Tips for Learning While Watching Chinese Television

[Frankhuang92]

Hi,

I plan on watching a few Chinese television series to develop upon my listening and vocabulary. I have a couple series with English subtitles. Are there any tips for how to maximize my learning while watching the episodes?

[Markko]

Passive learning never does any outstanding results, maybe you will increase your listening comprehension, that's all.

[flynnfrogg]

i have found this method of 'passive' learning quite entertaining (although some TV dramas are pretty dumb and meant for a teen audience) and useful. But you will have to be like me and be prepared to stop, rewind, jot down sentences etc - I have even played the video at a slower speed (but with the audio intact and not growling bass) (VLC is wonderful for this)

It is better if you watch the TV dramas with BOTH English and Chinese subtitles.

I believe that i have improved tremendously via this method of 'passive' learning.

[Kurtz]

I would also advocate passive learning. Recently, I have had CRI and Beijing Joy FM on in the background and my listening skills have improved immeasurably. Rather than hearing a high speed news stream of incoherent babble, I have now improved my ability to distinguish the words and tones without actively listening. My awareness of prepositions, sentence structure and so forth has also improved.

However, back on topic, your approach really depends upon your level. If your level is low, it may be worth reviewing dialogue and vocabulary in advance (if you have transcripts) and then using the programme to reinforce your study of such words and ability to recall them. If you are at a higher level, I would watch passively and use the programme to see how the language is used, focusing on structure, style and so forth. One approach that I have found useful is to cram Chinese tv once in a while. For instance, one evening I watched endless episodes of the recent Three Kindgoms cartoon back to back without pause or slowdown. After a punishing first half hour, my brain stopped resisting the foreign sounds and trying to analyse each dialogue and then just gave in to the Mandarin! I then found myself assimilating the subtitles and sounds and understanding much more through massive exposure.

[renzhe]

My advice is to stick with Chinese subtitles. You need to see exactly what you're hearing.

As for passive learning, it depends on how passive it is. If you are making a conscious effort to understand everything, it will help your listening comprehension -- and this is very hard and very important. It takes a lot of time, though.

[Frankhuang92]

Thank you for all the helpful replies. My ability is fairly low, I have started watching The Legend of the Condor Heroes and feel that I need to switch to another program. I use English subtitles because I do not read or am watching these shows to learn how to read Chinese. That will come later on. For this summer I just hope to improve my listening comprehension and vocabulary. Watching a couple episodes and intently trying to understand each word and matching that word spoken to the English subtitle is helping me learn more than I expected.

Can anyone suggest some easier television series that I should watch? I hope that they are popular enough to be readily available. I find that I have to re-watch scences of the Legend of the Condor House because the speech is too quick for me to match up with the English, word for phrase or word for word.

[character]

This is a topic near to my heart since I started watching TV series again. Sure it's edutainment and mostly passive, but it does seem to help with the hardest part of learning Chinese, listening comprehension.

Can anyone suggest some easier television series that I should watch?

There's a goodly section of this forum devoted to discussing Chinese TV series; I would look there for more suggestions, though the ones they discuss may only have Chinese subs, if that. You may want to look at shows set in the modern era as they may have more relevant vocabulary/fewer archaic phrases. I don't know if they are easier, but if you want to stick with wuxia, I quite enjoyed Handsome Siblings (except for some annoying side characters). New Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre was enjoyable, but this brand of wuxia can be an acquired taste. I'm currently watching Sword Stained with Royal Blood which is only OK so far.

I find that I have to re-watch scences of the Legend of the Condor House because the speech is too quick for me to match up with the English, word for phrase or word for word.

The only entertainment media where I've encountered relatively slow Chinese speech is Shaw Brothers martial arts/wuxia films. Everywhere else it's a mile a minute, even in kid's cartoons. The best I can suggest is chunking, i.e. learn phrases and whole sentences so you don't have to parse every word most of the time. The more vocabulary/phrases used on the show that you know, the easier this is.

[Frankhuang92]

Character, thank you for your advice and suggestions!

Yes I definitely do not find the out-dated vocabulary and phrases helpful and that may be contributing significantly to my confusion in matching up the speech with the English subtitle. I do not prefer wuxia films, I chose to start with The Legend of the Condor House because it is a very popular show that I was able to easily find the episodes for with English subtitles.

I understand that this is all very passive integration into my brain but it seems to work very well. I also practice my speech and comprehension daily at work on the weekdays so this is simply a supplement to my development. More modern, contemporary show suggestions would be wondering. I will check out the section of this forum for television.

[Silent]

I agree with Markko that just passive learning is not going to help you much. Imho it will mainly result in reading English subtitles and filtering out Chinese speach as background noise. This may still be usefull to get acquinted with the natural native sound of the language but won't yield great results. A more active approach where you rewind/loop parts, lookup words, pre- and/or post study vocabulary etc is a far more usefull approach. Personally I also recommend to use chinese subtitles. If you read along you get a direct match between the sounds and the characters. It's very hard to translate on the fly between chinese sound and english subs. Ideally you should process the language without translation as translations are by definition not (entirely) correct as nuances, double meanings, cultural references etc can't be translated properly.

Can anyone suggest some easier television series that I should watch?

In my experience it's hard to find native material that's slow relatively easy and more or less standard pronounced. My favorite is 奋斗. I'm not sure it's the most interesting series, the main feature is that is has little that really annoys me.

[abcdefg]

I agree with @Silent and @Marko in post #9.

I agree with Markko that just passive learning is not going to help you much. Imho it will mainly result in reading English subtitles and filtering out Chinese speach as background noise. This may still be usefull to get acquinted with the natural native sound of the language but won't yield great results. A more active approach where you rewind/loop parts, lookup words, pre- and/or post study vocabulary etc is a far more usefull approach. Personally I also recommend to use chinese subtitles. If you read along you get a direct match between the sounds and the characters. It's very hard to translate on the fly between chinese sound and english subs. Ideally you should process the language without translation as translations are by definition not (entirely) correct as nuances, double meanings, cultural references etc can't be translated properly.

If you watch Chinese TV with English subtitles and think you will somehow, just by passive osmosis, improve your comprehension, unfortunately I think you are fooling yourself. Especially when you are just starting out. At the very best, if you are a complete beginner, you might learn to recognize some frequently repeated words, such as 我 (me) and 你 (you.) I suppose you might also become able to distinguish Chinese, by its rhythm, from Russian or Spanish.

It's an extremely inefficient way to go about things. Much better to follow some of the suggestions above that involve first familiarizing yourself with the dialogue in a slower, more careful manner, then hearing and watching it live to reinforce the meaning. And use Chinese subtitles, not English ones. Learn to associate Chinese characters with their sound and their meaning early on. Additionally, the English subtitles are often very poor translations of what is actually being said. They are often more figurative than literal.

I will admit that I sometimes go to the cinema and watch a Hong Kong film that has been dubbed into Mandarin and supplied with English subtitles. I wind up reading the subs and my mind becomes oblivious to the spoken dialogue. It might as well be a silent film with music.

Similar thing routinely happens on the street. If I see a sign that has Chinese characters with English beneath, my eye automatically goes to the English and ignores the Chinese. I can make myself consciously go back and have a second look to understand the Chinese, but if I don't do that, the Chinese is lost. Requires effort.

Are there any tips for how to maximize my learning while watching the episodes?

Maybe your brain works differently from mine. I'm not ruling that out. But I think you have to do some active work to make the process of audio learning effective. The Chinese won't just "seep in" while you read the English subtitles and enjoy the visuals.

There are always disagreements on this topic and of course I might be wrong. I cannot claim to have mastered Chinese through any particular method, or to have mastered it at all. Furthermore, I doubt I will go on to really master Chinese in this lifetime.

But by now I can be in the kitchen cooking supper with CCTV playing in the other room and even though just "listening with one ear" I can catch the weather forecast or some major news items. Then I must later go back and double check that I understood it right to be sure. But this method wouldn't have worked for me a few years ago.

[WestTexas]

I think passive listening can help, but only if you are at a level where you understand 80-90% of what is being said. I think I'm at that point now with dating shows and some news forecasts. To get to that point, here is what I did:

1)Cram a lot of words in Anki every day. If you don't even know the 1000 most common characters as well as a few thousand words, you don't need to be watching TV.

2)Once you know a lot of words, you will still not understand what is being said on TV, but you can probably read the subtitles if you pause the video. So, what you do now is, cover up the subtitles and listen to part of a show, maybe like a one minute slice. Listen to it over and over again. Then, go back and pause/read the subtitles to see how you did. Add words you don't know to Anki. If you really want to be serious, try to transcribe the entire 1-minute word-for-word.

After several months of this, you should be able to understand TV shows pretty well.

[character]

I think we can all agree the amount of effort one puts in will determine how much Chinese learning one gets out of watching Chinese TV.

I often think of this statement from a forum member:

"Yes, Chinese is easy if people speak slowly to you, in proper tones and without an accent. But this is not how Chinese is spoken." -- renzhe

For those of us not in China, Chinese TV has the benefit of providing lots of spoken Chinese without the precision of language learning materials, but with context and subtitles. I think it helps understand the many ways words may sound, just like seeing characters in different fonts (or handwriting) helps understand the many ways a character may look.

More modern, contemporary show suggestions would be wondering. I will check out the section of this forum for television.

I would definitely look there. I've tried several modern shows and they were all very bad, so I have no suggestions.

[Frankhuang92]

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I agree with Markko that just passive learning is not going to help you much. Imho it will mainly result in reading English subtitles and filtering out Chinese speach as background noise. This may still be usefull to get acquinted with the natural native sound of the language but won't yield great results. A more active approach where you rewind/loop parts, lookup words, pre- and/or post study vocabulary etc is a far more usefull approach. Personally I also recommend to use chinese subtitles. If you read along you get a direct match between the sounds and the characters. It's very hard to translate on the fly between chinese sound and english subs. Ideally you should process the language without translation as translations are by definition not (entirely) correct as nuances, double meanings, cultural references etc can't be translated properly.

Please do not assume that I am just watching these programs leisurely. I actively listen to the Chinese dialogue and try to comprehend it without the English subtitle. After I hear the Chinese, then I read the subtitle to associate the spoken words with their counterpart. That is why I said when they speak fast it is difficult for me to first listen to the script and then read the subtitle.

Quote

If you watch Chinese TV with English subtitles and think you will somehow, just by passive osmosis, improve your comprehension, unfortunately I think you are fooling yourself. Especially when you are just starting out. At the very best, if you are a complete beginner, you might learn to recognize some frequently repeated words, such as 我 (me) and 你 (you.) I suppose you might also become able to distinguish Chinese, by its rhythm, from Russian or Spanish.

While I appreciate your post, I honestly did not make this thread to ask about the forum's opinions regarding the efficacy of learning vocabulary and comprehension through television. Any amount of basic research will show you that watching programs in the language of interest is effective towards developing proficiency.

I am an American born Taiwanese that has been speaking Mandarin for the majority of my life. I stopped speaking Mandarin for about ~4-5 years and have forgotten a lot of vocabulary and do not recognize the language as I used to. I work in a management consulting firm that requires me to conduct many calls to the Asia Pacific region, specifically Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China. Therefor, I practice my speech Monday-Thursdays and Sundays. And while off work, I refresh my vocabulary and comprehension through watching Chinese programs. At the very best, I will continue to improve both my vocabulary and listening comprehension.

Quote

It's an extremely inefficient way to go about things. Much better to follow some of the suggestions above that involve first familiarizing yourself with the dialogue in a slower, more careful manner, then hearing and watching it live to reinforce the meaning. And use Chinese subtitles, not English ones. Learn to associate Chinese characters with their sound and their meaning early on. Additionally, the English subtitles are often very poor translations of what is actually being said. They are often more figurative than literal..

Efficiency is not my main concern, as I would register for language courses if it was. I enjoy watching television series and I have decided to, instead of watching English shows, to pursue watching Chinese shows to augment my language development casually. I have tried to use Chinese subtitles but two problems arise. First, I have absolutely no reading comprehension, so the text becomes as foreign to me as any other language and effectively I have no idea what the characters in the program are saying beyond what I can already comprehend. And second, my purpose is not to learn how to read characters. Attempting to improve both listening and reading would burden my efforts even further, I would rather just improve on my listening comprehension for this summer.

Quote

I will admit that I sometimes go to the cinema and watch a Hong Kong film that has been dubbed into Mandarin and supplied with English subtitles. I wind up reading the subs and my mind becomes oblivious to the spoken dialogue. It might as well be a silent film with music.

Similar thing routinely happens on the street. If I see a sign that has Chinese characters with English beneath, my eye automatically goes to the English and ignores the Chinese. I can make myself consciously go back and have a second look to understand the Chinese, but if I don't do that, the Chinese is lost. Requires effort

This happens to me as well, especially when the story is at a climax or intense segment. However, this only happens if I take both the speech and subtitles in unison. I use VLC player to delay the subtitle track by a few milliseconds and I actively listen first and then read the subtitles. I find that this is very effective.

Quote

Maybe your brain works differently from mine. I'm not ruling that out. But I think you have to do some active work to make the process of audio learning effective. The Chinese won't just "seep in" while you read the English subtitles and enjoy the visuals.

I am fully aware of this, which is why I started this thread in the first place. To receive suggestions as to how to make this process effective

[Frankhuang92]

I think passive listening can help, but only if you are at a level where you understand 80-90% of what is being said. I think I'm at that point now with dating shows and some news forecasts. To get to that point, here is what I did:

1)Cram a lot of words in Anki every day. If you don't even know the 1000 most common characters as well as a few thousand words, you don't need to be watching TV.

2)Once you know a lot of words, you will still not understand what is being said on TV, but you can probably read the subtitles if you pause the video. So, what you do now is, cover up the subtitles and listen to part of a show, maybe like a one minute slice. Listen to it over and over again. Then, go back and pause/read the subtitles to see how you did. Add words you don't know to Anki. If you really want to be serious, try to transcribe the entire 1-minute word-for-word.

After several months of this, you should be able to understand TV shows pretty well.

Great suggestion, I actually was not aware of Anki. It will be a valuable resource when I start learning how to read. Unfortunately, I do not read Chinese but can understand a fair amount of the dialogue. What I do is I mentally match the speaking up with an English translation and then read the English subtitles to confirm.

[edelweis]

@Frankhuang92: your circumstances are indeed very specific, next time you you have a question you might want to give details in your first post. Else it is only to be expected that people will make assumptions based on personal experience and on forum experience.

[Silent]

Any amount of basic research will show you that watching programs in the language of interest is effective towards developing proficiency.

I dare to challenge this. Research shows that you need comprehendable input to learn a language. Watching programs in the target language is only effective when the material is appropriate to your level. An absolute beginner may learn from watching native TV programs, it's far from effective and there are far better alternatives. If the level is not appropriate the added value is very limited. Of course it may still be usefull, function as a motivator or give you exposure where otherwise you might turn to entertainment that doesn't.

[renzhe]

I agree with edelweis, you should have given us this information in the beginning.

I still think that Chinese subtitles are the best thing, because they write down exactly what is being said, while English translation is often approximate, or even wrong. In any case, Wuxia shows (and I love them!) are probably not what you need. You need something with not too much wordplay, not too much slang, and definitely no Taoist scripture vocabulary -- you want something resembling clear, "correct" speech. Once you can deal with that, move on to accents, dialects, slang, internet language, etc.

Have a look around in this thread: http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/24097-tv-series-recommendations-and-index-thread/ and in that subforum in general. There is a list of shows, difficulty rating, and some of them even have English subtitles. In terms of easy listening and modern language, you can have a look at 奋斗 or 家有儿女 but they don't have English subtitles.

Do look around in the thread I linked to first, because you can easily find all the shows with English subtitles (typically the Taiwanese shows have them)

[Frankhuang92]

I dare to challenge this. Research shows that you need comprehendable input to learn a language. Watching programs in the target language is only effective when the material is appropriate to your level. An absolute beginner may learn from watching native TV programs, it's far from effective and there are far better alternatives. If the level is not appropriate the added value is very limited. Of course it may still be usefull, function as a motivator or give you exposure where otherwise you might turn to entertainment that doesn't.

I do not disagree with you. I never said that watching any program will augment language skills. You are correct that it needs to be tailored towards the audience's conditions and purpose.

@Frankhuang92: your circumstances are indeed very specific, next time you you have a question you might want to give details in your first post. Else it is only to be expected that people will make assumptions based on personal experience and on forum experience.

I agree with edelweis, you should have given us this information in the beginning.

I did not realize that in order to receive advice I must promulgate my life story. My original post asked for advice regarding how to maximize learning, which is something that can be done without being cognizant of other information. I did not ask for opinions regarding the medium of learning I was perusing nor speculate that the forum would make assumptions regarding my purposes, intent, skill level or otherwise.

However, that may be my mistake on my part as this is a public forum where every user is entitled to their say regardless of how speculative they may be. Next time I will be sure to divulge all information, relevant or not in order to stem asserted assumptions.

I still think that Chinese subtitles are the best thing, because they write down exactly what is being said, while English translation is often approximate, or even wrong. In any case, Wuxia shows (and I love them!) are probably not what you need. You need something with not too much wordplay, not too much slang, and definitely no Taoist scripture vocabulary -- you want something resembling clear, "correct" speech. Once you can deal with that, move on to accents, dialects, slang, internet language, etc.

Have a look around in this thread: http://www.chinese-f...d-index-thread/ and in that subforum in general. There is a list of shows, difficulty rating, and some of them even have English subtitles. In terms of easy listening and mo...

The translations are definitely imprecise but they do help a good amount even with it the dialogue being full of archaic phrases and unknown parallels. The problem with characters is that I only work for another two months at this firm before going back to school. I want to improve my Mandarin for practical usage at work as much as possible during these next two months. I work 40-60 hours a week and attend a summer course 9 hours a week. When I need to unwind a bit and relax, I do so by watching these Chinese programs. I do not have the resources at the moment to take on learning Chinese characters.

But you were right on mark with the Taoist scripture vocab and so forth. Thank you for that link and the two suggestions, they are very helpful!

[renzhe]

I did not realize that in order to receive advice I must promulgate my life story.

No, but if you want the advice to be useful, it usually helps to provide all the relevant information. You're a heritage learner, and the best way to maximise learning is likely quite different for you than for a complete beginner. With you, it's likely a matter of vocabulary, new grammar patterns, and accents. Most of us have a completely different set of problems.

If you could understand spoken Chinese and lost that ability due to neglect, then passive learning WILL work for you. Find something easy, watch it until your brain bleeds, and it will click eventually. Probably even without subtitles. But start easy, work your way up, until it stops giving results -- you will reach that point once you encounter material with a lot of new vocabulary, classical language, new contexts, etc.

When you get to learning vocabulary, you'll need to write it down and review it later. Just hearing it several times will not work, you need to commit it to memory by writing it down, reading it, using it in a conversation, or some other modality. This is why knowing characters can help, first to figure out what was just said, then to write it down. Maybe you could use pinyin in the interim?

[abcdefg]

When I need to unwind a bit and relax, I do so by watching these Chinese programs.

Nothing wrong with that. Given your special situation, it will probably help you much more than it would help me.

I am an American born Taiwanese that has been speaking Mandarin for the majority of my life. I stopped speaking Mandarin for about ~4-5 years and have forgotten a lot of vocabulary and do not recognize the language as I used to.

There is a section of the forum dedicated to the sort of challenges you face as a Heritage Learner, who needs to "brush up" as opposed to "learning from scratch." When time permits, you might find it interesting to search them out.

In any case, I hope you have now gotten a few helpful tips for learning while watching Chinese TV that you can use within the parameters of your available time.