Any users here if they can share on how many words/characters and study books were they able to read a newspaper like Wall Street Journal in Chinese?

My guess would be 3,000 characters, 10,000 words you'll probably be fine.

I think the same as ximeng.

I must partially disagree. I think you must know around those number of characters and words, but also have invested a lot of time reading them in context. Knowing the meaning and generally how to use them isn't enough!

For example, I frequency run into texts where I recognize everything, but still don't entirely grasp what is trying to be expressed. This comes more from understanding the writing and not just what is written.

One of the challenges to get to the level required for reading a newspaper is finding enough things to read at lower levels.

Already others here have mentioned the chinese breeze readers, which are probably the best products of their kind out there. They help you get some practice of reading, even with a modest vocabulary.

@Olaf, breeze readers? What are those? Are they like Pleco's Pasteboard reader or Google Chromes extension that allows you to hover the mouse over words for instant lookup.

I think those numbers are a bit high. According to Skritter I currently know 5,679 words and 2,679 characters. I just finished a 12-week class on Media in Chinese, in which we read one or more articles from a Chinese newspaper every week. It wasn't easy; I made liberal use of the dictionary and I'm not claiming that I understood it completely on the first read through, but it was still doable. What I'm saying is that you shouldn't wait until you have 10,000 words before you attempt to read a newspaper. Even if you don't understand all of it, at some point you just have to throw yourself into the deep end.

About Chinese Breeze, I've never used them myself, but it's a series of graded readers, that is, stories in Chinese written at different levels for language learners.

At about 600 characters and words, there's no way I could read an actual newspaper. However, I find that I can get through one or two of the features on the BBC zhongwen website, which is fun. As junglegirl says, it's worth throwing yourself in at the deep end every now and then, and the satisfaction when you can read the headlines is one more step :)

(NB. I get the feeling that if everything online wasn't about the London Olympics it'd be a lot harder for me!)

And Chinese Breeze is awesome. I found the lowest level is a bit above HSK 2, but obviously it depends on how/what you've studied when.

@Junglegirl:- thanks for inputs. Just curious what this Media class was about and where did you attend it ?

@Olaf Thanks for recommending Breeze graded readers. Will try to get them from somewhere. Will be difficult to find them with an Indian retailer I am sure.

@ Catherine.. If I open BBC Chinese site all I can understand as of now are few words here and there like weather, Beijing, London, new york and 4- 5 others.
Reading it without any external help seems like impossible.

@Sandeep: It was offered by my employer (the United Nations Office at Geneva). It was essentially a class for advanced students of Chinese in which the materials were all taken from the Chinese media. We mostly read newspaper articles on different topics.

@Sandeep
It's maybe not the best measure, as my reading far surpasses my writing which in turn is much better than my speaking. Plus, a lot of it is contextual, as I tend to have heard some of the news stories before trying to read them in Chinese. So don't be disheartened!

I mentioned http://chinesereadingpractice.com/ in another post, but I'll say it again as a good free resource.

Edit - and this handy little helper for chrome http://zhongwen-chrome.blogspot.co.uk/

I use Perapera Chinese Popup Dictionary plugin with firefox to read BBC. Its really good.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/perapera-kun-chinese-popup-tra/

@Catherine
I have gone through one of the beginner's level stories on
http://chinesereadingpractice.com/
and it seems the best place for a beginner.
Xie Xie..
I sometimes use MDGB window's app and it works great with webpages. Suggest you try it if you haven't.

Yep, it's great! I print off the beginner stories with Chinese on one side and English on the other, to see if I can survive without computer dictionaries... it's way harder!!

Is MDBG's app free? Or am I thinking of something else...

MDBG app's free version works pretty fine with webpages. The paid one has better sounds and works with PDFs etc. The free one should work pretty fine for reading webpages with its Live Scan and Highlight Scan turned on.

@All here..

With all these comments and valuable inputs from so many experienced Skritterers I think I just might get to read a Chinese Newspaper without a dictionary just a few days before I DIE.

@Sandeep, don't be discouraged! For one thing, in this day and age, most all newspapers are online - I do not view tools like the Pleco reader (my favorite) as a crutch, as long as I try hard to read the word before I get help. It is a tool that makes my reading faster, more enjoyable and more productive, and I use it whenever possible, unless the reading level is easy enough that it would just get in the way. These days, about half of the reading I do these days is of printed material, but I'm just happy to live in a day and age where there are so many great electronic tools to help me!

My favorite way to read news in Chinese is to use the mobile version of the BBC Chinese web site. I cut-and-paste the text into the Pleco reader. The articles tend to be short, the Chinese is modern and straightforward, and the selection of content is good, without being overwhelming.

I've been looking for a good website to take advantage of Pleco's reader, BBC sounds great, thanks Chris!

BBC Chinese is great. Probably the only Chinese news site that doesn't try to cram excess numbers of articles into a small space.

There's also quite a few videos about the Olympics at the moment all in Chinese. Eg. http://www.bbc.co.uk/ukchina/simp/multimedia/2012/07/120719_vid_chenguanmin.shtml

Edit: The linked video above is the 英伦网, not the main site... Still, it's worth watching!

Edit 2: Main site's videos are here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/simp/multimedia/

@Byzanti thanks for the links. （I can't really keep up with the videos yet, but they are great for more advanced students.）

The 英伦网 tends to be easier to understand than the 中文网, either due to using less politics/economics jargon or just because I know more of the context to the stories. This one was my favourite recently: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ukchina/simp/uk_life/2012/07/120712_life_cake_map.shtml :)

Perhaps a little easier, but I'm not so fond of reading it as there are too many foreign names! The main site has quite a big focus on China, which mean there's less of that. If you can get by with the cake article, then you could certainly get by with the more popular stories on the main site (eg, Beijing flooding).

http://mag.nownews.com/ is another great site. It has selections from a wide range of current Taiwanese magazines. Funday is a magazine for learning English, and all of its articles are translated into Chinese - those articles are phenomenal for transitioning to real newspapers and magazines - I used to read a couple every week and it made a huge difference for me.