Over the past few months, I’ve seen quite a number of posts by learners around the web about reading progress. In these posts, one thing that I’ve noticed coming up again and again is the problem of reading stamina — many of the even quite advanced learners have commented about feelings of ‘weariness’ after reading in Chinese for longer than half an hour or more than a few chapters.

Encountering this mental stumbling block is unfortunate, as the more you read, the better your Chinese for one and greater your motivation for another. As such, I’d like to share what’s helped me achieve a decent stamina for consuming Chinese-language content and how you might go about doing so as well.

A year or so ago, I found the thought of spending over 30-40 mins on just a simple kid’s book daunting. Now, I can comfortably read for hours at once and indeed do so on a regular basis.

Time spent reading on 微信读书 recently

What I’ll be sharing here will also be drawn from discussions I’ve had with some other Chinese-language bookworms who’ve the stamina to read for longer periods of time as well. But before launching into the thick of it all, I’d first like to make clear a few things:

• The advice I write here works well for me but may not for you; please don’t follow it blindly but rather take it more as guiding thoughts on your own learning journey.
• There’s no silver bullet that will give your stamina a major overnight increase. Regardless of what actions you take, it may take (quite some) time before you start seeing noticeable results. But the ultimate benefit is worthwhile!
• Some people might not be able to read for long in their native language, let alone Chinese, and that’s alright — not everyone is cut out for tons of reading, be it due to personality or upbringing. While I firmly believe there’s never no room for improvement, don’t beat yourself up if that improvement takes too long — after all, there’s plenty of other Chinese-language media out there for you to explore.

Now, onto the tips — here are five strategies I’ve found over the past year to be most helpful towards building my reading stamina.

#1: Choose the right material

The importance of this really can’t be understated. The type of content you choose can greatly influence how much time you’re able to read it while maintaining a good focus. I, and those I’ve talked with, have identified three overarching hindrances.

Interest

Perhaps intuitively obvious, your interest in the content will directly influence how much time you can spend reading it. The more compelling you find some book/story/article, the longer you’ll be able to focus on getting through it.