Which lists/textbooks do you study?
Which lists/textbooks do you recommend in general?
Which lists/textbooks do you recommend for someone at a lower intermediate level like me (2400 characters)?

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After an unimaginably long break of no new characters (2 weeks) I think the time for a small dose of new characters may have come.

Most of my characters went through the queue, but the HSK lists also helped quite a bit.

Learned so far:

QUEUE

TEXTBOOKS

- Chinese Primer Character Textbook
- HSK 1
- HSK 2
- HSK 3 (finished soon - Should I study the HSK 4 list?)
- Good News Primer 1
- Good News Primer 2

LISTS

- 1000 Most Frequent (Informative Text)
- Chinese provinces and capitals [just begun]

Wow, studied all that and still calling yourself LOWER intermediate? How do you think that makes the rest of us feel?

I'm a bit behind you with not quite 1800 studied, last month+ was off so i just finished bring my queue from 3500+ to 0 yesterday. I am about 1/3 of the way through HSK 2, hope to finish that and add the words from Taiwan Today (an "intermediate," but below your level) textbook i am about to finish going through outside of Skritter. Also will do a couple Good News Primers, just saw those the other day :)

I would suggest either getting an advanced textbook ("All Things Considered" is in the Skritter database, and I think those guys have a newer, even higher level textbook, "Anything Goes"?) or just reading things on the web or reading comic books, novels, whatever in chinese and start throwing in words that you come across and don't know. Otherwise HSK 4 is always an option to have going when the queue runs out, I guess.

Mazel tov. I'm glad you found the "1000 most frequent" list useful. I also added a list with the 2000 most frequent two-character words if that might be of interest:

http://www.skritter.com/vocab/list?list=agVza3JpdHIWCxINVm9jYWJMaXN0SW5mbxjHy_kLDA

The Chinese provinces list has been very interesting for me as a lot of the names use unusual characters.

Just curious, are you also studying readings and definitions?

James

I recently added HSK to my list but I'm not really sure I should have. It seems to have a good deal of stuff I just never tend to see, so maybe an actual frequency list would be better.

Hobbes: level is a fickle thing, there is a tendency to place yourself where you might otherwise be (textbooks are often to blame). In a teaching English, the levels would look something like this:

Beginner (Knows very little/nothing)
Elementary (can handle basic conversation)
Lower Intermediate (lacks more detailed explanations or arguing, but general vocabulary and knowledge of grammar is reasonably wide)
Intermediate
Upper Intermediate (excellent vocabulary, grammar, few mistakes etc)
Advanced (well past textbooks, high level stuff, even for some natives).

In my experience, anyway...

@Byzanti: good point, it's like defining "fluent". I also think he's being overly humble but it's ultimately a semantic argument.

Also, note that your definitions start with conversational skill; that is not necessarily the same as skill with the written word, or, in a Skritter context, skill with individual characters. I know about 1,400 characters and lots of words, but my conversational skill is elementary at best.

James

"Provinces and Regions of China" is fairly basic, but "Chinese provinces and capitals" is a great addition. The single-character abbreviations are both useful and beautiful. I'd love to see more lists on geography. Do you know some?

Before activating HSK 4, I'll probably also rush through some lists on food, fruit, vegetables etc.

Oh, I didn't realize there were two province lists. I only studied the names of the provinces and a few city names as I wanted to focus on high-frequency items.

The food lists are great and can be quite complicated. I really like the Chinese food ordering guide:

http://www.skritter.com/vocab/list?list=agVza3JpdHIWCxINVm9jYWJMaXN0SW5mbxjx-eYHDA

I also liked the "Body Parts" and "Clothes" lists; I want to go through this whole category eventually:

http://www.skritter.com/vocab/tags?tag=daily%20life

And of course there's http://www.skritter.com/vocab/list?list=agVza3JpdHIWCxINVm9jYWJMaXN0SW5mbxip9bkGDA

;)

James

P.S. I just checked and it looks like the "Chinese provinces and capitals" list is almost a superset of "Provinces and Regions of China", except that "Provinces and Regions of China" includes the abbreviations. It would be kind of nice to merge those all into one list if that's within the powers of the Skritter gods.

http://www.skritter.com/vocab/list?list=agVza3JpdHIWCxINVm9jYWJMaXN0SW5mbxi5kuEDDA

http://www.skritter.com/vocab/list?list=agVza3JpdHIWCxINVm9jYWJMaXN0SW5mbxj-iOYGDA

James

Absolutely learn Heisig's Remembering the simplified Hanzi... I'm now working on finishing the 3000 most common characters.

@trauba (and other Heisig fans): I understand that the Heisig books give a good way to learn the characters, but don't you also learn all sorts of rare/unusual characters as well? My understanding is that this is simply because some of the "root" characters are not very common by themselves:

http://mekonik.wordpress.com/2009/12/06/comparison-of-kanji-learning-methods/ (for Japanese, but the same issue would be true for Chinese)

James

Just learned this great list; makes reading newspaper somewhat easier. The addition of some more surnames would be appreciated.

"50 Most Popular Surnames"
http://www.skritter.com/vocab/list?list=agVza3JpdHIWCxINVm9jYWJMaXN0SW5mbxi4qPEGDA

See aeriph's names list, which has the 100 most frequent surnames:

http://www.skritter.com/vocab/list?list=agVza3JpdHIWCxINVm9jYWJMaXN0SW5mbxiWjZEODA

I added the same list of surnames as a new list before I found his list... The Skritter gods should feel free to delete it.

Also see http://zhongwen.com/xingshi.htm for the top 200 names but it's not easily copiable. Whoever designed that web site should be given a stern talking-to. It appears to be based on this book if someone can find the data online:

http://cn.wudai.net/222576.html

James

I looked for a most common names list and somehow missed it. That is a good find that I really need. I currently have fun driving my Chinese teacher nuts with names. Whenever one comes up, I just read 某先生，or 某某. It is all in good fun, but in all seriousness that part of my vocabulary sucks.

I do have a question, though. I asked my teacher if she understood and she didn't either. Why worry about learning new characters at that skill level and not instead focus on words?

I want a list of words which would be useful in the bedroom (sounding like a medical textbook is quite unromantic...)

@mjd: This list ("Around the house") should be useful:

http://www.skritter.com/vocab/listsect?list=agVza3JpdHIWCxINVm9jYWJMaXN0SW5mbxjEm6oKDA&sect=0

It's not only about the bedroom, but also living room, kitchen and much more. Words like 枕头，衣架，被子，床单 are included.

its not a list, but if you can get hold of a copy of this book - http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2003/11/21/outrageous-chinese-a-guide-to-chinese-street-language - it will help with the bedroom and more.

@jww1066 - I couldnt see the link you posted, but i think you talking about what Heisig calls primitive elements. Some of them are rare characters, some of them are not even characters at all, but all of them are only learnt because they are part of ‘proper’ characters.

Im not sure he uses the charater in the first book or not, but To give an example:

Heisig would start you off with this 冘 which is pretty rare, but, unlike some of the other primitie elements he uses, has a meaning and pronunciation (yín - move on; go out). However you arent asked to learn this, all you are asked to do is attach a mnemonic image to it.

He would then go on to use it to build other characters like 枕 or 沈

So if you learn the characters the without Heisig you are also learning rare characters, just as parts of the more common ones.

@穆儿 I think he meant he wanted a list with romantic Chinese... ;)

James