Trying to improve listening comprehension / speed

[Ludens]

At the moment, my listening comprehension lacks far behind my reading comprehension. I'm not sure if this is natural, or if I'm it's my study routine.

As my vocabulary is still quite small, most of my time studying is spend on vocab drills in Anki. Other then that, I try to read chinese on the internet every day, get through my (npcr4) textbook (both reading and listening) and listen to podcasts.

Somehow, I struggle to understand the audio for my textbook, while I have no problem reading the same material. I think it's the speed of spoken text I struggle with most, as my comprehension is much better when I pause the audio after each sentence.

My question of course is: how to improve my listening comprehension? I've tried listening to the same recordings over and over, and although this helps with the comprehension of that particular recording, I'm not sure if it's improving my listening skills in general.

I've recently started 'listening' to Chinese radio, but of course I miss 80-90% of the dialoge. I also watch a few Chinese movies each week with English subtitles. Not sure if this is helping anything, although I guess it won't do any harm either.

Any study advice would be welcome (I'm self-studying outside of China).

[WestTexas]

I think this is fairly normal. I know I have similar problems. I think the only people whose listening ability is just as good as their reading are people who spend almost all their study time listening, or people who are naturally just very skilled with language. Even for many Chinese people, they have to read the subtitles on TV sometimes rather than just listen to it. I remember when I first started watching Chinese TV shows I could understand most of what was said if I read the subtitles, but if I covered them up with a sheet of paper or something, my comprehension dropped to almost zero.

I remember one specific instance when I was chatting with a Chinese girl online in Chinese. She spoke fluent English, but we were chatting in Chinese. She was quite impressed with my ability. When I went to meet her, she just started talking Chinese very quickly. I didn't understand any of it. I told her this, and she continued talking, then I told her again, then she just continued talking quickly in Chinese. I finally stopped her and I'm like, 'Look, I don't understand anything you are saying. Nothing.' She was incredulous. She couldn't believe my typing/reading abilities were so high but my listening skills were so low. I had told her online that my listening ability was not as good as my reading ability, but she said she didn't think it was possible for the gap to be so big.

I figured out about a year ago that my listening was seriously lagging and preventing me from having proper conversations, and since then I have spent maybe 5-6 hours a week doing listening practice. It is much better now. I can understand probably 80% of what is said on TV without looking at the subtitles, and almost everything if I look at them some of the time. Conversation is much easier and more interesting. Still, I miss a lot of details sometimes, and occasionally there will be a stretch of dialog I can't really understand at all. I don't think my listening is ever going to be as good as my reading, and to some extent I think this is just the nature of language, or at least the nature of my learning style. If someone recorded themselves reading a textbook in English (or whatever your native language is), and you listened to it, do you think you would understand it just as well as if you read the textbook? I know I wouldn't.

Chinese, I think, is even worse in this respect due to the huge number of homophones. Words that all sound the same in speech and require a some context to decipher will be easier to grasp on the page because they have distinct characters. Also, if you understand the writing system, many of the characters have mnemonics embedded in them, so they are easier to remember when seeing them (for me at least) than when hearing the same word spoken.

So, just keep practicing, you will get better... eventually. It does take a long time though. And keep improving your vocabulary. Studying vocab by itself won't make your listening great, but if you have a bad vocabulary your listening will never get to a high level. For reference, my Anki deck has just over 10k cards. That's less than 10k words, but I estimate it's at least 6k words or so. I studied Chinese for about 3 years before I even started using it, so there are probably several thousand words I know that aren't in there. I feel like I have just gotten to the level where I can listen to native materials pretty easily in the past few months. Others have made much faster progress, but I am not a full-time student and do this more as a hobby (though I do live in rural China, which helps).

[xuefang]

I've recently started 'listening' to Chinese radio, but of course I miss 80-90% of the dialoge. I also watch a few Chinese movies each week with English subtitles. Not sure if this is helping anything, although I guess it won't do any harm either.

I suggest you to watch more Chinese TV and movies, but without English subtitles. I think my listening is at it's current level just because I started watching Chinese TV.

If you find native material too difficult, you could also try ChinesePod.

[Guest realmayo]

Maybe:

- Use a programme like audacity to split your textbook audio into smaller chunks of sentences of clauses, rip them into mp3s, listen again and again.

- Get a book of listening comprehension tests that's around or slighly below your level: commit to doing them regularly (every day if there's not too much new vocab involved) and don't be discouraged by doing really badly initially -- when I did this I was getting well over half the answers wrong, but improved surprisingly quickly just be doing these regularly. You can use audacity to chop up audio from tests once you've finished them, relisten for a week or two and then revisit the test.

[renzhe]

I think of listening and reading (in Chinese) as two largely unrelated skills. You will simply need more exposure to spoken material, which takes time.

[Olle Linge]

Quantity is king.

I have the same problem as you, but I'm working very hard to change that. In my opinion, listening is about exposure and practise. The more, the better. When reading, you can learn tricks, skills etc., but when listening, I really think it boils down to how much you practise, which I've written about more in detail here. If I were you, I'd do the following:

• Listen as much as you possibly can, passively or actively
  
• Listen to the same file more than once (including your textbook)
  
• Listen actively (trying to transcribe, for instance)
  
• Listen to familiar content (i.e. where you're familiar with the topic)
  

It doesn't really matter that much what you are listening to as long as it is on a level you can understand (I'm not talking about understanding everything the first time, I mean if you can understand it with effort). You can use podcasts (I used Chinespod a lot), your textbook, audio files to other textbooks and test preparation material. Also, although this is obvious, you can listen to real people speak Chinese, either with you or with each other (although that might be difficult).

[imron]

I'm going to point to this old thread which discusses a technique I used to help improve my listening (be sure to keep reading the follow ups). See also my take on the matter here.

For audio with transcripts, my current recommendation would be 锵锵三人行, although if you have audio for your textbooks that would work equally well.

Personally, I found this sort of drilling and repetition (despite being boring and out of favour with current language learning trends) to be extremely helpful in giving my listening (and other) skills a large boost.

[simplet]

I'm pretty sure this is completely normal.

Personnally I've completely stopped working on anything other than my listening comprehension months ago. Actually the vast majority of my study time has been listening comprehension from the very beginning. Just by reading the transcripts or the subtitles when I can't understand the audio my reading ability is STILL miles ahead of my listening ability and probably even still progressing faster.

[character]

If you struggle with distinguishing x/sh, j/zh, and q/ch, drilling on those might help.

I'm coming to the conclusion that memorizing stock phrases (not just words) helps comprehension.

Listening practice works best when your vocabulary knowledge is a good fit for the material.

I watch a lot of Chinese films. There are a lot of great films for listening practice, and a lot of bad ones (weird accents, Mandarin dialects, ridiculously fast speech, etc.). If after the first few minutes of dialog it doesn't sound anything like your educational recordings, perhaps put it aside.

Cheng & Tsui has a "Making Connections" book/CD for improving listening comprehension.

[imron]

I'm coming to the conclusion that memorizing stock phrases (not just words) helps comprehension.

Yes.

Also memorising and reciting passages of text helps too, especially if you record yourself and then compare it against a native recording, and then keep re-recording until you can match the tone and rhythm of the native.

It often feels "less-smart" compared to other study methods to do boring rote memorisation like this, however I personally found it to be very useful in improving my Chinese.

[calibre2001]

I do think conversing in the target language helps improve listening skills. Yes one needs lot of listening but active use of the language helps to sink in the words and phrases learned quicker. Yes those embarrassing moments when we make mistakes do help.

[Ludens]

Thanks everyone for your thoughts on this. Lot's of useful tips!

After reading all your thoughts (+ linked topics) I think for me it boils down to what Snigel said: "Quantity is king." I guess my brain just hasn't processed enough Chinese to be able to keep up with spoken Chinese.

I've also found that my reading comprehension might be better than my listening skills, but that I read really slow, much much slower than spoken language. I need too much time to make sense of sentences, which I guess is also a matter of (lack of) quantity.

On top of this all I haven't been practicing conversing at all. I imagine Calibre is right by saying this has a negative impact on other skills as well.

One more question; Snigel also recommends "Listen as much as you possibly can, passively or actively". I'm wondering what people here think is the impact of passive listening: 'listening' to (but not understanding) Chinese radio talkshows while working, watching movies with English subs (not quite ready yet for Chinese subtitles: too fast and too much vocab, again...)?

[icebear]

At NPCR4 you should have a broad enough vocabulary to get some pleasure out of watching TV and movies. I recently have made the jump into more more Chinese TV and am finding it a great way to passively improve listening comprehension. There are great threads with lots of links/resources elsewhere on this forum, and many Chinese series can be found in great quality on YouTube. Choose a series and force yourself through the first 3 episodes - then decide if you can stick it out or need to try another.

One user that has an incredible wealth of content is:

http://www.youtube.com/user/MyChineseDrama

[imron]

See also this thread for TV recommendations.

[老爷子]

I used the passive listening method a lot when I first started learning Chinese. I knew no Chinese when I moved to China almost two years ago. I studied pin yin for almost a year before I learned how to read and write. I think that is what helped me the most. I could not fall back on reading the captions. I had to memorize a lot of words and rely on what I heard. If your listening is good, it will help a lot with your tones and prouncation. So, with that said watch as much tv as you can and listen to the radio. Also do what imron recommends. Recording myself against a native speakers has helped me in ways I never could have imagined. I spend atleast two hours a day doing this. In regards to helping my prouncation I used the exact same method the Chinese children use when they first start studying pin yin. I got the idea from my Chinese girlfriend. I have not seen anyone mention this method here on this fourm. It is one of those rote memorzation excercise,but it is worth it.

[c_redman]

I'm wondering what people here think is the impact of passive listening: 'listening' to (but not understanding) Chinese radio talkshows while working, watching movies with English subs (not quite ready yet for Chinese subtitles: too fast and too much vocab, again...)?

Passive listening has been utterly worthless for me, at best. At worst, it just got me used to hearing it as gibberish and comfortable with making no effort to understand it. But opinions vary greatly. Khatz, for example, absolutely loves passive listening.

[drungood]

Passive listening isn't something that looks like it's working in the short run because the rate that you learn from context alone is negligible. However, in my experience, by passively listening to something, I pick up the sounds of words, so that when I do finally bother to look words up, I remember them much easier.

Also, by passively listening to Chinese over the past few months, I've gained the ability to hear a sentence and immediately recall how it sounds in my head, even if I had no idea what it means. When I first started Chinese I would have to play a sentence like 10 times to remember what it sounds like even immediately after listening to it.

Hour-for-hour passive listening is an inefficient way to learn a language, but if you're doing something else (reviewing hanzi characters in Anki for example), it's still very beneficial to have some Chinese audio on in the background imo.

I will agree that having Chinese audio in the background while reading English language sites is worthless though. You can only pay attention to one language at a time.

[icebear]

Hour-for-hour passive listening is an inefficient way to learn a language, but if you're doing something else (reviewing hanzi characters in Anki for example), it's still very beneficial to have some Chinese audio on in the background imo.

Absolutely try, especially that the main advantage is that passive listening can be done without excluding other concurrent tasks. Its very easy to setup a playlist for news podcasts, or one which selects a few recently studied lesson dialogues, to sync to your MP3 player everyday. I may not have much time to study intensively, but I can at the least guarantee 30-40 minutes per day of listening while on my way to and from school or at the gym.

[character]

Hour-for-hour passive listening is an inefficient way to learn a language, but if you're doing something else (reviewing hanzi characters in Anki for example), it's still very beneficial to have some Chinese audio on in the background imo.

For me this would be more distracting than anything. I do think there's some value in playing Chinese audio while doing housework/yardwork.

[Olle Linge]

For me this would be more distracting than anything. I do think there's some value in playing Chinese audio while doing housework/yardwork.

I agree. I have made serious attempts to listen to Chinese doing almost everything I normally do, except perhaps talking socially with my friends, and reviewing flashcards is almost the only situation I don't think it's a good idea. It distracts me. Listening to audio in another language is fine, though,so I might listen to the Economist or music while writing/reviewing characters, but I don't listen to Chinese.