of words used in the back of the book.

Another thing I like about this book is that it highlights how language vocabulary and fluency are context-specific. If you are anglophone but learn all the names for your computer from a Spanish guy, you won’t know the English terms, and will be hispanic only in a computer setting! More on that another post.