And now a break from all the intermediate and advanced exercises I’ve been posting lately. This one is a straightforward beginner Chinese diary-style essay about a student whose mother is displeased with his (or her, it’s never clarified) homework.
I know, I know, I’ve never posted a video before, but this one is particularly fun. It highlights an interesting point of Chinese culture, all the words are written out in Chinese as they are said in Chinese (so it’s kinda like a trendy read-along), it uses modern slang in a way that’s easy to grasp, and the song itself includes a translation of each line in English as its played.
Plus, I feel for artistic Chinese girls – like artsy girls everywhere, they deal with their fair share of mouth-breathing jerks.
This is probably the longest text I’ve ever posted, but this is upper-beginner to mid-intermediate reading. I could probably toss this in the beginner category, but the length is prohibitive. The first few sentences are much more intermediate as we learn new vocabulary words and set up the story, but after that the reading is mostly a dialogue which is very smooth and fairly simple, so press through the first paragraph or two if you can.
In this essay you’ll learn to read Chinese martial arts words – well, a few, anyway – but it’s not really the vocabulary that places this in the “advanced” category. It’s more that most of the text is full of wax-on, wax-off Karate Kid statements, as the martial arts master talks about how putting oneself in a position of inferiority allows you to attain superiority.
Apparently, every person in the universe identifies with My So-Called Life. This quick and partial introduction to the mid-90s TV series starring Clare Danes, and is packed full of all kind of great teenage angsty vocabulary you might need if you’re desperate to describe your high school years but don’t know the word for, say, “social idiot”.