Newspaper reading skill level

[u/laurelsaading]

I've seen a lot of posts about the gap between HSK6 and reading in the real world. But what I don't know is which part of the real world? Is it literature? Newspapers? Graphic novels?

Is the jump from HSK6 to reading a Chinese newspaper from China/HK/Taiwan a big jump?

[u/EstamosReddit]

Probably anything that is not children stuff. I'd say you need around 8k words to understand adult media with certain degree of comfort. 5k is just too little

[u/Zagrycha → u/EstamosReddit]

Depends on what you mean by comfort. I think if someone is willing to look up unknown vocab etc on the spot hsk 6 will have no issue with a newspaper in general.

[u/BrightMoonLightS → u/EstamosReddit]

Yeah this is true. The reading age of the Sun newspaper in the UK is 8 years old which is as you say around 5k words maybe a little more. I use this idea to motivate me learning Chinese.

[u/laurelsaading → u/BrightMoonLightS]

That's a good way to look at it!

[u/smokingPimphat]

At hsk6, you should be able to read about most any topic and be able to intuit the meaning of many of the words you don't already know. Also that is a point where you should be learning mandarin IN mandarin.

So just start reading about stuff you like. Get mandarin versions of books you have already read in you native language and read them again.

[u/laurelsaading → u/smokingPimphat]

That's a good point. So learning based on context in the language in print.

[u/lazier_garlic]

If you want to read newspapers you need to learn newspaper vocabulary.

The US military used to teach people how to do this fairly rapidly. If this is all you want, it can be achieved straight forwardly.

There's an app to learn how to read newspaper Japanese (Todai). Wouldn't be surprised if someone did this for Chinese.

[u/phancdp → u/lazier_garlic]

What was the method of the us military? I’m curious

[u/Intelligent_Image_78]

At HSK6 you should be able to read the newspaper. Will you know every character or word you come across? Probably not. However, for most of the unknown you should be able to get the meaning from context.

The thing w/newspapers is that they are full of proper nouns, chengyu, aggressive shorthand (especially in headlines), and more formal language as opposed to spoken language. It takes some getting used to. The more you do it, the easier it gets.

[u/laurelsaading → u/Intelligent_Image_78]

This a good point.

[u/FunkySphinx]

It is not really. The HSK 6 (including expended vocabulary) provides the basic vocabulary you need. Once you start reading newspapers, you’ll get familiar with niche but usual /repeated vocabulary (fighter jet, stock exchange etc). You’ll get the hang of it within a month or two.

[u/BeckyLiBei]

I've seen a lot of posts about the gap between HSK6 and reading in the real world. But what I don't know is which part of the real world? Is it literature? Newspapers? Graphic novels?

It seems to be a euphemism for "this is too advanced for me". When you struggle with HSK6 content, it's not part of your "real world" and seems pointless. But then you learn it and start to use it, and it becomes part of your "real world", and it becomes genuinely hard to imagine what the "real world" would be like without it.

Edit: Oh wait, you mean the "HSK6 is not enough for reading" gap (not the "HSK6 is not real world Chinese" gap). If you evaluate the HSK6 via "number of words", then you might come to that conclusion, but that's not what the HSK6 is like in reality (you're expected to learn many words beyond the HSK). A large amount of diverse reading is how you prepare for the HSK6.

Is the jump from HSK6 to reading a Chinese newspaper from China/HK/Taiwan a big jump?

Hang on, early-HSK5 is where we start reading newspaper articles. Reading Chinese newspapers is how you prepare for HSK5/6 exams (this is the kind of content on the exams), not something you do after the HSK6. By the time you can score well on the HSK6 exam, reading newspapers is fairly easy.

[u/laurelsaading → u/BeckyLiBei]

AH I hadn't realized that it started n HSK 5

[u/Weekly-Math]

It's not a huge jump, but you will need to get used to the differences in vocabulary and grammar structures. Everything will be written more formally. I'd argue in today's world, it would be better just to learn to read/watch online news broadcasts instead since you will encounter that form of media more often. I personally read 天下雜誌 for articles today, but still gloss over a newspaper my in laws have every once in a while.

Archive.org has a ton of Chinese Newspapers going back over 100 years if you just want access to content right now (but it will be challenging, but interesting), but you will get an idea of the basic structure.

[u/Zagrycha]

Depends on your definition of big jump. For reference HSK 6 mastery is around junior high level for an actual native chinese language skill, which is around the minimum education level in china for adults.

That is more than enough literacy to read a newpaper in the sense of basic grammar and vocab, but you absolutely should expect to need to look up unknown terms, idioms, history, and pop culture stuff as they appear.

The more you look up, the less you will need to look up later, because the more of these non-basic stuff you will know. At first you might have to look up multiple things every paragraph, after awhile it might only be one or two things per newspaper.

[u/ewba1te]

I thought my English was good in secondary 4, then I started reading SCMP, I had to look up basically every word