In addition to formal learning methods, cultural products are a special way of learning that can provide a driving force of interest and a variety of contexts. English teachers in China also often recommend reading English novels, American TV series, and English periodicals.
I just saw this sub, I think members here can summarize the most suitable suggestions together.
I have seen similar questions before like:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseLanguage/comments/om67gv/late_night_reading_the_novel_in_chinese_and/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseLanguage/comments/om67gv/late_night_reading_the_novel_in_chinese_and/)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseLanguage/comments/ujjw0a/i_typically_use_jinyong_novels_to_study_chinese/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseLanguage/comments/ujjw0a/i_typically_use_jinyong_novels_to_study_chinese/)
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Before recommendation, we need a set of Rubric to judge the effectiveness of a work for Chinese learning, which should include:
1. vocabulary
2. language quality (right grammer and rich expression)
3. modern or outdated (jin yong’s books are old)
4. web-meme density (memes in web-media always useless)
5. richness of contexts (school, office, romance, nature, acient dynasty……)
6. difficulty (use Chinese Text Analyser)
This Rubric is called Text Quality.
Of course, as a cultural product, it also needs a Rubric, which I call cultural value:
1. story interest (do you enjoy the story)
2. ”depth of thoughts“ (learn something, or find out that the writer is talking about shit)
3. The density of Chinese cultural symbols (the book shows what happen in China, or just talk about what happen in America/Japan by chinese)
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You can make suggestions to improve the Rubric, or use it to measure some books you know, and then recommend or not recommend.
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Only if you think it is worthwhile to do so.
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I’m not an expert on language learning, but my guess is that if there is a high demand for Chinese learners and there is an increasingly clear requirement for what you want to learn, someone in China might start writing Chinese novels that suit you.
Have you seen Heavenly Path in the sidebar?
I think the problem with the rubric is that it doesn’t measure effectiveness. It measures effectiveness for a very specific purpose. If you want to learn Chinese to read danmei, your goals and materials are probably going to be different than learning Chinese for a history PhD. Some people want to read “outdated” novels.
>someone in China might start writing Chinese novels that suit you
Chinese media has just a wide of range as English media. Why would you think that novels you would want to read don’t exist?