A heritage speaker is someone who was raised and educated in a non-Chinese speaking country and acquired Mandarin Chinese informally through speaking with family and friends. Some heritage speakers would have attended formal lessons to learn to read and write.

“How can I improve my reading skills as a Chinese heritage speaker?” is a common question asked by many people of Chinese heritage all over the world.

Learning a language was a difficult challenge before the easy access to media and the availability of learning tools. Technology and the internet have changed our world in unimaginable ways, and this is much easier than before, especially for heritage speakers.

I am a Cantonese heritage speaker who has been learning Mandarin Chinese for a little over four years. I will show you ways you, as a Mandarin heritage speaker, can quickly and easily learn to read!

Your Experience

A heritage speaker’s Mandarin Chinese level could vary massively depending on their background and experience. It is difficult to write a guide that caters to all levels.

Therefore, this post is written for those with some prior experience:

basic knowledge of radicals and components
familiar with pinyin or zhuyin
able to recognise some Chinese characters
decent listening and communication skills

If you have little to no experience and need to start from the beginning, refer to my guide for beginners.

Dictionary Setup

Before you begin your journey, you must download a Chinese dictionary app. Pleco is currently the best app on the market for Chinese learners.

Pleco is a mobile app that offers many free Chinese dictionaries, including one with English definitions of over 100,000 terms. For an additional cost, it offers some extra features, such as a document reader and human audio recordings.

I highly recommend purchasing the basic bundle, which includes a flashcard system, document reader, advanced OCR, additional dictionaries, and human audio recordings. I will discuss these features in more detail in the Tools section below.

There is no need for a paper dictionary as a digital one is far more convenient.

Build Vocabulary and Confidence

Consuming visual and audio media is the best way for you, as a heritage speaker, to build confidence and quickly improve your passive vocabulary!

Passive vocabulary means words that you can comprehend when you hear them, but you may not be able to recall them in a conversation. Don’t feel stressed about this, as it’s completely fine and normal to have a large pool of passive vocabulary and a smaller pool of active vocabulary in your arsenal.

TV Shows, Variety Shows, Movies and more

TV dramas, variety shows, and movies are the most accessible visual media for those who don’t live in China, Hong Kong, or Taiwan.

A huge number of dramas, variety shows, and movies have been made available to the international audience via popular streaming platforms, including Netflix, YouTube, and Viki. In recent years, Chinese streaming services have released their own international platforms for Chinese media, and their subscription fees are a fraction of the price of other services.

If you are already watching Chinese TV shows with English subtitles, then that’s brilliant. But step up the game and turn off those English subtitles and turn on the Chinese subtitles instead.

But I don’t understand everything they’re saying! Don’t worry; with practice, you will improve by leaps and bounds in no time!

Here are ways you can start improving right now:

Start with simple TV shows containing subjects you’re familiar with. You can find suggestions on the TV Drama page, Short Drama page, and my Notion media bank. Look at those with the Newcomer and Intermediate tag. These shows use easy and straightforward language, with simple plots that are easy to follow from the visuals.
Try your best to watch and understand using only Chinese subtitles and visuals. You will be surprised at how much you can guess.
When you really struggle to understand and start to feel lost, then look up unknown words on Pleco or rewatch segments with English subtitles.
Have fun and enjoy the content. Don’t worry about understanding every dialogue; as long as you can understand enough to enjoy the show, you’ll improve!
After consuming 100 hours of content, rewatch segments of previous shows and amaze yourself at how much you can now understand!

Note: The visual and storytelling aspects of TV shows and movies are important as they help you comprehend and guess unknown words, greatly reducing dictionary lookups while improving your enjoyment. Therefore, in the beginning, avoid content where the visuals aren’t representative of the dialogues, such as talk shows and standup comedies.

Audio dramas

Feeling more confident and brave? You can step up your game using audio dramas!

Audio dramas are essentially dramas with only audio — imagine a TV show without the visuals but with added sound effects to represent the scenes. There are no visuals to help with comprehension, just audio and Chinese subtitles.

Sadly, these are not available on international platforms, so you’ll need to dive into using native apps and websites.

I recommend 猫耳FM, 漫播 and 饭角. Chinese subtitles are available on these platforms, and I recommend listening to the dramas with the subtitles turned on.

Without the visual help, you will be forced to focus on the audio and the Chinese subtitles. If you can pick up some Chinese characters, that’s really good; if not, don’t sweat on it. At this stage, you want to increase that passive vocabulary pool. We’ll work on reading and characters later!

This is too difficult for me, and I’m not enjoying it. No worries, you can stick with visual content, and you’ll improve just fine!

Note: For now, I don’t recommend audiobooks because they’ll contain more unfamiliar words than you can comprehend with dialogue-only content. The vocabulary used in conversations is only a small subset of the vocabulary you’ll find in literature.

When to start reading?

Watching TV shows and listening to audio dramas all seem counter-intrusive. Think of it this way instead; when you learn a new word, you need to learn three parts: the pronunciation, the definition, and the written form.

By consuming audio and visual content, you learn the pronunciation and definition of new words you encounter. Therefore when you come across these words when reading, you only need to learn the written form.

Yes, you can learn all three at the same time, but believe me, it’s much easier on your brain when you learn them separately.

You can start reading whenever you want, but I suggest consuming at least 200 hours of audio and visual content before starting. 200 hours is equivalent to approximately 6-7 full-length dramas.

Of course, the more, the better, so the bigger your passive vocabulary pool, the faster you’ll improve once you start reading.

A method to memorise words

An effective way to memorise information, in this case, new words, is using the spaced repetition system. What is the “spaced repetition system”? In short, it means to space out your learning with increasing intervals between each study session; the video below details this system.

You want to form a habit of daily sessions where you review words you pick up from reading. This can be achieved manually or digitally using apps that incorporate SRS. I recommend using an app for this, as it’s much easier.

Note: Although this is a great method for memorising words, don’t get too worked up on review counts, looking at stats and tweaking the SRS setting. Consuming content regularly is a natural way of reviewing vocabulary, so there should be more focus on the content you consume than the words you review with an app.

Study and reading tools

Word Review App

A word review app using SRS (spaced repetition system) will greatly improve the rate at which you remember new words.

Reviewing words can be done digitally using tools that perform all the SRS calculations. Two popular tools among Chinese learners are Pleco (with the paid flashcard add-on) and Anki (free on desktop and Android, $25 on Apple).
I use the Pleco paid flashcard add-on, which I recommend over Anki for heritage Chinese. Pleco is built for Chinese, and the flashcard system contains everything you need, including pinyin, zhuyin, definitions, and audio. Anki is a generic SRS flashcard system with lots of flexibility to create cards with images, videos, and sentences, but it requires more set-up. This added flexibility isn’t necessary for you, so for a quicker and easier setup, the Pleco paid flashcard add-on is the way to go.

Browser Pop-up dictionary

As the name suggests, it is a dictionary that pops up when you interact with a word. I recommend Zhongwen or Zhongzhong for the browser (free).

Zhongwen is a brilliant all-in-one solution. You can mouse over a word to see its tones and definitions and add them to a word list.
Zhongzhong is a branch of Zhongwen with different features, including text-to-speech audio. This is great if your pinyin or zhuyin knowledge is not up to speed yet.

Mobile Reading App

Reading on your mobile device or tablet is perfect for on the go. However, due to restrictions on the operating systems, options are limited.

The best apps available for reading Chinese are Readibu and the paid document reader on Pleco.

Readibu is an amazing free app that can pull text from web pages into a reader mode with a Chinese-English pop-up dictionary. There’s currently no tablet version, and it doesn’t run on the latest version of Android.
The paid document reader on Pleco is a must-have! The pop-up dictionary in the reader gives you access to all your Pleco dictionaries and human audio. This document reader pairs very well with the flashcard system, as you can add words straight from the popup dictionary to your review list. The downside is that you’ll need to source an offline version of your reading material in an epub or txt format.

What to read

Content for second language learners

Mandarin Chinese is a popular language to learn by people all over the world, and there has been a huge number of content created for language learners. As a heritage speaker, you can take advantage of those too. They are much more approachable than native content.

Little Fox Chinese (FREE)
- It’s a brilliant free resource (when accessed from the web).
- Lessons are presented as animated short stories with transcripts and native audio.
DuChinese ($)
- The best reading app for learners!
- They have hundreds of stories that are well-graded and updated regularly.
- Native audio is provided for each story.

Native books and webnovels

Reading native books and webnovels is where you want to be, but there are billions of options across various genres and difficulty levels, so it can be difficult to know where to start!

Below are suggestions to help you start your journey in the native book and webnovel world:

Extra Tips

New word limit

Don’t go crazy and add every new word you come across to your review list; you will quickly become overwhelmed by the number of daily reviews!

You will naturally learn words from consuming content, including reading and watching TV shows, without any review—it’s a natural form of system repetition.

Reviewing words, using apps or a manual system, is an additional aid to give you that little bit of a boost. So, don’t stress too much about the number of words you should be reviewing each day!

I recommend starting with 5 new words a day and increasing that when you feel more comfortable.

Routine Suggestion

If your schedule allows, you should read, review words and consume Chinese media daily. You don’t need to spend 6-8 hours a day. A little each day will be more effective than a lot at once.

Here’s a suggestion on how you can organise your time:

Morning: Review your words using your chosen SRS app. Spend no more than 20 minutes. If you find yourself spending too long on this, you can reduce the number of words you add to your review list or stop adding new words for a while.
Afternoon: Read for 30-40mins, note down some unknown words, and add a few to your review list. Remember to limit yourself and don’t add too many each day.
Evening: Relax to a few episodes of a TV show you enjoy!

Reading and Listening

Listening and reading at the same time is an amazing way for you, as a heritage speaker, to improve your literacy skills very quickly. Many eBook and webnovels platforms, such as 微信读书, offer superb AI text-to-speech and high-quality audiobooks with matching text.

But before you jump into the deep end and download 微信读书, remember that the vocabulary used in everyday conversation is only a small subset of the vocabulary you’ll find in literature. You could become very overwhelmed by the amount of unknown words and expressions.

This technique is extremely useful when your comprehension of the content is quite high (i.e., you can understand 98% and are able to guess the remaining 2%). If you want to adopt this technique, be mindful of the content you choose and avoid content that is far beyond your level.

Final Words

Good luck, and don’t give up! There are going to be plenty of ups and downs, but there is a light at the end of this tunnel.

I have been on this journey for four years, and it has been the best four years!

It has opened doors to things I never imagined, including texting my parents in Chinese and reading the same book as my mum.

Along the way, I’ve met and made friends with people all around the world. We may never meet in real life, but sharing the same interests and going on the journey together has been a wonderful experience!

I also started this blog because I wanted to share my experiences and views on Chinese TV shows and books with you and other learners!

My Chinese cooking skills have massively improved due to all the Chinese YouTube cooking channels I’ve discovered!

These are all things I never imagined when I started this back in May 2020, and it all started out from a dream of wanting to read Chinese books.

Reading will be the start of your journey, and believe me, four to five years from now, you’ll discover much more than the words on a page!

Improve your reading skills as a Mandarin Chinese heritage speaker