There is no better way to learn to read characters than through reading. Feel free to use the following resources. If you have trouble viewing Chinese characters, please click Computing in Chinese. We suggest that you copy and paste the characters, words and texts into your Clavis Sinica or a similar program to study them.

Test yourself how many characters you know

Most frequently used words in Chinese

LPE vocabulary

Texts in the books we use

Beginners Chinese by Yong Ho, published by Hippocrene Books in New York.

Intermediate Chinese by Yong Ho, published by Hippocrene Books in New York.

Readings of a variety of stories (the texts are in traditional characters, but you can convert them to simplified characters at this site: http://artvine.com.tw/gb.htm).

Chinese newspapers

 People's Daily (in Chinese)

 Xinhua News Agency

Chinese News (in Chinese)

China Times News (in Chinese)

Global Chinese Electronic Daily News

 Hua Xia Wen Zhai (in Chinese)

Beijing Spring (in Chinese)

SinaNet News Center (in Chinese)  

Sources of Chinese-Language Text Files
http://www.webcom.com/~bamboo/chinese/text.html
is a source of documents written in Chinese, mostly of Chinese literature