I keep searching for my post of Chinese Reading Levels whenever I try to determine Thumper’s reading level. Looking through the archives, it seems that I got confused by the levels myself and mislabeled them for awhile. So spent some time today to re-research and re-organize.
The levels are a combo of the often cited reading levels articles by Tian Xia Magazine 天下 and what I saw in the jacket cover of the books by 東雨文化 Kingin Publishing.
Below, I present my Chinese Reading Levels.
Updated 12/18/2017: I added my thought of equivalent grade level for easier reference. If you look at the Taiwanese recommended reading age for these books, they encompass a very wide range (bridging books go up to 10 year old!). But I’ve shortened this range to “at grade level” instead, as a 10 year old reading a 5000 character bridging book is probably a bit behind. Or maybe the book is still of interest to a 10 year old, but at grade level they probably could be reading something else.
With this system, the child will have mostly finished Reading 123 series by 2nd grade level, which is my marker for being at “grade level” to Taiwan. Keeping in mind many Taiwanese kids will probably surpass this level in in 2nd grade, just like in the U.S. with kids reading English books.
You can also ignore the lexile level. It’s for my own reference for the online Chinese books catalogue I’m building.
Kindergarten & First Grade – Level 0-1
What I did was to add a Level 0 because there is a huge jump in reading skill between reading that first 32 pages in Little Bear （小熊看世界）versus reading a 64 page book like Lulu and Lala (露露拉拉）. I arbitrarily put down 2500 characters because that’s how the leveling seem to work, doubling for every level.
Assuming you start zhuyin when the kids go to school as a kindergartner, you can start by reading picture books and Level 0 books. From reading other people’s experiences, it sounds like a kid can be in the 0-2500 character level for awhile as they learn to read, sometimes due to the fact that they learn to read early, and the maturity level isn’t there. My kids just didn’t read much, despite my efforts, while they were trying to get past this level, for various reason. All this to say, I think you can split this level up into even more minutia levels, but I havn’t done so.
I also made sure to include picture books in the Kindergarten level. Learned this with Astroboy that it is okay, as you’re starting to read, to read picture books. You don’t have to just rush them into chapter books, especially if they’re young.
Reading 123 are mostly in Level 2. Assuming you’re learning to read in Taiwan in 1st grade, with three months of zhuyin instruction up to December, I think being able to read up to 5k characters is good.
Second Grade – Level 2-3
Level 2 and 3 are the rest of Reading 123. In general, you should finish all of Reading 123 by the end of grade 2, assuming you learned to read in 1st grade.
Magic Treehouse is considered Level 4 because the author who coined the levels considered Level 4 to be when children can start reading series. But, they don’t really have as many characters as other books that are truly of the 20-40k characters range. Each book has only about 100 pages of large font text. Plus the language itself is much easier than say, books from the Happy Reading 456 樂讀456 series.
In terms of content, many books in this level are related to children’s daily life, sometimes about schools, and often very funny or silly.
Third Grade – Level 4
You can put a variety of random books that still has some illustrations but have a high page number, though the font may still remain a bit large, in this level. So many of the long Dahl books are Level 4. At this point, you start going into Reading 456 types of books. The authors start setting up scenes and background info before they get into the story. But many of these stories are still fairly funny, related to school, fantasy, animals, adventures, etc.
Third and Fourth Grade – Fiction
As you progress from third to fourth, the stories start transitioning into more “serious” topics. By serious I mean they explore the protagonists’ feelings, or they start exploring social issues. This is a transitional period as the plot get more elaborate and just like the hurdles the kids jumped through to really learn to read in the beginning, there is a content maturity level they will need to jump through here.
Often, zhuyin is dropped from these books, but many old books still have zhuyin in them. An example of books in 3rd or 4th grade level is Reading 456 and Little House on the Prairie series. As the publisher of Reading 456 states: “中年級孩子對故事的需求，已經從「拉近自己與文字的距離」進階到「自書中探求對自己內心及外面世界的了解」”
Fifth & Sixth Grade – Fiction
It’s easy to know a book is in 5th or 6th grade due to its length and also the lack of zhuyin. By now the kids are in the preteen years, the themes of the books are definitely getting more serious, talking about growing up pains, social issues, identity, etc. Due to content maturity, a child should be able to start Harry Potter in the lower grades and be able to finish it by 6th grade. Samples of books in these grades are Reading 456+ books, Wrinkle in Time series, Narnia series, Harry Potter series, and Cross Century books.
Other Notes
I also arbitrarily assigned grade levels to them. If you look to Taiwan, I think you will find children reading Level 4 books in 1st and 2nd grade. But again, there’s a huge range in level in these books. The number of pages may not increase much, but the fonts get smaller and the amount of illustrations shrink.
One way to know the grade level of a book is to look at the age of the protagonist. Typically they can be 2-3 years older than the reader. So for example, Harry Potter started at age 11, so a child can probably read it at around 8 or 9. Of course tons of kids read it earlier than that, but that gives you an idea of book’s maturity content.
Another way to know the grade level is to think of the content type and Chinese complexity. So 1st and 2nd grade is often breezy, fun, and short stories. Third to fourth grade still has zhuyin but gets more complicated story lines. Fifth and 6th has no zhuyin and can be very thoughtful stories.
It’s important to understand that content maturity level need to be considered as well when you talk about a child’s reading level. Astroboy may love the fun animal stories in Reading 456, but cannot read the more mature stories in the same series. Similarly, I’ve seen kids who can read 5th and 6th grade books, but yet when given freedom of choice to pick their own books, will choose 3rd and 4th grade books because they’re not quite ready yet for the content of upper elementary books, preferring to stay in the more fun and breezy middle elementary school books.
For picture books, you will also find a range. There are definitely certain types of books geared toward babies, basically vocabulary books. Then there are those for toddlers; cute books about toddler daily life. The Little Chicks 小雞 or books by Tomi Goro are a good example.
Some picture books are very long with very small text, such as the I Love Martine series or the Mr. Men and Little Miss series. Though they were not designed as bridging books, which have easier vocabulary and more frequently used Chinese characters, they can still be used as a Level 0 reading book. When children just start learning to read, they overlap a bit between the two types of books.
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