Chinese

Learning
Guide
 About this E-Book
We have put this guide
together to help answer some
common questions when
learning Chinese.
Whether you’ve been learning
the language for a few years
already or are just getting
started, you’ll likely nd
something of interest to you.
This guide is constantly being
u p d ate d b a s e d o n yo u r
feedbacks.
We wish you all the best in
your Chinese learning journey.
- maayot Team
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Contents
• Why Learn Chinese?
………………………………………………. p. 3-8
• Daily Chinese Learning Schedule
………………………………………………. p. 9-15
• Simpli ed vs Traditional Chinese
………………………………………………. p. 16-22
• How to Speak Chinese
………………………………………………. p. 23-25
• Why Chinese Reading is Critical
………………………………………………. p. 26-33
• How to Type in Chinese
………………………………………………. p. 34-37
• Pursue your Learning
………………………………………………. p. 38
 Chapter 1

Why Learn
Chinese?
Chinese might be a notoriously dif cult language to
learn. The tonal system is alien to most speakers of
Indo-European languages, and Chinese character is yet
another daunting challenge, even for native speakers
themselves! However, in this article, we will debunk
some of the myths surrounding learning Chinese and
the impressive amount of bene ts you will obtain from
this rewarding process. Who knows? We might talk
about Chinese court dramas and food with crazy
names along the way.

Le r g C i s i ir
t a y i h hi !
Despite what we just said and what everyone keeps
saying, Chinese is not as dif cult as people make it out
to be. For starters, you do not have to worry about
verbs! There is no verb conjugation whatsoever.

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 Chapter 1

Imagine a Romance language like French or Spanish.

You would need to remember hundreds of sets of verb
conjugations if you want to master these languages. In
Chinese, verbs always appear in the in nitive (i. e. fancy
linguistic term for “original” ) form. Besides, you do not
have to worry about plurals, masculine and feminine
nouns or cases, which often exist in European
languages.

Other characteristics that make Chinese easier than

you might have thought include its relatively
straightforward sentence structure. Similar to a lot of
languages, Chinese has a subject + verb + object
sentence structure, whereas in languages like
Japanese, you will have a subject + object + verb
structure. As you progress through your Chinese
lessons, you will discover more traits of the language
that are logically similar to your native language or the
languages you have learned before. Linguists have
found that it is usually how similar a foreign language is
to your native tongue that determines whether you will
acquire it easily, instead of how easy that foreign
language is. You just might nd more similarities
between Chinese and your native language than you
initially imagined.

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 Chapter 1

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a modern

person conscious of the progress of the modern world,
must be conversant in more than just one language.
However, being able to speak more than one language
is more than just catering to the needs of our modern
world.

Linguists and psychologist have discovered that

bilingualism, the ability to speak two languages,
signi cantly alter your brain capacity, speci cally, the
executive function of your brain. This refers to the skills
that allow you to control, direct and manage your
attention, and your capacity to plan. Essentially, being
able to speak two languages means that your brain
“lights” up in more areas when you make a decision
than those of a monolingual person. When it comes to
languages, your brain loves a challenge. What is a
better challenge than mastering Chinese?

Chinese is the language with the most speakers in the

world today. As Howard told Shelton in Big Bang Theory,
once you learn Chinese, you will have a billion more
people to talk to. Or “annoy”, in Howard’s words.
Not only is learning Chinese good for travelling
domestically and communicating with the local
population, it is also helpful considering millions of
expatriates, or people with Chinese heritage in other
parts of the world speak it.

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 Chapter 1

Granted that many second- or third-generation

immigrants may not speak Chinese as a rst language
anymore, learning Chinese can still be a key to mingling
with your local Chinese community or personal friends.

Philosopher Wittgenstein once said that “the limits of

my language mean the limits of my world”. Language is
the key to understanding a country, or a people’s
culture and history. Are you a fan of Kung Fu movies,
but also bothered by bad lip dubbing or bad
translation? Do you want to watch a Chinese version of
Game of Thrones, set in ancient imperial court, full of
deceit and plotting, but fail to understand when the
characters start quoting classical Chinese poetry? Or,
let’s say, do you want to dabble in one of the oldest
poetic tradition in world, and are you unsatis ed with
just reading English translations?

To be able to understand classical Chinese poetry

takes years of hard work, but even learning just a bit of
C h i n e s e m i g h t h e l p t r e m e n d o u s l y i n yo u r
understanding of the Chinese culture. Ancient
dynasties have always been obsessed with recording
stuffs, and by that, I mean everything in history is
scribbled down somewhere in the vast corpus of the
Chinese language. When you push open the door of
the Chinese language, a world of in nite exploration
awaits you.

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 Chapter 1

Do you like Chinese food, but are you often baf ed by

the weird names appeared on the menu? Is “stinky
tofu” really that stinky? What has “lion’s head” got to
do with lions? Why are we eating “bird’s nest”?

Chinese food is not just one thing, it is a great

multitude of things. While Cantonese food prefers
sweeter, fresher and healthier ingredients, Sichuan
cuisine, or Southwestern cuisine in general, is all about
spice and heat.

Even for native Chinese speakers, some may be a little

dazed when reading a menu in Chinese, especially
when travelling to other places in China. You can always
ask your Chinese friends to order for you, but wouldn’t
it be cool that you actually know a couple of word from
the menu and not get scandalised when you are served
“lion’s head” or “squirrel sh”? Learning Chinese might
just lead you on this great culinary adventure.

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 Chapter 2

Daily Chinese
Learning Schedule
Learning Chinese doesn’t require hours of daily
studying. You don’t need to go abroad or study the
language full-time. Only consistency.
You can study a few minutes and hours every day and
make massive progress. All you need is to keep it
regular.

Le r ga g a n va
in se t i n
We’ve broken our recommended ressources and tools
down between beginner & intermediate/advanced
learners. Your level may change what is the most
appropriate resource.

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 Chapter 2

Our recommended schedule:

Monday: Character learning

Tuesday: Reading
Wednesday: Character Revision
Thursday: Listening
Friday: Speaking
Saturday: Writing
Sunday: Character Revision

Se ur m e d ol d
ap c i t x ag

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 Chapter 2

Character Learning
Mon/Wed/Fri
Chinese characters are the basis of Chinese learning.
There is no way around them.
Spaced-repetition is the best way to study them.
They’re spaced so you see them when you’re about
to forget them. If you haven’t yet, give it a try.

Beginner

Go through the HSK 1 course, it includes the 150

characters that HanBan sees as essential. HanBan is the
main Chinese language body, so you can trust them.
Memrise uses examples, audio and images to help you
remember the words, which is great as a start.
Recommended tool: Memrise
You may also like: LingoDeer, Drops, StudyStack

Intermediate/Advanced
Download Anki on your phone or computer, it’s well worth
it. Once again, we recommend you use the HSK decks for
study.
It allows for much more customisation and ‘freedom’ than
Memrise.

Recommended tool: Anki

You may also like: LingoDeer, Drops, StudyStack

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 Chapter 2

Reading
Tu s s
When it comes to reading, we’ll de nitely recommend our
own tool maayot for the purpose.

Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced
Register for the best Chinese graded reader.
You’ll be getting a story in Mandarin Chinese in your email
inbox every day tailored to your level.
You can read it in a few minutes. It’s a great way to see
characters in context.
If you have some time left, each story also comes with a
recording. There’s no harm in you listening to it too.

Recommended tool:

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 Chapter 2

Listening
Thu d

Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced
This one is simple. It has over 1600+ free Chinese
recordings.
Pick your level and listen. Don’t listen without paying
attention though. Listen to each sentence, making sure
you understand it 100%.
If anything is unclear, you can use Pleco or your favorite
dictionary to identify the word.
If you subscribe to maayot, you can otherwise listen the
day’s daily story recording.

Recommended tool: CSLPod

You may also like: maayot, ChinesePod (paid), Slow
Chinese, Popup Chinese

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 Chapter 2

Speaking
Fri s

Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced

You’ll need someone to talk to; it’s not enough to repeat

sentences on your own. Why? Because you’ll need
someone to correct your pronunciation.
As you might know, tones in Mandarin are critical. Get one
wrong, and your sentence loses its meaning.
With a language exchange app like Tandem, you can nd
other language learners and talk away!
Focus on nding someone that will correct as many of
your mistakes as possible. Naturally, help them too with
the same.

Recommended tool: Tandem

Other resources: iTalki, HelloTalk, SuperProf

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 Chapter 2

Writing
Sat y

Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced

There’s two parts to it practicing your handwriting and

practicing your writing.

If you’re looking to know how to handwrite characters,

Skritter is a safe choice.
Like most apps, they have characters packs to ensure
studies are for your level. It’s well done, and well worth the
subscription price.

When it comes to writing and ensuring your grammar is

on point, you nd have a teacher similar to the one you
have for your speaking to correct you if needed.
You may otherwise practice it by replying to the daily
writing prompt within the day’s maayot story

Recommended tools: Skritter & maayot

Other tools: iTalki, HelloTalk, SuperProf

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 Chapter 3

Simpli ed vs
Traditional Chinese
When people start to learn Chinese, they will nd that
there are two types of Chinese in terms of writing—
traditional and simpli ed Chinese. Then the next
question is which one should you learn? In this article,
we will discuss some of the background of simpli ed
and traditional Chinese, explore the differences
between them. We hope it will give you some ideas
that can help you to make the decision.

History

Chinese characters have a history of more than 5,000

years. The earliest Chinese characters were
hieroglyphs. Different people had different descriptions
of the same thing. The detailed and rough depictions of
things resulted in simpli ed and traditional Chinese
characters. In oracle Chinese, some characters already
existed in both traditional and simpli ed Chinese
characters, which gradually evolved into the simpli ed
and traditional Chinese characters we see now. So we
could say that the simpli ed and traditional characters
are in the same line. During their ve thousand years of
development, Chinese characters were constantly
simpli ed, leading to the simpli ed characters we use
today.

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 Chapter 3

Simpli ed Chinese mainly consists of inherited

characters and the characters were introduced and
promoted by the government of the People’s Republic
of China after the 1950s. Traditional Chinese has a
history of more than three thousand years and was the
standard character for Chinese people everywhere
until 1956.

There are differences between traditional Chinese and

simpli ed Chinese in terms of characters and
vocabulary.

Characters
Traditional and Simpli ed Chinese have obvious
differences in character patterns. Traditional characters
look more complicated and have more strokes, while
simpli ed characters are, as the name suggests, simpler
and have fewer strokes. However, some characters in
traditional and simpli ed remain the same.

For example:

I: 我 (traditional Chinese); 我 （simpli ed Chinese）

No: 不 (traditional Chinese); 不 （simpli ed Chinese）

Chase: 追 (traditional Chinese); 追 （simpli ed Chinese

Big: ⼤ (traditional Chinese); ⼤ （simpli ed Chinese）

Walk: ⾛ (traditional Chinese); ⾛ （simpli ed Chinese）

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 Chapter 3

Vocabulary

For example, “ball-point pen”, in simpli ed Chinese is

called “圆珠笔”, while “原⼦笔” is used in traditional
Chinese.
In the early part of the last century, the Chinese
government presided over a process of simplifying
Chinese characters in order to reduce illiteracy. Since
the founding of PRC, the process of simplifying Chinese
continued to be promoted with the support of the
government. As simpli ed characters are easy to write,
the introduction of the process has been very smooth.
In 1964, the Chinese mainland published the General
List of Simpli ed Chinese Characters, which simpli ed
traditional Chinese with an average of 16 to 19 strokes
per character into simpli ed Chinese with an average
of 8 to 11 strokes per character. However, traditional
Chinese did not disappear after the introduction of
simpli ed Chinese. They are still in use in many places
and elds today.

Pros and Cons

Since the reform of Chinese characters, some people

have advocated restoring traditional Chinese, because
traditional Chinese can better represent traditional
C h i n e s e c u l t u re . S o m e p e o p l e s u p p o r t t h e
implementation of simpli ed Chinese, because
simpli ed Chinese is simple and easier to learn.

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 Chapter 3
In fact, both simpli ed and traditional Chinese have
their pros and cons. In terms of cultural meaning and
artistic connotations, traditional Chinese serves better.
But for simpli ed Chinese, it is easy to learn and haas
made a contribution to the education system. One is
more artistic and one is more practical.

Pros and Cons of

Traditional Chinese
Pros: it is based on the ancient
Chinese characters evolved, so
it is easy to understand original
meaning of the word.

For example:
Dragon: ⿓ (traditional Chinese); ⻰ （simpli ed Chinese）
Phoenix: 鳳 (traditional Chinese); 凤 （simpli ed Chinese）
Love: 愛 (traditional Chinese); 爱 （simpli ed Chinese）
Woman: 婦 (traditional Chinese); 妇 （simpli ed Chinese）
Fly: ⾶ (traditional Chinese); ⻜ （simpli ed Chinese）

Cons: there are more strokes and Chinese characters. It

is more complex to write up, increasing the dif culty of
learning. In the Chinese character computer coding
standard, 13,053 traditional Chinese characters are
included.
For example:
Open: 開 (traditional Chinese); 开（simpli ed Chinese）
Door: ⾨ (traditional Chinese); ⻔（simpli ed Chinese）

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 Chapter 3

Pros and Cons of Simpli ed Chinese

Pros: the number of strokes and the number of

Chinese characters are less than traditional Chinese,
this reduces the dif culty of learning Chinese
characters, and speeds up the writing. There are 6,763
simpli ed Chinese characters included in the Chinese
character computer coding standard.

Cons: one simpli ed character corresponds to multiple

traditional characters, resulting in serious polyphonic
problems. In traditional Chinese, each word has its own
separate character.

Here are some examples:

Surface: 表⾯ (traditional Chinese); 表⾯（simpli ed
Chinese）
Noodle: 麵條 (traditional Chinese); ⾯条（simpli ed
Chinese）
Back: 後 (traditional Chinese); 后（simpli ed Chinese）
Empress: 后 (traditional Chinese); 后（simpli ed
Chinese）
Appearance: 外表 (traditional Chinese); 外表
（simpli ed Chinese）
Watch: ⼿錶 (traditional Chinese); ⼿表（simpli ed
Chinese）
Family: 家庭 (traditional Chinese); 家庭（simpli ed
Chinese）
Furniture: 傢具 (traditional Chinese); 家具（simpli ed
Chinese）

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 Chapter 3

⿓ Dragon
⻰
Traditional Simpli ed

Where to Use?
Simpli ed Chinese is widely used in Mainland China,
Singapore, and Malaysia; where traditional Chinese is
used in Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and some of the
oversea Chinese population-based areas.

So… Simpli ed or Traditional?

Now that you understand some of the differences
between traditional Chinese and simpli ed Chinese,
you should be more equipped to make a decision
about which one to learn. The answer to the question is
usually a matter of preference. The general opinion is
that if it is for business purposes, it is recommended to
learn simpli ed Chinese. If you are interested in
Chinese culture and want to understand the meaning
of Chinese characters in depth, you can learn
traditional Chinese.

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 Chapter 3

If you plan to work in Hong Kong or Taiwan in the future,

you need to learn traditional Chinese, for mainland
China, go for simpli ed Chinese. If you’re not sure, you
can start with simpli ed Chinese, because simpli ed
Chinese are easier to learn, and there is no barrier to
communication in both simpli ed and traditional
Chinese. In addition, people who can read simpli ed
characters in general can also read articles in
traditional characters in most cases, even though the
characters have far fewer strokes than traditional
characters.

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 Chapter 3

How to Speak
Chinese
There are four key elements of learning a foreign
language, they are listening, speaking, reading and
writing. Many people who learn Chinese feel that one of
the most dif cult issues in Chinese is that Chinese
characters and pronunciation do not correspond to
each other, which is different from English. If you see a
word, it is hard to tell what its pronunciation is.
Therefore, to learn how to speak Chinese, we need to
st a r t f ro m t h e b a s i c fo r m at i o n o f C h i n e s e
pronunciation–pinyin. Today we will take a detailed
look on pinyin（拼⾳: pīn yīn）and the tone of pinyin
(拼⾳声调: pīn yīn shēng diào).

PinYin
Chinese pinyin is a Latinisation scheme of Chinese
character phonetic notes promulgated by Chinese
of cials. It refers to the phonetic syllable of
Putonghua, which is spelled into a standard
pronunciation of modern Chinese with the letters and
spelling stipulated in the Chinese pinyin scheme.
Chinese pinyin is a tool to assist the pronunciation of
Chinese characters, and it is used in the eld where
Chinese characters are inconvenient or cannot be
used.

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 Chapter 3

How to Speak
Chinese
PinYin Pronunciation
The 23 consonants (initials): are both consonants in
front of vowels and a complete syllable formed with
vowels.

How to pronounce each:

b: the lips are closed, hindering the air ow, and
then the lips suddenly let the air ow out, the
pronunciation is light and short.
p: the lips are closed, hindering the air ow, and
then the lips suddenly open, and the air ow bursts
into a sound.
m: the lips are closed, the tongue is retracted, the
air ow comes out of the nasal cavity, the mouth is
opened, and the vocal cord quivers.
f: the upper tooth touches the lower lip to form a
narrow slit, allowing the air ow to squeeze out of
the seam and rub into a sound.
d: the tip of the tongue against the gums, hold back
the air ow suddenly release, the air burst out of the
mouth, burst into a sound.

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 Chapter 3
t: the tip of the tongue against the gums, hold the
breath, suddenly release it, the air burst out of the
mouth.
n: the tip of the tongue stands against the gums,
the air ows through the nasal cavity, and at the
same time it ushes away the hindrance of the tip
of the tongue, and the vocal cord trembles.
l: the lips are slightly open, the tip of the tongue is
against the gums, the vocal cord trembles, and the
air ows out from both sides of the tip of the
tongue.
g: the anterior part of the tongue root against the
soft palate hinders the air ow, allowing the air ow
to break through the obstruction of the tongue root
and erupt into a sound.
k: the anterior part of the tongue root, against the
soft palate, hinders the air ow, let the air ow break
through the obstruction of the tongue root, burst
into a sound.
h: the root of the tongue is raised, close to the soft
palate, forming a narrow slit, and the air ow is
squeezed out of the seam and rubbed into a sound.

j: the tip of the tongue stands against the lower

incisor, the front of the tongue is close to the hard
palate, and the air ows out of the narrow seam,
rubbing into a sound.

Discover the full list of vowel and consonants

pronunciation directly on our blog:
https://www.maayot.com/blog/how-to-speak-chinese/

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 Chapter 4

Why Chinese
Reading Material is
Critical
If you have started to learn Chinese and want to
improve your reading and writing abilities effectively, it
is important to read Chinese stories. However, the
problem is that it is not always easy to nd suitable
reading materials, which can guide you through learning
new Chinese words, sentences and grammars etc. step
by step. The solution is you need to nd the graded
readers that are written based on your level and focus
on providing you with understandable information,
interesting topics that enable you to gradually improve
your level and get more decent knowledge about
China. In this article, we are going to nd out what is
the graded readers and how we can nd good Chinese
graded reading material.

Development of Graded Readers

In the 1920s, a variety of different graded reading
systems appeared in the West countries. In the 1930s,
graded reading books began to have well de ned
grading standards. Most countries will use graded
readers as a framework for children’s extracurricular
reading. The advantage of graded readers is that there
is a gradual process of age and level, which can
accumulate vocabulary and increase the expansion of
knowledge.

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 Chapter 4
Because of the attempts of Western countries, Hong
Kong and Taiwan began to develop graded readers
more than a decade ago. After entering the 21st
century, graded readers have gradually entered the
vision of China’s publishing industry and some experts
and scholars. Some Chinese graded reading
institutions and experts have emerged, and some
research results have been achieved in different elds
and different areas.

Compared with
English graded reading
m ate r i a l s , C h i n e s e
sentence structure is
very exible, each
word in a sentence
has a meaning, and
the same word may

have different meanings in different context. Therefore,

the focus of early Chinese graded readers is not
sentence patterns, but the accumulation of vocabulary.
In the early days, many graded reading materials on the
market were designed for children whose mother
language is Chinese. Most of the cognition of graded
reading materials stayed at the stage of “reading by
grade” and “reading by age”.
With Chinese, developing graded readers for second
language learner is not that easy for several reasons.
First, picking up random book for children is not a good
idea.

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 Chapter 4
It will likely contain lots of words you have never heard
and probably don’t need to learn. For a second-
language learner is not the same as a kid who can
already speak uently and is beginning to explore the
written language! Second, there used to be a dearth of
reading material targeted directly at second language
learners.
Since the Hanban of China launched the “HSK Exam
Syllabus”, graded reading materials for non-native
Chinese learners have been gradually introduced in the
market. Notable examples are “Chinese Breeze”,
“Reading China “, “Developing Chinese”, “Boya Chinese”,
etc. Among them, some are more text books suitable
for learning in class, and some are also suitable for self-
studying.

Bene ts of Reading at your Level

✓ According to the reading dif culty of the text, it
matches the reader’s level to ensure that the reader
can read the most suitable text.
✓ Make reading more fun, it lets readers read what they
can understand, and get a sense of accomplishment.
✓ Reading step by step, while accumulating vocabulary,
learn more about the meaning of Chinese characters in
different contexts
✓ Strengthen reading ability and deepen the
understanding of Chinese sentence expressions.

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 Chapter 4

What makes a good Chinese reading

text?

Good Chinese readers would be well designed to make

you feel like there is actually a teacher besides you
teaching Chinese, including new words you may not
know, and questions to discuss the story with.
However, not all Chinese readers are equal, so we have
listed several criteria for de ning good Chinese readers
for the second language learners.

Good Chinese readers would be well designed to make

you feeling like there is actually a teacher besides you
teaching Chinese, including new words you may not
know, and questions to discuss the story with.
However, not all Chinese readers are equal, so we have
listed several criteria for de ning good Chinese readers
for the second language learners.

✓ The content is accurate; the system behind it is

complete and scienti c.
✓ There is a clear degree of distinction, which is not
only based on the amount of word recognition, but also
includes semantic dif culty, artistic complexity, etc.,
not simply based on age.
✓ The evaluation is simple, and it is best for readers to
evaluate whether they need to be upgraded.

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 Chapter 4
✓ Each reading is equipped with a brief guide for easy
selection. If there are questions and exercises at the
end of the chapter, it would really help reinforce what
was learnt in these short stories – that would be an
added bonus.
✓ Readings cover a wide range of topics, not limited to
a single eld, including current affairs news, daily
conversation, Chinese culture, history, etc. These
stories must be well written. That’s core – if stories
aren’t interesting, it defeats the whole purpose of
learning Chinese with them – you’ll forget about what
you’ve read easily!
✓ Audio stories with various versions. There is a slow
voice recording version for reference.
✓ Compiled in accordance with the “HSK Exam
Syllabus”; it has a high coverage of vocabulary,
grammar, and topics in the outline.
✓ Scienti c arrangement , adopting a spiral
arrangement method, the dif culty of the story
gradually increases, and the repetition frequency of
new words and key words is high.
✓ Rich learning forms. Learners can log in to the of cial
website via mobile phones or computers, listen to
recordings online, follow stories, and use the
vocabulary learning system to learn new words.
✓ Too dif cult and too easy will lose interest in reading.
The most ideal state is that you can understand more
than 90% of the words you read without help.
✓ Well annotated. These stories must be well
annotated with explanations of words.

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 Chapter 4
With that in mind, you might be interested to know that
there are Chinese graded readers in the market that
can meet the criteria.

Recommended Ressources

maayot
maayot is a set of online graded learning tools specially
created for Chinese learners. It is tailor-made for
foreign Chinese learners. It adopts scienti c graded
reading learning philosophy and aims to effectively
improve the Chinese reading ability of Chinese
learners, develop skills such as “listening”, “speaking”,
“reading” and “writing”. The reading dif culty of the
text is measured according to the HSK grading system.

The story content is

divided into three
levels: beginner,
intermediate and
advanced levels,
which can be freely
selected by learners
of different levels.
The content includes stories about
Chinese people’s daily life, cultures, traditions and
modernity stories, allowing readers to understand
Chinese social traditions, habits, historical legends and
current news from all angles.

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 Chapter 4

Learners can fully enjoy the reading, listening. Each

story features concise and short sentences as well as
commonly used words for easy reading. Pinyin is
added to the full text, English notes or sample
sentences for dif cult words and sentences are also
provided. The story has an English summary at the
beginning of the story and questions on reading
comprehension at the end.

“Developing Chinese” - 2nd Edition

Learners can fully enjoy the reading, listening. Each

story features concise and short sentences as well as
commonly used words for easy reading. Pinyin is added
to the full text, English notes or sample sentences for
dif cult words and sentences are also provided. The
story has an English summary at the beginning of the
story and questions on reading comprehension at the
end.

Reading China

“Reading China” is suitable for Chinese learners of all

levels. It is a set of graded Chinese reading materials
that can be used as extracurricular reading materials as
well as reading materials. The complete set of reading
materials includes annotated versions in English,
Japanese, and Korean. The whole series is divided into
ve levels according to language dif culty.

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 Chapter 4
“Chinese Breeze”

The dif culty of this set of books is divided into 8 levels,

each level has 6-8 volumes, and each volume is
8,000-30,000 words. The target audience is Chinese
learners from the elementary level (about 300 common
words) to advanced level (mastering 3,000-4,500
common words) and middle school students (including
AP students) and other Chinese learners. The stories
are well written, interesting to read and have literary
value. In addition, the subject is wide, learners can
choose the topic according to their hobbies.

That’s all about the background, bene ts, and

recommended books and tools of graded readers.
There are a lot of learning materials about Chinese
graded lessons in the market. You could choose the
suitable one according to your learning purpose,
interest and level. We believe that even simple words
can create stories with meaningful content. We hope
that every learner can nd a learning tool that is
suitable and can truly improve their Chinese.

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 Chapter 5

How to Type in
Chinese?
On a Computer
The Chinese keyboard looks exactly the same as the
English keyboard. The only thing you need to learn is
pinyin (拼⾳, pīn yīn), which is a method to pronounce
Chinese characters. Here we are talking about
simpli ed Chinese (简体中⽂, jiǎn tǐ zhōng wén) which
are often used in mainland China.

Using the same keyboard, we also have got another

input method called Wubi method (also called ve-
stroke input method, 五笔输⼊法, wǔ bǐ shū rù fǎ). This
method is based on how to write Chinese characters,
which was popular in the 90s. Nowadays most Chinese
use pinyin input method (拼⾳输⼊法, pīn yīn shū rù fǎ)
instead of Wubi.

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 Chapter 5
On Mobile

We also have got pinyin input

method (which is called pinyin-
QWERTY on a cellphone).
Besides, we have another
keyboard version called
pinyin-10 key (we call this
version as jiǔ gōng gé “九宫格”
in Chinese), as shown in Figure
3. Some Chinese people love to
use this version as they are
used to typing with it.

Some elders are not good

at pinyin due to their
strong accents from their
dialects, so most of them
choose handwriting input
method, (⼿写输⼊法, shǒu
xiě shū rù fǎ) as shown in
the screenshot to the
right.

We suggest Chinese learners use the fundamental

version – pinyin QWERTY, which is the same as English
keyboard.

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 Chapter 5
Once you have chosen your preferred Chinese keyboard,
you can now type in Chinese. If you already know how to
pronounce Chinese characters using pinyin, just simply
type the pinyin of the characters you want, and ignore the
four tones in Chinese at the moment.
If you are using a computer …
When you are typing, several Chinese characters will
appear in a small window, you can choose the one you
want and type its number. The character that you want
will then be typed out. (If the number is 1, you can just
press space bar instead.)
For example, if you want to type the character “中”
(zhōng), you can type “zhong” on you keyboard, and a
window will appear, you can then type the number “3” to
choose the character “中”, this character will nally appear
on the screen.

(If you are using a cellphone, you can just press on the
Chinese character, no need to press any numbers or
space bar.)
If you are typing a slightly complex or not that common
Chinese character, for example, “玥”, you might not nd it
in the window.
If you are using a computer, you can press “+” to search
more Chinese characters with the same pinyin; if you want
to go back, you can press “–”.
If you are using a cell phone, similarly, you can press the
arrow beside the row of the Chinese characters to look
for more characters, you can also press the arrow again to
go back.

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 Chapter 5
How to Type Faster
Phrase by Phrase

If you want to speed up your typing, you can type the

pinyin of each phrase as a group.
For example, if you want to type out a sentence “我正在学
习如何打出中⽂字” (wǒ zhèng zài xué xí rú hé dǎ chū zhōng
wén zì, the translation is “I am learning how to type in
Chinese”), you can type like “wozhengzai”, then press
space, continue typing “xuexi”, then press space, continue
typing “ruhe”, then press space, continue typing
“dachuzhongwenzi”, then press space.

Type Less Letters

In addition, to speed up, you can type the rst letter of

pinyin for each Chinese character in a phrase, then the
most common Chinese phrases related to this pinyin will
come out.
For example (as shown in Figure 11), still using the example
above, to get “我正在学习如何打出中⽂字” (wǒ zhèng zài
xué xí rú hé dǎ chū zhōng wén zì), you can type “wzz”, then
press space, continue typing “xxrh”, then press space,
continue typing “dczwz”, then press space.

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 Chapter 6

Pursue your
learning…
maayot is a set of online graded learning tools specially
created for Chinese learners. It is tailor-made for
foreign Chinese learners. It adopts scienti c graded
reading learning philosophy and aims to effectively
improve the Chinese reading ability of Chinese
learners, develop skills such as “listening”, “speaking”,
“reading” and “writing”. The reading dif culty of the
text is measured according to the HSK grading system.

The story content is

divided into three
levels: beginner,
intermediate and
advanced levels,
which can be freely
selected by learners
of different levels.
The content includes stories about
Chinese people’s daily life, cultures, traditions and
modernity stories, allowing readers to understand
Chinese social traditions, habits, historical legends and
current news from all angles.

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