Reading News Headlines to Learn to Read Chinese 

Reading news headlines to learn to read Chinese  To communicate fully in a language, you need to be able to speak, comprehend what is said, read and write. Each of the four involves a different road to success, but each involves repetition. Let’s look at some ideas on reading.

The most effective way of learning how to read Chinese words is not to learn long lists of random vocabulary. Always put time into learning words which are structurally basic, or which relate to something that interests you. What is interesting of course varies from one person to another, so everyone’s vocab lists should be different. 

For beginner students, beyond the textbooks, children’s stories are a great way to go. For more advanced readers, try learning to read news headlines. Now, news headlines initially requires a much higher level of new vocabulary than other types of text, but there is a high level of repetition, as there is with most written materials, and before long you will see the same words and phrases cropping up. if you don;t fully understand, don’t get bogged down. Move on to the next headline. And pretty soon, the fact that you learning to read Chinese fades away, and you are reading the headlines in order to glean information that is new and useful to you beyond the context of the Chinese language. 

In other words, Chinese fades into the background, and you are gradually using Chinese as a tool to lead your life. The pure magic and genius of a communications tool in revealed when you are not thinking it as a tool. You are simply using it to achieve a separate goal. Which, with news, is discovering what is happening in the world around you.