Is it okay to read along while listening?

[ezpar]

I'm currently studying from the NPCR, now on volume 2. I found a college class to be not worth the time & money, but now I'm finding my listening skills perhaps lagging behind, or at least not where I want them to be.

When I listen to the dialogues from the CD's, I can follow very easily if I read along (with only characters, no pinyin), usually on the first try granted I am at least vaguely familiar with most of the vocab. However, once I take the text away, I have a lot of trouble unless I've already read/listened to it several times and basically know what is being said.

Is something to be concerned about? I assume it's fairly normal to be a better listener with text, but should my listening skills be close behind?

Also, what would you guys recommend to improve listening skills? I'm not quite ready yet, but sometime within the next few weeks or months I hope to get a conversational partner, either in "real life" or through Skype. I expect that will do a lot for both my speaking and listening skills, but is there anything outside of that that could be good?

Thanks!

[roddy]

Try doing a few other things before you listen with the text. Ie:

Listen once to pick out any vocab that you already know - stuff you are confident of, where you can say 'ok, that guy just said "post a letter"'.

Once you've got that, take a guess at what the general topic of the piece is and listen again trying to fill in the blanks - ie you hear someone talking about going somewhere, but you're not sure where. But given the above, you guess it is 'post office'.

Now listen again with the text, or maybe read it and then listen again.

Listening with the text won't necessarily do you any harm, but you'll bring your listening up to speed much faster if you force yourself to listen and only listen at first, and the trick to making that less painful is to set yourself meaningful aims and objectives for listening, rather than just 'try to understand'. If you are working with a textbook that sets questions for the piece, try reading through the questions first and then answering them - that purpose for listening is key.

[imron]

Also, what would you guys recommend to improve listening skills?

You might be interested in some of the suggestions in this thread.

[wrbt]

... and don't worry, almost everyone who does college courses in the West or self-study through college textbooks has the same problems with listening comprehension lagging.

[fredrik_w]

ezpar, I have the same problem as you. Listening with text makes a big difference compared listening without text. I feel relieved that other than me have the same problem

This is what I do: Right now Im using the dialogs in the last modules of FSI. I listen to the dialog without text and try to understand as much as possible (as Roddy decribed). After three-four attemts, I cant understand more without the text. Then I listen to the dialog with text a few times more and at the same time pick out new vocabulary. After learning the new words, I listen between 15-20 more rounds (with and without text). I also use the pause button alot and shadow each sentence. Slowly, this method seems to work and improve my listening comprehension. I think you need to flush your ears and brain with a much comprehensible input as possible.

[calibre2001]

If there's a place with plenty of chinese people, go and hang out there. And eavesdrop.

For some reason, it's easier to listen and understand people in real life. I find it much easier to absorb the words and phrasings this way compared to audio tapes, tv shows etc

[renzhe]

I have to say that the NPCR DVDs are unexpectedly difficult for me to follow, especially if I try to understand every single word.

[Scoobyqueen]

In addition to what Roddy said on filling the blancs, try to detect which words in the syntax should logically go where - eg time, place and verbs. Then you lean the pattern which means that you brain will pick out names of people and place names easier and also which is a verb. you should then guess what the sentence should be and then check if you were correct. You will find that the frustration element of finding out you SHOULD have known what this meant is valuable as a learning tool because you are unlikely to forget it again.

Also, you should separate reading and listening at first because they are two different skills. Especially you will not practice listening to tones using this approach is my opinion.

Someone here mentioned that a teacher at Beida continually let the students listen to an audio clip going through it again and again until the students understood it. That student said his listening skills improved significantly and after three months the differenence was noticeable.

It is normal to feel the way you do.

[tooironic]

Like other posters have said, don't worry about your listening skills lagging behind. Let me tell you EVERY single Chinese learner finds listening skills the hardest to develop and improve.

[imron]

Let me tell you EVERY single Chinese learner finds listening skills the hardest to develop and improve.

Sorry, but I find listening the easiest skill to develop and improve.

For me, developing and improving writing is what I would consider the hardest, and by this I don't mean being able to physically write characters, but rather, being able to write decent length passages/articles.

[renzhe]

This will probably be very different for different people. I personally find listening to be by far the hardest part of Chinese.

True, I haven't put much effort in writing (I don't write anything by hand in my mother tongue, I don't intend to train this in Chinese), and I don't live in China like many of you, so the listening part is bound to be difficult due to the lack of immersion.

EDIT: It was frustrating to watch one of our Grand Episodes which featured Italian. I've never learned a word of Italian, yet I understood the Italian parts better than the Chinese parts. I've had a similar experience with Taiwanese movies vs. French movies. I have about 3 semesters of Spanish study, and I can watch Spanish movies with no problems, although I haven't touched a Spanish textbook in many years. I can HEAR the words I don't know, take them from a sentence context, look them up, no problem.

Yet, after years of learning Chinese, if I don't understand a sentence immediately, it's gone. I have no idea what I've heard. What the words were. Which sounds, nothing. It's been a slow and gruelling process to get to a level where I can follow easy TV shows. I've never had this experience with any language ever.

[imron]

I haven't put much effort in writing (I don't write anything by hand in my mother tongue, I don't intend to train this in Chinese),

As I mentioned in my post, I don't mean writing by hand, but rather being able to write things like reports or other lengthy documents at a level acceptable for professional use. This might be by hand, but more likely than not it will be done on computer. Compared to the other aspects of learning Chinese (listening, reading, speaking), mistakes made in writing are more unforgiving, and also leave a record. I also find it harder to find the motivation to practice writing, compared to say watching a Chinese TV series

[wan_neng]

Language is language is language.

The whole talking/writing debate -- it's just different sets of languages. If you speak like you're readin an essay you'll be sniggered at, and if you write an academic essay as if you were chatting with your pals, it will be ordinary.

But both skill sets cross over, and strength in each language set boosts the other. You can talk chinese to natives all day and your listening will pick up and you'll get what they say, and start to build up your armoury of colloquialisms and everyday speech.

But that doesn't mean you can suddenly understand the TV news -- that will take some more practice in news-watching.

Even then you won't be able to put a formal chinese essay together unless you've been studying your grammar books and reading plenty of books and newspapers, plus essays of a similar style to what you're supposed to be writing. That will have to be followed by writing bad essays, then ordinary ones, then eventually ok ones.

Show me a non-Chinese who has gone to China and learned chinese and done plenty of outside study (chatting to locals), but skipped the hardcore deskwork that they really shouldn't have, and can speak great but not write so well -- and I'll show you a Chinese kid who learned all his english from a book, even studied overseas, but has never held down a real conversation with a non-Chinese; thus can write an essay but can't sit in a circle of english speakers and get the gist of their conversation.

The study and practice provide the framework of your knowledge; but the human interaction provide you with the linguistic soul you'll need to connect with the chinese world. At which time you'll realise that hearing what they're saying doesn't necessarily mean knowing what they're on about.