How I read a novel in Chinese (and how you can too)

This is one of the best ways to boost your confidence in your target language, reading a novel. But the way you approach it is crucial, because you could very easily get overwhelmed and lose interest in it. So in this video, I'm gonna walk you through how I read Harry Potter in Chinese, what approach I used in order to keep on going, and show you how you too can read a novel in your target language. In case we haven't met yet, hi, my name is Alex. I've been passionate about learning languages for as long as I can remember. I've learned over ten languages in the last ten years, and I make these videos in order to share the insights and lessons that I have learned, and to hopefully save you some frustrations that I had, and help you reach your goals faster. So why did I read a novel in Chinese? I find that when we're learning a language, we go generally through three phases, which are characterized by high level of motivation, low level, and then high level again. The first phase is when we start out with the language. Our motivation is high, even though we don't understand much, because it's expected that we don't understand much, and we're actually excited at those few things that we do understand. But then, when we come to the second phase, which most people call the intermediate plateau, we reach this phase where our expectations change from being excited at the things we understood, to being frustrated at the things that we still don't understand. And that is a phase in which I found myself with Chinese. I have been studying Chinese on and off for the past few years, unfortunately, not very regularly, and I found myself in this phase where the language still felt too strange, too foreign to me, and I still didn't feel comfortable enough in it. And this is a feeling that I have quite often towards languages, this feeling that I'm not yet comfortable enough with it. I've not yet spent enough time understanding, I've not spent yet enough time speaking it, so that I feel confident that I can read or talk or converse in this language without issues. So, one way to really boost the confidence in the language that you're learning, I find, is to read a novel. Why is that? I find that when you, if you manage to work your way through a novel in your target language, that really proves to me that I'm able to consume advanced content in this language. I'm able to consume content that native people consume in this language, and that really makes me feel like throw something else at me now. I feel open to grab other things, other books, other films, and to get my teeth into them. And this is the stage which I wanted to reach, to break down this wall that was still separating me from Chinese, and to really improve my confidence in the language. Now, am I now, after reading the novel, completely confident? Can I understand everything? Certainly not. But it is a really powerful first step to improve your confidence. So, how do you decide what book you should read? And why did I read Harry Potter? I decided to read Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, because it's a book that I have read several times before. I have read the book probably two or three times, and I have watched the film probably four or five times. So I really know the plot very well. And that means that while I'm reading the book, even though I only understand maybe 60-70% of the words, I always know what's happening. And this is really crucial. I have tried to read books that I had not read before, directly for the first time in the target language, and that was really difficult. Because you're not going to understand everything, certainly, because you're still learning the language. And reading a whole novel where you constantly don't understand everything is really difficult. It really needs a high level of motivation, and a high level of being comfortable with noise. Which I did not have yet at that level. Now, Harry Potter is a book that I have in Chinese. I also have it in Russian, where I read about a third of the book so far. And I even have it in Persian, but I have not really read much of this yet. So, how do we approach reading a novel in our target language? When we start reading, you'll obviously notice immediately that you don't understand every word. There's a lot of words that you don't understand. And what I did initially was to look up every word that I didn't understand, to look it up in the dictionary, and to even write it into the book, so that I could see it immediately the next time when I read it again. This is an approach that I would really not recommend. It's a recipe for disaster. After the second page, I felt completely burned out, because I was stopping all the time. I stopped, looked up words, and so I never got into the flow of reading. And that is what our goal should be. Our goal is to get into the flow of reading, where we no longer think about the fact that this novel is written in a foreign language. Now, of course, we need to have a certain level where we we do understand probably 70-80% of the words. I know that the research on comprehensible input says we should understand maybe 90-95% of the words, but I personally find it quite difficult to find content where I understand 90-95%. That is only when I'm at a really advanced level. I actually think it's quite okay to only understand 70-80% of the words. Also, because a lot of the words, you don't really have to understand them, and that is something that you will realize while you are reading. It is okay to look up words. You should regularly look up words, but you need to develop a skill to know which words you should look up and which ones you don't. And that is a skill that you cannot, you will not have beforehand. You will only get this through reading. As you keep on reading the novel, you will realize that there are again and again words that are just onomatopoeic, for example, like haha or oh-oh, or they are words like he na-na-na and then started saying something. So it probably means he shouted or he screamed and then it says what he screamed. But you don't really need to know that word. It's just a rather rare word for shouting or screaming or so. There are a lot of words which you don't need to look up because you understand from the context what it probably means. The words that I look up are words that I see at least two or three times. When I see a word and I feel like this is already the third time that I see it and I still don't know what it is, then I would look it up. Another situation is when I feel like I really don't understand what's happening and it's because of this one word. Then and that's another situation in which I would look it up. So when you start out, it will be a little bit difficult at the beginning because you're not used to it yet. If it's the first time that you're reading a novel, you will need some time to get used to how to read a novel, how to become comfortable with the fact that you don't understand every word, how to understand when you should stop and look up a word and when you should not. Regarding looking up words, of course, there are different ways to read. So you can read a physical book like the one that I read. But I also read on Kindle quite a lot. And on Kindle, looking up words is, of course, much faster because you can just press on the word and then open a dictionary. That is easier, but it actually also comes with the risk that you will then fall back into this trap of looking up every single word because it's so easy to look up every single word. So it is important to develop this skill to know what to look up, when to look it up. So this is how I work myself through the whole novel. And how did I manage to keep myself from burning out? I would say there's two main factors. The first, as mentioned, is to choose a book that you have read before. I think this is the main cause of burnout from reading content in a foreign language. That you don't know what's happening. You don't know what the plot is. And that makes it really difficult and really frustrating to keep on going. So choose a book, a novel that you have read before, preferably one that you have read several times. And the second is to develop this skill of knowing when to look up words and which words to look up. You will notice very soon this urge in you coming up, the urge to look up words. And when you notice this urge coming up, observe it. Observe the urge, but don't act on it. Keep on going. And once you feel confident that this is a word that I really want to look up, then look it up. The thing is also that if you look up a word the first time that you see it, you're much less likely to remember it. Because you just saw it, you look it up, and one minute later you will already have forgotten what that word was. But if you keep seeing a word two times, three times, it already slowly ingrains itself in you. And you then look it up, you're much more likely to remember it. So looking up words that you see for the first time is to some extent a little bit of wasted energy. Because one minute later you will have forgotten them already. So what did I learn from reading a novel in Chinese? Did I learn more Chinese? Certainly. But in the end, I don't feel that I necessarily learned a lot of new words. What changed the most was my level of confidence and how comfortable I am with the language. It gave me this feeling that I can tackle content in Chinese. I can tackle content in this language. And it gave me this confidence that I could keep on reading more material and therefore to keep on growing in the language. While before, I felt like there was this invisible wall in front of me that kept me from really stepping into the language and really becoming confident and comfortable in it. One difficulty, the main difficulty certainly, about reading a novel is that it's not easy to find a novel that is at a low level, B1, B2, and so on. Even novels that are written for children usually are at a B2 level because children already have a quite advanced level in their mother tongue. So that, of course, means that you can only read a novel once you have reached a slightly more advanced level. But I find it's generally really worth it because it really helps your confidence and it really helps me tearing down this wall. If you found this video helpful, please leave a like or a comment. I don't get so many comments yet on this channel, so I'll definitely reply to all of them. If you're interested in how I use audiobooks to learn a language, please check out this video here. Thanks a lot for watching. I'll see you next time. Bye bye.