Does listening to the radio really help your ability?

[xuechengfeng]

I don't think so, or maybe I'm missing the way to do it. I don't understand how listening to the radio when you have no clue what they are saying helps.

[PollyWaffle]

it depends what you are listening to... the news goes over my head, i may get what the story is about but not the details... however, those gay comedy sketches aren't too bad (forgot what they're called)... whilst you don't get all the jokes at least you know what's going on... talk back radio is also pretty good once you work out the subject of discussion...

[Pravit]

I think it's pretty hard to pick up vocabulary words from radio, since they talk a bit faster than they would in normal conversation, at least in most languages, and if you don't know the word, you probably won't catch it. But it does help your ears become accustomed to the language. As your vocabulary grows and you become more accustomed to the language, you should understand more. I don't know much Chinese yet, but this has held true for other languages I've studied.

[roddy]

Blind listening probably won’t help – certainly not if you ‘have no clue what they are saying’. But if you can direct it a bit it’s useful, even if you still can’t understand the main part of it. From my long-forgotten days as an English teacher . . .

- You need to be aware of what you are listening to. Just turning on the radio and hoping won’t help, get the schedules.

- Give yourself a purpose for listening. If it’s a news broadcast try to get the topic of each item. Or try to pick out numbers, or places or dates.

- Predict what you’ll hear. If you are going to listen to a program about a musician, make a list of vocab you think it’ll use and cross it off as you hear it.

- Even incredibly basic stuff, like trying to identify word / sentence boundaries is useful.

- If you can, listen to an English news broadcast before the Chinese one (preferably from the same channel) – it’ll be broadly the same, and so you’ll already have a good idea of the content and structure.

Don’t push yourself. If you aren’t enjoying it, or at least feeling like you are making some progress, try some nice jazz . . .

[Pravit]

I remember being happy when I was able to pick out obviously foreign names or places, then later getting mad this was the only thing I could pick out.

[xuechengfeng]

Are there any stations someone can point me to, that actually has a site in English? Every time I try to listen to the radio it's in all Chinese, which I obviously can't read.

Good suggestions, roddy.

[beirne]

I mainly listen to VOA over the Internet. They have fairly clear diction but the vocabulary is tough. Most of the news stories are also written on their web page, though, so you can go there to see the words you missed. I went through a period of reading a couple paragraphs of VOA news every evening and adding the new words to my Supermemo flashcards. I miss a lot when I listen to VOA but I get a lot more words than I used to.

[TCcookie]

Roddy's list of suggestions is perfect. Those are all wonderful ideas.

For me, listening to radio/tv/movie etc. was TREMENDOUSLY helpful to my learning of Spanish and, I think, Chinese now. Like Roddy and others said, if you have no idea of what they're saying and don't care and don't try to actively listen and at least pick something out, it's not worth it. However, I have found that, at least for my mode of learning, hearing actual speach and even song ingrains in me the "rhythm" of speech. Even though I don't know what the words are, I come to understand by sound that this is a word, this is probably the subject of this statement, this the verb, and so on. Knowing how to do this by sound helps me internalize the language better when I actually learn it in a more structured environment.

I've found a great thing for me is to do some free listening immediately after an intense period of study. I try to listen for new words and concepts I just learned, and it helps me get a lot more out of it.

Everyone would agree that listening this helps in some way. Some would say it's totally not worth it unless you are actively listening and participating in some way--using some of Roddy's suggestions, for example. I think it really depends on the person and how he or she "internalizes" the language. Listening helps me a ton, even when I don't understand much.

[roddy]

I think another thing to remember is that while radio listening is useful, it’s a very different skill from conversational listening. If what you are really looking to improve is your Chinese conversation, then at least try to find something with dialogue – ideally plays / dramas where it will be more colloquial, otherwise interviews.

[marcopolo79]

Here is the link to the BBC's Chinese site, where they have a variety of programs (just click on the button that says "收聽BBC中文廣播）plus, the format closely followes that of the English worldservice, so if you listen to the English news service first, then listen to the Chinese news service, you'll have a very clear idea of what they're talking about (they both use the same correspondent's reports, order of presentation, etc.) Additionally, the other programs are either interesting, informative, or at the very least, good practice for listening to a wide range of topics. Another plus is that their 主播 all have extremely standard CCTV worthy accents.

[wushijiao]

I'd also suggest listening to call-in advice shows. People give their general info and then explain whatever problem they have. There's a lot of repetition, which is useful.

I think the radio is a great resource for learning Chinese because:

1) It can help you with recognizing the tones.

2) It's cheap.

3) It forces you to listen. At this point, pathetically, I use Chinese subtitles as a crutch when watching TV because my reading is better than my listening.

4) Even for beginners, listening to the language while doing something else is still valuable to familiarize your ears to the sounds of the language. I think that extensive listening to the sounds of a language, even while doing something else like math homework, can still be beneficial towards increasing listening comprehension and proper pronunciation. And, of course, later on one must develop specific listening strategies, as Roddy pointed out.

[owen]

4) Even for beginners, listening to the language while doing something else is still valuable to familiarize your ears to the sounds of the language. I think that extensive listening to the sounds of a language, even while doing something else like math homework, can still be beneficial towards increasing listening comprehension and proper pronunciation. And, of course, later on one must develop specific listening strategies, as Roddy pointed out.

Ｉused to think this as well but have since changed my mind. I can't thin of any thing i have learned listening to chinese radio or tv without defining some goal, as roddy suggested, or recording and then reviewing it. I can appreciate the theory that it accustoms your ear to the sounds but i have just never found it to practically manifest itslef in one's language ability. It could be that i just eventually get frustrated at not really understanding and so subconsciously refuse to listen.

[Jack MacKelly]

it depends what you are listening to... the news goes over my head, i may get what the story is about but not the details... however, those gay comedy sketches aren't too bad (forgot what they're called)... whilst you don't get all the jokes at least you know what's going on... talk back radio is also pretty good once you work out the subject of discussion...

I think it can help, but you have to choose the right radio and work hard at listening to selected stuff rather than some DJ/chattering nonsense

[wai ming]

Ｉused to think this as well but have since changed my mind. I can't thin of any thing i have learned listening to chinese radio or tv without defining some goal, as roddy suggested, or recording and then reviewing it. I can appreciate the theory that it accustoms your ear to the sounds but i have just never found it to practically manifest itslef in one's language ability. It could be that i just eventually get frustrated at not really understanding and so subconsciously refuse to listen.

Slightly off-topic, but I think that's what used to happen to me when I heard people speaking Cantonese. I got so frustrated at not being able to understand, my mind/ears just shut off when I heard people speaking Cantonese.

Nowdays though, since I'm starting to make a little bit of progress with my Cantonese, I think hearing anything in Cantonese helps me practise listening.

I think if you don't let yourself get discouraged, listening to Chinese radio, no matter how fast can help you - sometimes you will pick up a few words you know just because you've become more accustomed to the speed, even though you have no idea what the general subject is. That said, it probably is of more benefit to listen with a purpose.

[Harpoon]

the problem with word recognition is that Chinese almost drop tones completely when speaking at high speed... so you have to assume that "wo" = I, "bu" = not, etc... the most common variants.

[in_lab]

I think speed is less of a problem with mandarin than with other languages. On the whole, learning spanish was much easier, but I had more of a problem with lightening-speed Spanish. In Chinese, the tones limit the speed people speak at. This comparison is more of a hunch because it's so hard to compare the speed of different languages.

[Harpoon]

I think speed is less of a problem with mandarin than with other languages. On the whole, learning spanish was much easier, but I had more of a problem with lightening-speed Spanish. In Chinese, the tones limit the speed people speak at. This comparison is more of a hunch because it's so hard to compare the speed of different languages.

that doesn't make much sense.. i dont think native chinese even know much about tones. its just a natural part of their language. they are ignored in music, and as the langauge speeds up they become less and less distinguishable

[Altair]

I think the issue is not one of speed, but of rhythm. Spanish and French tend to have machine gun rhythms that poorly indicate word boundaries, compared with English or German or other languages. This rhythm often gives the impression of unrelenting speed.

Chinese, surprisingly, has rhythms that are much closer to English than Spanish. One problem for learners who have prior experience with Spanish or French is that they can unconsciously assume Chinese will work the same way as these languages. They tackle tones and Chinese syllables as if they should all be equally stressed and pronounced at equal speed. This can be further complicated by some listening materials that use articifically slow and clear Chinese to make tone recognition and reproducion easier. (E.g., Rosetta Stone).

Rhythm and intonation are actually key components of the grammar of all languages and are relatively more important in Chinese than in other languages. Nevertheless, such features generally get short shrift in learning materials and learners are left to pick them up on the fly. For example, how many of us have ever been told exactly how to produce a question intonation as opposed to a declarative intonation. It is not just the words at the end of the sentence that indicate the difference.

Where listening to the radio makes sense is precisely to accustom the ear to noticing the difference in rhythmic and intonation patterns so that the mind can become open to associating the correct grammatical information along with it and give you the opportunity to reproduce it yourself.

[Harpoon]

the question intonation is "ma1" right?

[Altair]

the question intonation is "ma1" right?

"Intonation" refers to speech melody. "Ma1" is a question particle that is used for one means of forming certain types of question and has nothing to do with intonation per se.

I forget the precise application of the rules, but I think in Chinese yes-no questions (however formed), all pitches are raised to a higher level throughout the utterance. This signals to listeners that a question is involved long before the sentence reaches its conclusion and question structures are encountered.

In English, this type of question is signaled by inverting the melody of regular statements. In regular statements in English, the pitch drops abruptly after the last stress. In yes-no questions, the pitch abruptly rises. English even does this with one-word questions, and language learners that carry this habit into Chinese spoil their tones by turning everything into second tone.

Both English and Chinese have many other intonation patterns that carry various meanings. All this is usually a secondary aspect of language learning, but complete unfamiliarity with this sort of thing is why some people have great difficulty actually speaking or listening at regular speed without some kind of immersion experience that forces them to assimilate aspects of intonation unconsciously. Course material with natural dialog can also help.