For what it's worth, language learning enthusiasts may point to the difference between textbooks and graded readers as the difference between "intensive reading" (reading a small amount of difficult text for the purpose of learning specific content and improving vocabulary) and "extensive reading" (reading a large amount of easy text for the purpose of learning general content and improving fluency, where fluency is the ability to use the vocabulary rather than just "know" it).
I'm not in any way trying to convince you, of course. Just trying to spread positivity and joy around the topic of language learning, which I find generally delightful and uplifting :)
To that point, I would add that the content of graded readers is highly variable, and some publishers have a clear focus they don't necessarily advertise for whatever reason.
For instance, Mandarin Companion is very western, mostly retelling English classics with the barest nod to Chinese culture. (This makes it uniquely easy for native English speakers who may already know the stories and will definitely recognize the sentence structure.)
Beijing Language & Culture University Press (BLCUP) is probably the gold standard in terms of traditional Chinese language and stories, though most of its readers are solidly intermediate (which is great, since there's not a huge market for non-beginner graded readers, but it does mean that being interested in the topic helps.)
Sinolingua produces an all-ages blend of traditional and easy in their "Rainbow Bridge" series, and these were far and away my favorite beginning readers. (They're usually too short to really reinforce the language, and they definitely introduce whatever random vocabulary they need for the story itself regardless of its utility elsewhere, but the stories are often funny and/or unpredictable.)
Chinese Breeze is more adult-oriented and modern, telling present-day fiction involving murder mysteries and computer hacking and all sorts of exciting things (including a China-typical and very sympathetic view of law enforcement) with vocabulary that's useful in day-to-day life.
...just in case you do find yourself looking into it later, I wanted to make sure I accurately if briefly represented "the publishers I suggest" :)
Totally agree about longfic; it has been better for my wuxia and xianxia vocabulary than any TV show, just because the volume of words is so much greater! ♥
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I'm not in any way trying to convince you, of course. Just trying to spread positivity and joy around the topic of language learning, which I find generally delightful and uplifting :)
To that point, I would add that the content of graded readers is highly variable, and some publishers have a clear focus they don't necessarily advertise for whatever reason.
For instance, Mandarin Companion is very western, mostly retelling English classics with the barest nod to Chinese culture. (This makes it uniquely easy for native English speakers who may already know the stories and will definitely recognize the sentence structure.)
Beijing Language & Culture University Press (BLCUP) is probably the gold standard in terms of traditional Chinese language and stories, though most of its readers are solidly intermediate (which is great, since there's not a huge market for non-beginner graded readers, but it does mean that being interested in the topic helps.)
Sinolingua produces an all-ages blend of traditional and easy in their "Rainbow Bridge" series, and these were far and away my favorite beginning readers. (They're usually too short to really reinforce the language, and they definitely introduce whatever random vocabulary they need for the story itself regardless of its utility elsewhere, but the stories are often funny and/or unpredictable.)
Chinese Breeze is more adult-oriented and modern, telling present-day fiction involving murder mysteries and computer hacking and all sorts of exciting things (including a China-typical and very sympathetic view of law enforcement) with vocabulary that's useful in day-to-day life.
...just in case you do find yourself looking into it later, I wanted to make sure I accurately if briefly represented "the publishers I suggest" :)
Totally agree about longfic; it has been better for my wuxia and xianxia vocabulary than any TV show, just because the volume of words is so much greater! ♥