Hi, I would like to read more in Chinese, practising the characters I know, but often, even the easiest texts are full of characters I don't know.


My question is whether there exists, or can be created, a website or app that can create text based on the Skritter characters I know already.

What I mean is that, Skritter saves a record of all the characters I've learned (to present them to me again with spaced repetition) right? Does anyone provide ebook, magazine, articles, text compilations that are able to scan through their catalogue and show me texts containing only the characters that are in my "learned through Skritter list"?

I guess this has been asked before, if it has, please excuse me and post the link to the previous thread.

Hi MJ,

There are some good resources out there, but I'm not sure there are any that can specifically target ONLY the words you are looking for. My suggestion is to try to read a variety of leveled materials as well as "authentic" (meant for native speakers) stuff with some help. Below is a list of my favorite graded readers, websites, and helpers that I have used from the beginning.

My favorites are:

* Chinese Breeze Graded Readers: I've read them all, and more are being published all of the time. I like these because they don't have pinyin, and "new" words are clearly annotated throughout the text. The level one stories are a bit cheesy, but good enough to have kept me reading. They are very novice friendly. http://www.cheng-tsui.com/store/products/chinese_breeze

* The Readings in Chinese Culture Series 1-3: Book 1 is called "The Sky is Always Bright". This is the level 1 book. These are nice for some short essays on Chinese culture. The level is higher than the Chinese Breeze, but still pretty easy until you get into later volumes. http://www.cheng-tsui.com/store/products/readings_chinese_culture_series

*Readings in Chinese Literature Series books 1-4: Book 1 is called, "Tales and Traditions". http://www.cheng-tsui.com/store/products/tales_traditions



Some online resources:

*Yes- Chinese Graded Readers: These are short online stories that allow you to listen to a word, a line, or whole paragraph depending on your preference. Some of the stories are great and others are terrible. You have to look around http://www.yes-chinese.com/reading/

* Mozilla Foxfire pop-up dictionary add-on, "Perapera". This allows you to read Chinese websites with a bit more ease. I try not to use it too often because it can become a crutch.

* www.slow-chinese.com: this website is for upper intermediate, or advanced students, but I like listening to the audio just to hear Chinese and try to pick out what I know. Like the name suggests, the reader speaks a little slower than normal. Other than audio though, the website provides articles that can be read online. If you use the above pop-up dictionary, they can be made accessible for lower level.


Other resources I haven't tried personally, but that my friends like are:

* The Lady in the Painting:The Lady in the Painting: Simplified Characters (Far Eastern Publications Series): Simplified Characters (Far Eastern Publications Series)

*爱上中国 ： Leveled reader. FLTRP Graded Reader 中文台天天读 。 But this has pinyin over every word, which bothers me.

PS.

I've also recently been buying children's books and these are some I've found on amazon that I've liked. THey do have pinyin on top though: http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Teacher-My-Little-Story-Edition/dp/7301144040

If you have a mac, this www.byzanti.co.uk might be useful. It will highlight the words in an article you don't know, based on your Skritter vocabulary. It's more useful when you're at intermediate or above though with a fair few words added to Skritter. Otherwise, check out the graded readers.

This won't really apply to Chinese users, but for Japanese users I have a related comment/how-to. Sign up on http://kanji.koohii.com

Export your Skritter characters known (on the My Words page, be sure to only include characters). Input them into your koohii account under Manage>Custom selection.

There's now a ton of stuff you can do with these characters. You can go to the Read tab and input any Japanese text to have it highlight the kanji you know in that text. You can also go to Labs>Vocab shuffle and it will pick vocab out for you to learn, comprised only of characters you know. Pretty cool stuff!