Listening Skills: does it help to re-watch a movie (scene)/re-listen to an audio?

[Ruben von Zwack]

大家好!

I have noticed (duh...), that every time I watch a film or a particular scene again, I understand more dialogue. So I am training my listening abilities. Great! At least that's what I'd like to think.

 

But lately I wonder - what if I'm instead just training my memory, my ability to make estimated guesses from context, etc? Am I really improving my tīnglì, or am I cheating myself?

 

What are your opinions? Do you re-watch? Or, I guess this is similar but more difficult: re-listen to a podcast etc. And how often?

I hope my question makes sense (sometimes I'm not sure how to word something precisely in English).

Thanks for your thoughts on this.

[imron]

But lately I wonder - what if I'm instead just training my memory, my ability to make estimated guesses from context, etc? Am I really improving my tīnglì, or am I cheating myself?

Making estimated guesses from context is what listening ability is all about.  With your native language, you have so much exposure to the language that making such guesses is easy to the point that most of the time you don't need to even think about it - although sometimes under certain circumstances you might still mishear something, which means those estimated guesses failed.

 

With Chinese, your ability to make those estimated guesses is initially going to be much lower than your native language and you need to bring it up to the same or similar standard, and that means lots of exposure and practise.  Drilling the same segment or scene will be really helpful (see here for one way to do that).  Just make sure that you choose small sentences/segments to start with, that way it won't take so long to get it 'perfect' and then you can move on to new content, keeping things fresh.  The more you do this, the more you'll start to see/hear common phrases sentences from previous drilling and you'll find you can deal with longer and longer sentences/segments, which is to say, your tīnglì will have improved. 

[tysond]

I do know what you mean about memory - did I just remember this scene itself and hence think I know what's they are saying?  

 

If I feel like this I usually close my eyes, and try to listen very hard for every word, every detail as if I am going to mimic them.  Often I do mimic them :-)  To me this feels more active, more careful, but of course it's more tiring too.

 

But I think it's still very beneficial to just watch passively - surely you must be training your brain to spark a memory based on a sound + a context.  

People say stuff to me all the time that I didn't quite hear (in English and Chinese) but I respond anyway based on the context + sound.  Lately my Chinese responses are getting better.  Not much hope for improvement on the English ones.  :-)

[Ruben von Zwack]

Thank you! Guessing, even in my mother tongue - I haven't seen it that way.

Actually I was doing the Audacity exercise with 天龍八部 (Demi Gods and Semi Devils) and I felt like recently I could so-so, with a bit of pain, follow without subs.

But just now I watched 霍元甲 and didn't understand too much. I re-watched, understood more, and wondered - do I get that he's quitting their friendship because this time I catch the words (I do know the vocabulary when I pause to read the Hanzi subtitles, but just can't catch it when it is spoken), or do I "understand" because this time I know where the story is going? And so I started worrying, did I maybe just train myself to guess a typical 天龍八部 dialogue? ("杀了你师傅， 杀了你父母?! 我真的没有!!")

Tyson - watching blind is a good idea. I'll try that and put my brain to the test

[Olle Linge]

I think it's very good to listen to the same audio more than once. Even if you understand 100% of it (which isn't very likely if it's audio produced for natives or anything even slightly above your current level), it's still useful, because listening speed isn't only about being able to understand something said in Chinese, it's also about how quickly you can do that. I called this "listening speed" and wrote an article about it here in case anyone is interested.

It's the same with vocabulary in other areas as well, it's usually not good enough to be able to tell what a character means after thinking about it for ten seconds. For listening ability, this is extremely important, because if you spend just a second remembering what a word means, you're already screwed because the person speaking will have said several additional words that you just missed. You might be able to keep a few in your working memory, but it'll run out very quickly.

So listening again is very good if you're dealing with non-trivial audio. It's useful even if you know everything in the clip, except mostly as a way of reviewing.

[Pingfa]

"what if I'm instead just training my memory, my ability to make estimated guesses from context, etc? Am I really improving my tīnglì, or am I cheating myself?"

Isn't it really the same thing? The two aren't mutually exclusive.

 

It's said that most of what we see visually we're not actually visually processing, but rather the brain makes an educated guess and fills in what it expects to see. I imagine hearing is much the same - language is a lot of guesswork.

 

Lots of repetition and high frequency is key. As Olle pointed out, the only way to improve listening speed is to improve your recollection of the word; you have to become so familiar with the word that recognition becomes instant.

Personally I think going by story is no less valid than going blind - it allows you to experience the language in different contexts, creates more connections for your brain to work with. Even if you did only understand that sentence because you knew the story, it allowed you to hear the sentence just going by ear.

[imron]

But just now I watched 霍元甲 and didn't understand too much

That's ok, because even those these are in a similar genre, they have wildly different stories and the dialogue and situations won't necessarily be that similar.

 

You might want to try something like episodes of 锵锵三人行, which will have a lot of repeated phrases and vocab for introducing the topic of discussion or for pointing out something of interest and so on.

 

Each day has a fresh new episode, so you'll have constant access to new material, which will help show that you are improving (because you'll be able to practise with longer and longer segments)

It's also great for listening because it doesn't have subtitles (but it does have separate transcripts for each episode).

[Ruben von Zwack]

Great, thanks a lot! Not that I can follow their conversations. But I understand a lot of phrases and half sentences, and sometimes when I least expect it, some sentences exchanged are crystal clear. I think this is the kind of beyond my level which is just right to motivate. Most helpful 

[JustinJJ]

I've read the listening article and it looks very useful!

 

I'm at the annoying stage where I'm understanding 95% of what I hear in native programs like 锵锵三人行 and conversing with people is ok, however the catch is that I'll need to be concentrating properly. That is, if I'm distracted or hear a new voice/accent there might be a 'tuning in' time to get accustomed to it. My end goal would be to understand without requiring as much dedicated focus.

 

I suspect the solutions are just to steadily increasing my vocab to the point where I'm at say the 98% comprehension level, to make the last 2% easier to guess the meaning of without as much concentration, as well as continued daily exposure  to get my comprehension speed as instantaneous as I can.

[imron]

I suspect the solutions are just to steadily increasing my vocab to the point where I'm at say the 98% comprehension level,

I would say you're better to work at your listening comprehension such that you can understand 95% without needing to concentrate too much.  Get sound recordings of each episode and load them up in Audacity, looping over small segments and gradually building up to longer segments.  Do a small amount of vocab acquisition while doing this (don't feel you have to learn everything at once, useful words will come up in another day's episode).

[eion_padraig]

I watched one the episodes of 锵锵三人行 and I think I may try to watch some others. Can anyone point me in the direction of where the show's transcripts are located online? Thanks.

[Ruben von Zwack]

Can anyone point me in the direction of where the show's transcripts are located online?

 

When you are on the programme's page (http://phtv.ifeng.com/program/qqsrx/), in the upper right, it's the word "节目文稿" (jiémù wéngǎo - program manuscripts). Click on 更多 below will take you to even more, sorted by date.

I wonder if each has got a transcript though. I was searching for some specific ones and couldn't find them.

[JustinJJ]

 

I would say you're better to work at your listening comprehension such that you can understand 95% without needing to concentrate too much. 

 

After walking through 唐人街 today, I'd have to agree with this. I noticed that if any Westerner talked past me it takes 0% effort to listen and understand 100% regardless of whether they speak clearly or with a bogan accent. With Chinese however, I'd really need to concentrate hard to understand, despite their conversations levels being basic (in terms of vocab, grammar, etc).

 

I'm finding listening to some radio shows fairly easy to understand due to the 'standardness' of speech, but the general public don't usually speak that way unfortunately. Hopefully with time/practise I can reduce the effort required.

[Guest realmayo]

I've often thought that getting better at listening to the easy stuff is just as important as getting better at listening to the more difficult material. My logic is: if you're having to pay attention even to the easy bits, you'll struggle to also pay attention to the more difficult stuff. But if you're used to listening to to basic words and connecting phrases and they take practically zero effort to process, then you're able to give 100% of effort to the bits that you do need to be thinking about.

I reckon relistening means that by the second or third time, you completely know the more easy stuff, you don't need to pay any attention to understand it. Which has two benefits. You're able to focus more on the harder material, and you're reinforcing your competence with the easier language.

[Guest realmayo]

I wonder if each has got a transcript though. I was searching for some specific ones and couldn't find them.

 

Yes, usually. http://phtv.ifeng.com/program/qqsrx/list_0/0.shtm The dates there are usually one day after the date of the broadcast (so if you click on a link dated the 22nd, the date you see at the top of the transcript is the 21st).

Often the video at the top of the transcript page is only a short clip, to find the full length video you still need the homepage and, as you say, the 更多 link there.

[imron]

After walking through 唐人街 today, I'd have to agree with this.

It should be easy enough to verify.  Simply take an episode of 锵锵三人行 where you have a transcript, choose a short section and make sure you understand every single word.  It can be a sentence, a paragraph, a brief exchange between multiple people etc and should be as long as your ability comfortably allows, just make sure you go through and make sure you have 100% vocab comprehension on that section of the transcript.

 

Then try listening to the same section and see if you have 100% understanding.  If you don't then it's not a vocab problem, it's a listening problem.

[JustinJJ]

I'm actually OK with 锵锵三人行 because I've listened to it so often that I'm quite used to hearing the voices of the guests. It's really just new voices that I find more challenging or really slurred / unclear speech.

[Guest realmayo]

You could try the BBC's podcast of the day, only a few minutes long, I'd say about half of them consist of mainly an interview over the phone with someone, and that someone is usually different each time and often the accents vary.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/simp/institutional/2011/05/111111_pod_of_the_day.shtml

[smartmandarin]

Hi

 

Of course ewatch or relisten to TV shows, movies, or MP3s help you with your listening skill, not only that, you can build up your

vocabulary, phrases bank of Chinese.

 

However, you do need to listening to different materials, that way, you can hear/listen to the same vocabs./phrases in different contexts, conversations, or with different accent.