A plan for extensive reading of my first novel, with the help of Chinese Text Analyser

There have been posts about this before, but I thought I'd share my process and make a note for myself of some things I've learned.

I am excited to have a goal and plan for extensive reading of my first novel in Chinese, chosen with the help of Chinese Text Analyser.

The book is Enders Game by Orson Scott Card.

I use pleco for my flashcards, and exported a list of my flashcards to input into CTA.

Currently I have learned: - all of the words from HSK1-5 - The first 3000 words from the Subtlex project - The first ~1500 Characters from Subtlex as well.

I analysed a few books against my flashcard list using CTA. Here are my percent known results for a few titles:

• 狼图腾: 74.6%
• 三体: 76.6%
• 活着: 81.1%
• 流星蝴蝶剑： 81.3% (A wuxia novel recommended for learners here)
• Harry potter and the sorcerers stone: 81.4%
• Enders Game: 86.3%

Aside from being a few percentages higher than the other books on the list, Enders game was a favourite when I read it 8 or so years ago. Being familiar with the plot is also commonly listed as a bonus when choosing reading material in a second language.

And from looking at the list of unknown words in CTA, I can see that there are a good number of 'words' that are common compounds or grammatical structures that I'm familiar with, but are not represented in my flashcards.

In fact I feel like a good number of these should not be considered 'words' and probably shouldn't be captured as unique by CTA?

Besides that there are some characters that I know but don't have a flashcard for the single character. So the percentage should be a bit higher again.

From looking at the same list I can see that if I learn every 'word' or character that appears at least 3 times, my 'known' ratio would raise up to 94.8%. Not quite the 98% commonly referenced as the benchmark for extensive reading, but I think it's a good compromise as opposed to memorizing uncommon terms.

That leaves me with 1448 terms to create flashcards for and learn in pleco before I read the book. Although the number seems high, I think they will go quickly because so many of them are simple grammatical patterns rather than new vocabulary. And then they will be added to my flashcard database, making my next book selection using CTA more accurate.

I'm excited about this project. I passed HSK5 a year ago, and it's hard to stay motivated for HSK6 with such a big list of words to memorize, plus the fact I don't really care about HSK.

This gives me a goal to work towards that keeps me motivated to learn new vocab, and at the end I get to enjoy reading a good book.

submitted by /u/hirocase
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