Blend Extensive Chinese Reading and Intensive Reading Practice

While Chinese extensive reading materials are designed for enjoyment and fluency, they can also be highly effective tools for Chinese intensive reading practice. Because these materials are leveled and often written with simpler vocabulary and grammar, they’re accessible for beginners to analyze in depth. By using extensive reading texts for both approaches, teachers and parents can maximize the learning potential of each book or story.

How Extensive Reading Materials Can Be Used for Intensive Reading

With the right approach, a book or story that a child has read extensively can become a powerful intensive reading tool. Here’s how:

Revisiting Familiar Stories for Deep Analysis

When kids read a book for pleasure and then return to it later for focused analysis, they often feel more confident. For instance, if a child has read a story from “My First Reading Book Series”, revisiting it allows them to dissect sentences and examine new vocabulary in a context they’re already familiar with. Knowing the sentence structure helps them focus on character meanings and grammatical patterns without feeling overwhelmed.

Building Vocabulary and Sentence Structure Awareness

Extensive reading books are filled with age-appropriate, frequently used vocabulary and simple sentences, making them ideal for analyzing how sentences are structured. For example, a story that describes a child’s daily activities may include phrases like “我吃早饭” (“I eat breakfast”) and “我去学校” (“I go to school”). Kids can break these sentences down, focusing on verbs like “吃” (eat) and “去” (go) and understanding how sentence components fit together.

Reinforcing Character Recognition and Familiar Vocabulary

Revisiting a story they’ve already enjoyed gives kids repeated exposure to common characters, which reinforces their recognition and understanding. A familiar book about animals, for example, might use words like “狗” (dog) and “鸟” (bird) throughout. When children go back to examine these words more closely, they gain a deeper understanding of each character’s pronunciation, meaning, and use across different contexts.

Practical Example: Using Extensive Reading Materials for Both Approaches

Imagine a child reads a story about a panda and its adventures in the forest during free reading time. They may enjoy the plot without worrying too much about each character’s meaning. However, when it’s time for intensive reading practice, the same story becomes a resource for deeper analysis.

Step 1: Extensive Reading (Initial Enjoyment):

The child reads the story casually, becoming familiar with characters like “熊猫” (panda), “树” (tree), and “叶子” (leaf).

Step 2: Intensive Reading (Focused Learning):

Later, the teacher can return to this story, guiding the child to analyze specific sentences. They might look closely at a sentence like “熊猫喜欢吃竹子” (“The panda likes eating bamboo”) and identify each word’s role. This helps children grasp character combinations, sentence structure, and meaning with a level of detail that strengthens their comprehension skills.

Benefits of Using Extensive Reading Texts for Intensive Reading

Combining extensive and intensive reading using the same materials offers a range of benefits:

Familiarity Boosts Confidence

Kids feel more capable analyzing a text they’ve already enjoyed.

Deeper Vocabulary Retention

Repeated exposure to vocabulary and characters makes retention easier and helps kids see how words function in sentences.

Natural Language Progression

As children progress from reading broadly to analyzing deeply, they move from basic understanding to mastery, which is vital for language development.

In this way, extensive reading materials become versatile resources, adaptable to both pleasure reading and detailed language learning. This dual-purpose approach keeps reading engaging while ensuring that children develop a comprehensive understanding of Mandarin.

Example: Using My First Chinese Reading Book Series for Both Extensive and Intensive Reading

Let’s take an example from “My First Chinese Reading Book Series”, which focuses on types of houses or structures. We can use this book for both “extensive” and “intensive reading” to reinforce vocabulary and comprehension for young Mandarin learners.

Here’s how the book’s content might look and how each sentence can serve dual purposes:

房子 (Houses)

The sentences in this book introduce different types of houses or structures, using simple phrases and vocabulary:

– 这是独立屋。(This is a detached house.)
– 这是公寓楼。(This is an apartment building.)
– 这是小屋。(This is a cottage.)
– 这是公寓。(This is an apartment.)
– 这是树屋。(This is a treehouse.)
– 这是城堡。(This is a castle.)
– 这是冰屋。(This is an igloo.)
– 这是帐篷。(This is a tent.)
-这是水上屋。(This is a house on water.)
– 这是茅屋。(This is a hut.)

Using this Book for Extensive Reading

For extensive reading, children can read through these sentences to get a general sense of different types of houses in Mandarin. They can use the images in the book as a visual tool to help understand how the houses look like. The goal here is to enjoy and recognize the vocabulary without stopping to analyze each word in depth.

Free Reading Practice

During free reading time, the child reads through these sentences and looks at accompanying illustrations to understand what each type of house is. They get a general sense that “公寓” means “apartment,” “城堡” means “castle,” and so on.

Building Confidence and Fluency

The repetition of “这是…” (“This is…”) at the beginning of each sentence helps kids build fluency with this basic sentence structure. They start recognizing this pattern as a way to introduce an object or place, which is useful for building conversational skills in Mandarin.

By engaging with the text this way, the child practices recognizing familiar vocabulary like “屋” (house) and begins to understand how Mandarin sentences are structured without needing to analyze every detail.

Using this Book for Intensive Reading

After the child has enjoyed the book as a whole, we can revisit it for intensive reading. Here, we’ll focus on specific characters, vocabulary, and sentence structure to deepen their understanding.

Step 1: Breaking Down Vocabulary

Each sentence introduces a new term related to a house or structure. Here’s how we might break down and focus on vocabulary:

独立屋 (detached house)
Explain that “独立” means “independent” or “separate,” and “屋” means “house.” Discuss how “独立屋” translates to a house that stands independently.

公寓楼 (apartment building)
Point out that “公寓” means “apartment” and “楼” means “building” or “floor.” This helps the child understand how compound words work in Mandarin, with “楼” adding meaning to describe a larger structure.

树屋 (treehouse)
Explain that “树” means “tree” and “屋” means “house.” This provides a great opportunity to discuss how Mandarin combines characters to form compound nouns.

Step 2: Examining Sentence Structure

The sentence structure “这是…” (“This is…”) is repeated throughout the book, which makes it ideal for intensive practice.

Analyzing Sentence Pattern

Have the child read each sentence and recognize the sentence pattern of “这是…” as a way to identify objects. Practicing with this structure can help them form similar sentences on their own. You might ask, “What is this?” (这是什么？) and have them answer with “这是…” + the type of house.

Expanding on Sentences

Encourage the child to make similar sentences with other objects they know. For example:
– 这是书。 (This is a book.)
– 这是桌子。 (This is a table.)

This kind of practice helps solidify the pattern in their memory, allowing them to apply it beyond this context.

Step 3: Adding Comprehension Questions

To ensure they understand each type of house, ask questions that encourage further exploration and reinforce vocabulary:

“Which house would you like to live in?” (你想住在哪个房子里？)

“Is an igloo made of ice?” (冰屋是用冰做的吗？)

Which house can you find in a city?” (在城市里可以找到什么样的房子？)

These questions help the child think about each structure while practicing the vocabulary in a broader context.

Combining Both Approaches

Using the same book for both extensive and intensive reading not only reinforces comprehension but also builds versatility with language:

1. First Read (Extensive)

The child enjoys the book, recognizing the visual cues and learning basic vocabulary. They practice fluency with “这是…” and get comfortable with the topic.

2. Second Read (Intensive)

The child dives deeper into each word and phrase, breaking down vocabulary, and practicing character recognition. They explore sentence structure and can even create their own sentences using the patterns they’ve learned.

This dual approach to using leveled reading books like those in “My First Chinese Reading Book Series” provides a well-rounded learning experience. Through extensive reading, kids build fluency and confidence by reading broadly, while intensive reading helps them master vocabulary, characters, and sentence patterns.

Using both methods allows children to enjoy and understand Mandarin more fully, fostering a love for the language and giving them tools for deeper comprehension.

If you are looking for leveled Chinese reading books to use for your kids to conduct either extensive or intensive Chinese reading, or both, you’ll find Chinese Reading Made Easy Book Vault useful.

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