Practice reading Some of our students do well in other areas for Chinese, but don’t put in much effort for doing Chinese comprehension practices. That’s the main reason why many students lose marks for compre – many students find it daunting to read long passages. What we recommend is for students to try to understand as much as they can first. During exams, students have time to read the passage twice. They can scan through the passage to get a gist of it, and then read it once more to look at the details. When students encounter an unknown character or phrase, they should try to guess what it means. Then, they can highlight the characters or phrases they don’t understand, and then look it up after the practice is done. You can Line’s Chinese-English Dictionary for more accurate translations, or Google Translate as well. This blog, Skritter, also encourages students to focus on what they understand, rather than what they don’t get. You can generally g...