Reading the news in Chinese is quite a different experience from reading Chinese literature, and yet it is one of the best ways to improve your Chinese comprehension skills. What makes reading the news unique is that you will encounter more straightforward (and modern) language.To get more news about chinese letters alphabet, you can visit shine news official website.

Beyond this, it’s a good starting point towards the next level when you’re already familiar with the basics (pinyin, zhuyin and some basic chengyu). You’ll find that even a basic knowledge of Chinese grammar will take you a long way. Knowing key vocabulary for popular topics such as soccer, business, clothing and food – will take you even farther. Surprisingly, once you have a good idea how to approach a Chinese newspaper, it isn’t all that hard to get into!
Why Read the News in Mandarin Chinese?
I’m sure most of you will hesitate before picking up the papers. You’ll come up with a hundred and one excuses just so you can avoid them. But they’re not difficult at all. You’ll be surprised to find out that all these excuses and problems are quite commonplace and as you’ll realize later on, these are simply unfounded notions.

Now, I know you won’t be easily convinced so I’ve listed 5 good reasons why you should start reading the news in Chinese.

It increases your vocabulary. We usually start with the basic conversational pieces when learning a language. But the downside is this restricts us to a limited vocabulary. With the news, we get to learn a number of terminologies that we have never encountered before. It’ll be hard the first try but the good news is there are various sections in the papers and you simply have to go to the one you’re more familiar with. They’re easier to understand and you can start from there but once you encountered an unfamiliar term, don’t give up. You have to learn – this is the main reason why we’re encouraging you to pick up the papers. If everything’s easy then, what else will you learn from it.
You’ll learn to adapt to different sentence structures. News has a different format from the usual books and that’s the good thing about it. You get to learn different sentence structures and how to effectively position your characters in different contexts. you may not get it the first try but sooner or later, you’ll get the hang of it.
It’s interesting and will surely capture your attention. It’s not just the added vocabulary but the fact that there’s so much to learn about the current events, culture, lifestyle about a country that’s so unfamiliar to you. Isn’t that fun? It’ll help you get a new and wider perspective.
You don’t have to love current events to read newspapers. The first thing that pops into your head the moment the papers is uttered is current events. But that’s not all there is to it. A lot of people don’t read the papers for current events, business or politics. There’s a lot of variety to choose from – travel, sports, culture, etc. All these variety will surely interest you.
It’s readily available online. You can access it anytime, anywhere! You don’t need to be near a Chinese community to get a copy of the papers. You’ll be happy to learn that there are a lot of Chinese papers online. Just check out their website. Some even have English translation.
Tips on How to Start Reading Chinese Newspapers
Now that you’re finally convinced that it’s not that difficult (or scary) to read Chinese newspapers, there’s nothing left to hold you back. To help you get started, here are 5 tips you’ll find quite useful.

Read the headlines. Just read the headings and the titles of the articles. Practice reading. Since there’s no pinyin or zhuyin to help you, practice reading the bigger font first. This will help you from getting discouraged. Don’t force yourself to read the whole article the first try.
Choose your favorite section. Whether it’s the section on travel, sports, culture, lifestyle or world news, you’ll find reading the papers more enjoyable when you’re reading something that interests you. Once you build up that habit then, broaden your scope and try branching out to other sections.
Go for words first instead of sentences. I use to count how many words I can recognize in a paragraph. It really encourages me to learn faster and read longer paragraphs. When you first start reading, read the words first. It doesn’t always have to make sense. Just practice reading them and understand how they are used. Then, slowly look up the other words or go over them while looking for context clues.
Check the English translations. Check their website. Most of the Chinese papers have English translations readily available in their website. You can use it to check if you understood the articles perfectly. But remember, don’t compare it word per word. It doesn’t mean that the second sentence in the Chinese article corresponds to the second sentence in the English article. It doesn’t work that way.
If you’re looking for word-for-word translations, however, try FluentU.
With interactive subtitles, you can easily check the contextual English translation any Chinese word by clicking on it. Better yet, you can turn these words into flashcards for later review.

You can also search FluentU for any vocabulary you learned in your newspaper reading. This will show you flashcards for the different definitions of the word, as well as any videos where the word appears naturally, like movie clips, music videos and news segments.