> With a native speaker you could shred through those books fairly quickly.

I'm not sure this applies equally to Chinese, as it's not a phonetic language. Extensive speaking/listening practice isn't totally transferrable to reading tasks. There are many things I can hear for which I might not recognise the characters (because I seldom see them written) and, equally, there are characters for which I know the meaning (because I read them when shopping online, and have seen them in context a lot) but not the sound.

I agree in principle- I was in an intensive Chinese program in Beijing, and I read the children's books with tutors. This was not like "See Spot Run" type of stuff. In regular class, you mostly learn everyday language, which only helps to scratch the surface of literature with a lot of background cultural context that is assumed of native speakers.

Yeah, I'm in an intensive program as well. 6 hours a day M-F all Arabic, sometimes a 1-1 session with a teacher. Normal classes it's 5-1.