Reading and Responding: Comprehension of Chinese Texts
What you must understand
Reading tasks present notices, emails, articles, advertisements, diary entries and short stories. You must locate specific information, infer attitude and purpose, understand text type conventions, and respond in Chinese or English as instructed.
Know the conventions: 通知 (notice) states time, place and requirements; 电子邮件 has 主题 (subject), 称呼 (salutation) and 祝好 (closing); 广告 uses persuasive language and 优惠/免费/打折; 日记 uses past tense markers 了 and 过 and personal reflection.
Traps that appear in questions
- Answering in the wrong language. If the question says "answer in Chinese", English scores zero. Check instructions every time.
- Copying the whole sentence. Marks are for the relevant information; copying large chunks without selection shows weak comprehension.
- Misreading 不 and 没. 没去 means did not go; 不去 means will not go. 别 and 不要 signal prohibition.
- Ignoring the source. An advertisement's claim is not a fact; a diary entry's opinion is not objective. Questions on 目的 (purpose) or 态度 (attitude) test this.
- Skipping unfamiliar characters. Use radicals and context: 氵 suggests water, 讠 suggests speech. Guess meaning from surrounding words rather than stopping.
Rule of thumb
Use skim, scan, then verify. Skim for the topic and text type, scan for the keyword in the question, then verify by reading the whole sentence containing it. Underline the exact phrase that answers the question before writing.
Worked example
Text: 各位同学：本周五下午四点在学校礼堂举行中文演讲比赛，欢迎报名参加。请于周三前到办公室报名。 Question: 什么时候报名截止？ The key phrase is 周三前 (before Wednesday). The trap is answering 周五, the event date, rather than the deadline.