Able to understand chinese by reading but not by listen?

[calibre2001]

I've been learning Mandarin for 1.5 years now. Because my environment lacks Mandarin speakers, I wasn't able to develop proper listening and conversational skills. My Mandarin is stiff and confusing to a native speaker. I thought vocabulary was the problem, hence I proceeded to reading and writing (just writing out characters, not essays and such). Since then I have built up enough vocab to understand TV shows such as serial dramas , and simple news articles but I admit there's still a long way to go. Though my listening has improved a little I can put what a person is saying unless I see it written or if what he/she is saying is pretty darn simple. I reckon it's because I have never heard alot of the vocab I learn spoken out in real life.

I think my way of learning is wrong and requires a major change. Just wondering how I can go about this?

[skylee]

I think watching TV (drama, news) with subtitles would be very helpful. But you said you could understand TV shows. Did you mean you understand them by reading the subtitles only? Would re-watching them (again and again) focusing on listening to what is said help?

[Qcash3]

It sounds to me like you need to improve your 听力. Apart from conversing with native speakers, you could listen to tapes of native speakers. Also watching Chinese TV and movies will help as well.

[Qcash3]

^^^Beat me to it Skylee

[calibre2001]

skylee, yes I can understand the content via subtitles mostly (thankfully most chinese shows are subtitled in chinese!). I can hear the words but can't put them together with the sentence connectors together to make sense in my mind. With 2-3 time of repeated listening it gets better though.

The problem with tapes of native speakers is they speak much faster in real life. I have tried and can understand podcast mandarin mp3s without little difficulty 'cause it's textbooky but with a very 標準 accent.

[renzhe]

Sounds like you're simply missing listening, which is very important in Chinese.

I think overloading on Chinese TV shows, podcasts, etc for months will do wonders for you. Make sure you listen to an hour of Chinese every day, even if you don't understand most of it. After a while, you will make far more sense of it. sounds like you have enough vocabulary already, you just need to keep hearing it so your brain can process it more naturally and more quickly.

No, I'm not there yet, I read the subtitles too ;) but overloading with Chinese shows has really improved my listening comprehension. In the beginning, it was all a stream of babble, but now I can pick out words and sentence structure.

[889]

I think it's a mistake to start reading before you've learned pronunciation.

Problem is, your mind instinctively starts assigning pronunciations to characters as you read them, probably based on their Pinyin values. Once those pronunciations get locked in place, it can be near-impossible to dislodge them, no matter how deep you subsequently immerse yourself among native speakers.

[文言訓開班]

Hi, calibre2001, it sounds like you and I are in a similar boat. I learned for about a long as you, but continued on my own. I too, lacking a speaking partner, practied reading and writing.

I think there's really no substitute for speaking, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that reading and writing to learn is the "wrong way to go". When you read, make sure you're reading complete sentences. Practice writing complete sentences, and say them to yourself, out loud preferably, so you can get a feel for how they sound. Try to focus on vocabulary and on understanding what's being written. Chinese news is a good place to get sentences. Also try just surfing the net--blogs especially are a good place to get more colloquial language.

And most importantly, don't be afraid to talk to Chinese people you interact with in Chinese!

[imron]

See this thread for ideas on how to improve your listening skills.

[LiYuanXi]

Me too, I have learnt French since forever but I suck at listening because of my environment! Maybe you can watch some Chinese TV dramas with english subs? We have lots of this in Singapore that even our non-chinese citizens learnt listening to chinese through these dramas subconciously. Lots of malays and indians here are good at listening but bad at speaking.

[LiYuanXi]

The problem with tapes of native speakers is they speak much faster in real life. I have tried and can understand podcast mandarin mp3s without little difficulty 'cause it's textbooky but with a very 標準 accent.

For this case, I think speaking with natives is the only way. There are so many slangs in chinese and when we speak fast, lots of words tend to merge together.

Eg: 这样 (zhe4 yang4) becomes 酱 (jiang4)

So we (or rather singaporeans and taiwanese) will say: (酱)对不对？instead of 这样对不对？

[cdn_in_bj]

Eg: 这样 (zhe4 yang4) becomes 酱 (jiang4)

So we (or rather singaporeans and taiwanese) will say: (酱)对不对？instead of 这样对不对？

I had noticed this before and wondered if it was just how they said 这 and 样 together quickly, but now I know it's a totally different word. Thanks

[wushijiao]

My personal thinking on this: you have to do a massive amount of listening. 1 to 3 hours a day for a few years.

The ideal situation, as you hinted at, is where you know how every word sounds because you have heard it thousands of times, and you don't have to spend the mental time trying to think of its paper link. By knowing how a word is pronounced by recalling it from memory that has been burned into your brain, you can replicate the word better, and you can recognize a word instantly in conversation.

In the fall of 2004 I bought a walkman and started listening to tapes all the time, probably 2-4 hours per day. The ideas that I developed at the time can be summed up (from one of my old posts):

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/510-phoenix-tv7&highlight=recent+studying+methods

At that stage in my studies, I think I got a lot of value in listening to the same dialogue or news piece over and over again dozens of times. That way, I was able to better memorize the pronunciations, the combinations of words. Of course, I also think it is good to listen to the radio and TV dramas and the like. But if you only do that (at an intermediate stage of learning), I think you will run into problems. 1) You might just rely on the subtitles. 2) If you listen to the news and don't understand very much, how much value are you getting out of the listening?

I think it would be better to get more use out of your time listening. What worked for me was (as I wrote in the link, posted by imron):

1) Buy a textbook related to Chinese radio news, or newpaper news.

2) Record on tape all the new vocab to a lesson.

3) Record any useful set phrases/ common collocations

4) Have a native speaker record the material at a slow speed

5) Have a native speaker record it again, at a normal speed or slightly faster than normal speed

So, I made probably a dozen or so tapes in that fashion. After listening to those all the time, I really, really improved my listening skills and consolidated my vocabulary.

However, I also think that iPods and podcasts have brought about a revolution in language learning. There are many good sites for podcasts out there (such as Chinesepod, CSL Pod, and others), aiming at all different levels. Unfortunately, I don't know if all the podcasts are set up so that learners can really milk all the value out of them.

Anyway, I still get about an an hour and a half a day of podcast listening in per day.

At the end of the day though, as others have said, speaking to people is the best way to improve. But if that is really not an option, I hope that you can try to create a good environment, even if it is somewhat artificial.

[LiYuanXi]

I had noticed this before and wondered if it was just how they said 这 and 样 together quickly, but now I know it's a totally different word. Thanks

cdn_in_bj: I am sorry I think my example is not good. It is actually a result of speaking 这 and 样 together too quickly which results in pronouncing '酱'.

Please note that this word 酱 is incorrect. If you are going for oral tests or writing something.. DO NOT USE THIS. It is just an example of speaking too fast for native speakers.

[dporter1465]

There are some good materials for intermediate-level listening practice on the Chinese Voices Project page. It's a collection of about 60 short, accessible mini-essays on various topics relating to life in modern Beijing. Each piece is accompanied by an mp3 recording of the (Chinese) author reading it in his or her own voice. They're short enough that you can listen several times over in just a few minutes. Then you can go back and read the transcript, and then listen again, until you've got it!

The Chinese Voices Project can be found at: http://www.clavisinica.com/CVP/voices.html

[Yiwan]

台湾国语 is my favourite. I really like how they sound like saying 素 when mean 是, 酱 when 这样子, huang (no characters available) when 饭, etc. It's like New Zealanders will make six sound like sex!

[choisum]

I would suggest listening to radio shows with phone-ins. People phoning in tend to speak as they would in the wild.

[DrWatson]

I notice people keep mentioning watching dramas or TV shows. This really interests me as it was how I learned my second language before I started with Chinese. However, where do you all find these dramas or TV shows? Where I live I can't buy the videos in stores, and there is not a large population of Chinese here so there are no ethnic stores catering to a Chinese population. I have tried searching for some stores online, but the prices can be very high! Is everyone using Baidu or something like that?

[muyongshi]

http://www.tudou.com

[imron]

You might also check out PPLive, PPStream and VeryCD.