Videos to practice listening skills?

[Address7]

I am looking for video clips that would be suitable to watch for a beginning learner of Chinese, ideally subtitled in both Chinese and English, so as to see the characters and the translation. Does such a thing exist?

My vocabulary is still very small, but I would like to get more exposure to the words I'm learning in actual speech. Full TV programs are still much too difficult, but tapes made for language learners are not that great either for this purpose.

Any tips on things to watch? I'm open to anything -- TV shows, karaoke tapes, documentaries, anything.

[renzhe]

Full TV programmes are difficult for beginners, but I'm not sure if there are any better resources out there. Podcasts, maybe, search the forum for lots of discussion about Chinese-language podcasts. EDIT: You're looking for video, sorry, podcasts don't apply.

If you'd like to give some TV a shot anyway, have a look in here. Read through the thread, all the shows are rated for difficulty, and you can see which ones have English subtitles, etc. At the moment, most of the easy shows with English subtitles are Taiwanese dramas.

Depending on your level, working your way through a TV series might be feasible. Most of us weren't all that advanced when we started, and it is really helpful. Get a dictionary, find an interesting show with (Chinese) subtitles, get a good dictionary and get your feet wet!

[Address7]

That's a great link. Thank you very much, renzhe!

[taylor04]

You might want to give language partners a shot. If you are living in China just talk to more Chinese people, or if you live in another country you can find a lot of people on sharedtalk.com and italki.com to talk with you.

Depending on your level, I would strongly recommend against watching a show with English subtitles. Often times, the meaning is slightly changed especially to get it to fit onto the screen, or the translation could be completely wrong. Watch tv shows with Chinese subtitles, try to ignore them and when you don't understand something, read the Chinese, if you can't read it, you already have the pronunciation and the character making it quite easy to look it up with an online dictionary.

[xiaotao]

When I go to Chinatown, I am always on the lookout for videos that have both Cantonese and Mandarin audio. Some of the Korean movies have audio in Mandarin/Korean as well as in Mandarin/Chinese/English subtitles. I was able to get popular DVD sets for a very affordable price.

Youtube.com has lots of mandarin video clips. Do a search on learning mandarin, Mandarin songs with subtitles, chinese movies with subtitles, etc.

If you don't have time to do a search, just buy an appropriate DVD on-line that has all the features you are looking for. Get the one that you can switch to English audio, switch the subtitles.

[Robert14]

The 3-DVD set "Business Chinese at Work" from New Concept Mandarin is superb. Don't be put off by the "business" in the title; there's plenty of practical situation material such as passport control, asking/giving directions, hotels, ordering at restaurants, etc. You can choose subtitles in English, Pinyin Romanization, or Chinese characters. After each 5-minute segment, teachers appear and discuss grammar and vocabulary as well as additional patterns and phrases. All in Chinese with three subtitle options. It's intended for intermediate to advanced learners, but if you're up to the challenge, a beginner could also learn a lot. Available from Amazon in the US and from New Concept in China. I need to refresh my rusty intermediate Chinese, and it seems to fill the bill.

[Chinadoog]

Chinese movies are good for listening practice. Of course, most Chinese films are difficult to understand without subtitles unless you have really good Chinese. But once you get into the habit of quickly scanning the English subtitles and then just listening to the language, it's a good way to practice.

A lot of Zhang Yimou's older films are good listening practice for beginners. I find that there is a lot of basic dialogue in them. For example, ''Raising the Red Lanterns.''