Notes to self for when I write up the next big chinese listening experiment update:
I've been thinking about how I learned to read first.
And thinking about what I would suggest for people learning to read after they have a foundation in spoken language.
For those doing purely extensive watching/listening to comprehensible input (purist), when it's time to start learning to read:
1. Hanzi lessons in Mandarin (on bilibili and youtube) to learn the radicals, and the types of hanzi (sound components and meaning components, pictographs etc). This is important because radicals will help you remember new hanzi meanings and pronunciation. *I recommend you do learn pinyin or zhuyin at this point, using resources in Mandarin, as those systems are used in the teaching materials made for native speakers you'll likely run into, and they're used to type. I suggest learning traditional or simplified characters, zhuyin or pinyin, depending on what you've BEEN listening to up to this point (whatever characters they use more often in their video captions and transcripts) and on the teaching materials you're finding in Mandarin for hanzi. If you're running into simplified characters, you'll probably also be running into pinyin. If you're running into traditional characters, you may also have seen some zhuyin. You can learn all, of course, if you want. I personally stuck with simplified first, then learned some traditional by reading some traditional character novels later. The same is true in reverse - if you learn traditional first, you can pick up the changes to simplified characters later. Search for your learning materials with Chinese search terms, since you're looking for teaching materials only in Mandarin. I searched ĺŚäš ćąĺ and found some useful results - in Google I found a lot of Chinese text sites with some English translations, with bilibili.com I had more luck finding Mandarin-only lessons.
2. Watching CI Lessons with Chinese captions turned on, listening to learner podcasts while reading along to the transcripts, watching cartoons and shows with captions, reading Graded Readers while listening to their audiobook, watching audiobooks on bilibili with captions, reading webnovels with TTS (Microsoft Edge's Read Aloud is decent, or any other TTS). Basically, matching Chinese text to listening materials as often as you can, so you can learn the written form of words you already know from listening. The more you can do this, the better, this is going to match up what you can listen to and understand, to the written words you can recognize.
3. Try reading Graded Readers without the audio, watch some CI lessons you know you understand with the Chinese captions on and sound muted, read the transcript of a Learner Podcast you know you can understand without listening along. Repeat this strategy with any materials you want - reading things without the sound to help you. Eventually, as you feel you don't need audio, continue reading online in whatever web browsers and apps you like, and reading print materials.
For those who are okay using translations:
An initial note, if you are using translations and explanations already, you can start reading whenever you want. If following the Dreaming Spanish roadmap suggestions then you'll still want to wait until Level 5 or 6. But if you want to read earlier, then there are Graded Readers and other learner materials which will be readable as soon as HSK2(Level 2, 100 hours), and some stories/novels for Children with 1500 or less unique hanzi will be readable at HSK4 (Level 3-4, 300-600 hours). Once you start reading stories and novels for Children, are around HSK4, and can handle 1000-2000 unique hanzi, reading really opens up a lot - there's a LOT of webnovels for teens to adults with around 2000 unique hanzi (see Heavenly Path's webnovel recommendation lists), and as you read more you'll be able to handle higher amounts of unique hanzi in your reading material. So if you don't care about building up a strong listening foundation first, you can start reading as soon as 100 hours since Graded Readers (and Graded Reading apps like duchinese) will start to become readable. You can start reading as soon as you want to, can find reading material at your level, and are willing to look up enough unknown words to understand the material. But things will go smoother if you learn some words and grammar first, so either do that (explicit study), OR do enough comprehensible input lessons to have a foundation first (something like to Level 2/100 hours to Level 4/600 hours).
1. You will basically be doing everything the first section suggests, since it's a good strategy to match words you know from listening to their written form. And then you'll be doing whatever parts of the Heavenly Path Comprehensive Reading Guide you wish to follow. That guide can get you to the point of being able to read novels in Chinese. It did for me, and for others.
2. Since you're cool with using translations, when learning simplified or traditional characters, pinyin or zhuyin, and hanzi radicals, types of hanzi, feel free to use resources with translations. There's many videos on Youtube that explain Hanzi radicals in English, the hanzi types, pinyin, and zhuyin. I really liked the hackingchinese hanzi articles (linked here), the dong-chinese.com Pinyin Guide and Zhuyin Guide, and the Yoyo Chinese Pinyin Chart and Tone Pairs Chart. I also liked Tuttle Learning Chinese Characters (800) for it's mnemonic stories. There's plenty of other hanzi reference books. There's also many anki decks for learning hanzi, so if you like flashcards go for it (I liked the anki decks 3000 hanzi with mnemonics - there's a simplified and traditional version, and Spoonfed Chinese).
3. Get Pleco app and start pasting Chinese text into the Clip Reader section. You're going to use TTS and do reading while listening, as matching words you know in listening to their written form is the goal. You also can look up word translations. So use Pleco to look up word definitions and translations by clicking on new words. You can save those words for later to review or find again, if desired. Pleco has a History section to view what you've searched before too. (Pleco has a built in SRS flashcard system if you like doing flashcard reviews). You can use Pleco to discover words the hanzi you looked up is part of, components of the hanzi, and see the word used in sentence examples. You can listen with TTS to everything in Pleco, so use that to match up words you know from sound to their written form. If you go into Pleco's paid resources, you can buy Graded Readers and read them in Pleco. (There's a few one time payment add ons in Pleco you can get, I got the expanded dictionaries, Document/OCR Reader, and handwriting recognition add ons for under 20 dollars). Or you can find Graded Readers outside of Pleco. You can paste children's stories from websites like qigushi.com into Pleco's Clip Reader to look up words. I mostly just pasted text from online into Pleco, although as a beginner I read a few Graded Readers inside Pleco.
Optional: Get Readibu app and start browsing for webnovels. It's a useful tool for finding and reading webnovels. The app has good click translations like Pleco, although the free version of Readibu has no audio (so I'd recommend Pleco and just pasting in webnovel text to the Clip Reader when you want audio). Readibu also allows pasting in the url for a webnovel and bookmarking it inside Readibu, which is what I mainly did when I used it. (Please reference this post for search terms to find Chinese media online free).
Optional: download Google Translate, or DeepL, or your Translation app of choice. You can use this when encountering phrases or sentences, since Pleco and Readibu only translate on word/chengyu level. Note that Pleco also has built in Google Translate in it's Clip Reader section to translate a whole selection of text - if you do want to do longer sentences translation. Note that Google Translate tends to only be 80% right for Chinese - it makea a lot of basic errors with word meanings, so I'd advise comparing the Sentence translation from Google Translate with the word-by-word Pleco or Readibu translations. Do not ever take what Google Translate says a word or phrase means as 100% correct. It's usually roughly in the ballpark (like translating "bro" as "brother") but not specific and with nuance the way Chinese-specific dictionary-translation references are (like Pleco, mdbg.net). Despite it's shortcomings, in a pinch Google Translate (or equivalent) will help you figure out the rough meaning of a full sentence or a longer phrase. LingQ seems to use Google Translate for it's word-by-word translations so I did not like using it for reading Chinese, and Pleco and Readibu translations are so much higher quality.
4. When you feel confident about not relying so much on click-translations, you can move away from relying heavily on Pleco and Readibu. I like to read in Microsoft Edge, because the Read Aloud feature TTS is the best I have found for Mandarin. I can always type a hanzi into Pleco if I really want to look up a word, or click-highlight a sentence in Microsoft Edge to use Google Translate to translate a sentence or longer phrase. You can sometimes find audiobooks and audio dramas with captions on sites, if you'd like to keep practicing reading with listening. And shows, cartoons, programs with Chinese captions. You can read tons of stuff online, just search in Chinese to find it. The library app Hoopla also has some Chinese ebooks, and audiobooks. There's a lot of big popular webnovel sites, like qidian and jjwxc.
For both kinds of learners:
For finding Chinese text online to read, just use Chinese search terms.
For print books! You can find them by using Chinese search terms. If you are looking on English store sites (like Amazon). I recommend searching the book and author title in hanzi. You can try pinyin if hanzi gives no results, I sometimes search with pinyin on Ebay and Aliexpress. I like books.com.tw because it ships to my country, has traditional and simplified character books for sale, and carries authors I read. I've also bought from aliexpress.com though, because it can be much cheaper than Amazon. Ebay also sometimes has books for cheaper than Amazon does. Depending on your city, print books may be available for check out in libraries.
Consider reading ćźŤçť in your transition from listening-reading to just reading, as ćźŤçť have pictures to help you figure out what's going on. To find ćźŤçť just search in Chinese online. You can also find some ćźŤçť in video form on bilibili.com, so you could practice first with your listening-recognition to help you by listen-reading, then practice reading by muting the videos and reading the text.
I find that reading while listening, both helps connect sounds to the written form, and also helps increase reading speed. So it's worth doing reading-listening once in a while - even if you're the kind of person who only listens to the audio and ignores the captions when watching shows, and who prefers to read silently.
