Beyond HSK 5, the HSK curriculum will be less and less and important, and the focus is now shifted to "branching out" to non-HSK territory. This requires you to start doing extensive reading of authentic Chinese material. Starting from this lesson, we will provide you with guidance in this regard.

For this lesson, do the following:

➊ Go to Slow Chinese

➋ Find an article that interests you

➌ Read the article while listening to the audio, and make use of the translation that they provide.

➍ Have a good time!

(We will get you to try Slow Chinese for this lesson, and will give you more recommended sources in future lessons.)

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Suggested Reading Tools

By now you probably already have a few favorite app/dictionary/website in your Chinese toolbox. But here are some recommendations you can try:

• LingQ ($10/mo.) – They provide you with lots of articles to read with audio. They also provide tools for you to build up vocabulary and track progress. Their mobile app allow you to read on the go. You can also read your own material using their tools. (This means you can copy the articles from Slow Chinese, upload the audio, and use LingQ's tools to study the article.) It also works with many languages. I (Jon) am personally using this to study Korean and Italian and it's working quite well.
• Decipher Chinese ($5/mo) – similar to LingQ, app only.
• Pleco app's clipboard reader.
• Pinyin annotation tool from Mandarin Spot
• Zhongwen – hover dictionary Chrome browser extension