Chinese Reading Goals for the Next 1.5 Years

These few days I’ve been thinking very hard about what my goals are for Little Man’s Chinese. Of course I would like to aim high, but I am also realistic about my own not-so-awesome Chinese and the fact that we live in a monolingual English environment.

Anyhow, I decided I need to make my goal more concrete. Because vague goals go nowhere.

Here’s the list of books I’d like us to read before he enters first grade, which is 1.5 years from now. This list is approximately ordered by difficulty of characters and book length. Most of these books don’t have pinyin so he will be reading characters only.

1. 《四五快读》 Book 8
2. 《可爱的鼠小弟》series, 22 books
3. 《我会读》series, 8 books
4. Odonata Readers, 48 Books
5. Odonata Self-Reading series, 8 books
6. 《幸福小鸡》series, 5 books
7. 《超人兔》series, 7 books
8. 《亲爱的小熊》series, 5 books
9. 《青蛙和蟾蜍》series, 4 books
10. 《黄色小水桶》series, 5 books
11. 《青椒小超人》series, 4 books
12. 《小巴士》series, 5 books

I figure if we finish this list he will be able to read at least 1000 characters, have decent fluency, and a pretty solid level of comprehension. I am not setting a goal for speaking because it is increasing steadily on its own with increased comprehension.

I already have many books shortlisted for first grade, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Ahhh… It feels so good to have a goal. 🙂

加油 everyone! Let’s keep encouraging and motivating each other!