Reading/Writing Fine, Listening/Speaking Awful!

[hashamyim]

Hey guys,

 

I am new here but thought you might be kind enough to offer me some advice. I've been learning Chinese for about 18 months now and have just passed the HSK3. I have a few Chinese friends and meet up with them to do language exchanges, which is really helpful, however the strange thing is that although my reading and writing skills are all fine (I got 99% and 96% in the exam portions respectively), I have a complete inability to understand or produce even the most simple sentences orally. In fact, unless it is Subject + Verb + Noun or Subject + Adjective, then I'm pretty much useless.

 

Strangely, I did get 86% in the listening part of the exam, though I fear this may have been a combination of luck and logic (after all, if the question is 'Where does Mr Li want to go on holiday? China, the Office or a Cupboard', you don't really need the audio accompaniment... well, unless he has a stationery-fetish...).

 

In my head, Chinese just sounds like a mess of sound, where each syllable could be one of many syllables, each of which has many possible character representations. For me, it feels like trying to understand spoken Chinese is similar to doing a 3000-squared Sudoku. I've tried listening to texts and learning short passages off by heart, but I really don't seem to be making progress. I have even used ChinesePod for a period to pick up shorter sentences. What makes this all the more scary is that I can speak several European languages and can normally pick them up with relative ease.

 

Has anyone else suffered from an audio-block in Chinese whilst having almost no issue with reading/writing? What did you do to get around this problem? Is there a trick I am missing?!

 

Your help would be really very much appreciated!

 

Hashamyim

[eshton]

What I find helpful at times is to think of the character I wanna say then speak its pinyin, that way I know which character I'm pronouncing. You could also write out what you want to say then read that aloud. Don't be discouraged try to speak as much as possible.

[Guest realmayo]

In my head, Chinese just sounds like a mess of sound, where each syllable could be one of many syllables, each of which has many possible character representations.

 

I know exactly what you mean, it can feel discouraging, but I also know that after time and effort you'll see big improvements in your listening. I'm sure you can get good advice about how to get the quickest and best result for putting in that time and effort. I would suggest finding plenty of chatty material that is at or around your level, listen and relisten a lot, 30 mins or an hour every day, after a month you will probably be able to detect real improvement -- and hopefully that sense of progress will prove to you that you are heading in the right direction after all.

Repetition, when you're alert and interested, is extremely powerful.

But it's no surprise that Chinese is posing you more difficult problems in this regard than, say, your nth European language did. 

[Ruben von Zwack]

Hello and welcome!

 

Yes, I've had such a block too. I think your problem is very common. I'm amazed though that you passed the HSK3 and still feel so bad about your listening skills! They can't be all that bad

 

I think I got better at listening just by the sheer amount of time I listened.

On the one hand actively: I make mp3s of what they call "native content" - not random stuff but where I know what they're talking about - and put them on my mp3 player and concentrate while I'm running, or riding the bike.

If you want to make your own materials, too, there is lots of tips on this forum!

And on the other hand passively: when I'm at home and make dinner or do household chores, I have some Chinese talk show or TV series in the background, and when something catches my attention I'll "zoom in" for a minute and listen actively. I also watch a few series and really try to follow the dialogues.
 

Some weird thing I found was - I had to completely separate reading and writing from hearing. I have no scientific knowledge there to back this up, but it was as if for me, the Chinese visuals are so strong that they completely over powered everything else. Maybe something to do with the way my brain is hard-wired? I wonder if others have this weird problem, too.

I kept visual and audio separate for about half a year now, and I feel I'm getting to a point now where it's not posing such a big problem for me anymore, but I still want to keep it this way for a while.

 

May I ask what listening materials you have, and how much and often you listen to what sort of material?

 

Welcome again and 加油！

edit:

PS - about speaking, I think it is just natural that this is the hardest part. I would be shocked if you said you can comfortably speak!

[querido]

To hashamyim:

It's good that you've noticed the problem so soon. I've had this problem much longer than you so you should not listen to my advice, ok? :-) But, here are some thoughts:

Have you ever noticed that upon first listening a new lesson can sound like nonsense-syllables, but after enough repetitions it "clicks" and suddenly becomes crystal-clear? So, nǐhǎo and some other things from "lesson 1" are perfectly clear to you, right? Fortunately, this "clicking" has a distinctness to it. Do you think so? Then THAT click would justify counting those words, truthfully now, as listening vocabulary acquired.

So, one solution that suggests itself would be to go back to "lesson 1", listen on repeat or do whatever it takes to make everything "click", and building up again from there. (And then repetition should probably be scheduled somehow.)

But, a shortcoming of that in my case (and probably for most people) is that "lesson 1" was probably a pathetic little fragment of real conversation, at best. (In my case it wasn't even conversational material.) So, much better, probably, would be suitably vocabulary-restricted material that is much longer. At this moment it seems to me that a graded reader with audio would be a good idea. For example, the Chinese Breeze graded readers come with audio recorded both fast and slow. A 300 word level volume has a playing time on fast of about 45-60 minutes; that's a lot of repetition in a controlled but not too boring environment. And, at least the two I've listened to have been suitably chatty (not just narrative or exposition). You could start with the slow recording but some think that might be a bad idea. (For example, if you were to memorize some or all of it on slow you would lose the chance to experience grasping it on fast, as it flies by.)

Every time I set up a program to begin doing the above I was seduced back toward chopping everything up and flashcarding. Instead, some sort of immersion environment with these things playing continuously is called for. I'm not the first person to think of this!

I always thought that AFTER I understood a lesson perfectly I could put the whole lesson audio on the front of a flashcard and that this would serve well for review scheduling. I still think that! :-(

I don't think my thoughts on this subject are worthless; as with many other learners my inclination and aptitude favor reading and writing, and I just haven't had the strength or character or single-mindedness to make myself do the above. Maybe you're stronger. Good luck! :-)

[roddy]

You say you've been learning for 18 months - how, exactly. What resources, websites, textbooks are you using? How many hours a week, and what are they spent doing? 

[querido]

To Ruben von Zwack:

"Some weird thing I found was - I had to completely separate reading and writing from hearing. I have no scientific knowledge there to back this up, but it was as if for me, the Chinese visuals are so strong that they completely over powered everything else."

A hearty and sincere "amen", sister!

I don't understand it either, and I haven't really acted on it yet as you have, but can I tell you a little story about why this was on my mind lately? Recently I was trying to get started studying Cantonese. (To make a long story short) I resolved to study only spoken Cantonese via audio. Then I struggled to figure out how to do that, to imagine what my study routine would look like, since it is so far from my natural inclination (which is reading and writing). Then I realized that what I was trying to do for Cantonese was precisely what I had always needed to do for Mandarin but had never understood what the problem was and what to do about it.

No matter how I adjusted my study routine in the past, I always ended up seeking to have a "grip" on things, and this "grip" seems to mean "has a link to something in the visual field". But, you know, the auditory field of the brain is just as voluminous and solid, hopefully! I wonder why I don't feel as safe in trusting it?

[makochan]

This article on the hackingchinese blog might be of help:

http://www.hackingchinese.com/listening-strategies-problem-analysis/

 

If you are already at HSK3 level, then lack of vocab probably isn't the main problem.  Maybe the problem lies in either speed or phonological awareness?

 

I was in a similar boat as you.  I started off with mostly self-study and I could read and write pretty well.  I was reading Level 1 Chinese Breeze readers, but I still felt like my listening skill was so low.  My situation changed where I'm now meeting with a teacher one-on-one regularly.  I think being forced to speak on the spot, and exposure to real-life listening has finally brought my listening and speaking ability on par with my reading and writing ability.  So I'd say flashcards/skritter/etc is all great, but nothing can take the place of the face-to-face practice.

[hashamyim]

Hey guys,

 

Apologies for suddenly disappearing after leaving the origanal post - family problems...

 

In any case, thank you all very much for the advice, which I shall certainly use.

 

Ruben van Zweck: I think the idea of separating out the verbal form of the language from the written is probably a good idea. I spoke about this with a Chinese friend of mine and he said that this is actually the way the language 'lives' (so to speak) in the minds of those that speak it, as commonly, a Chinese person will know how to say or write something but not vice versa, and therefore have to look it up. As such, there does seem to be some truth to this idea of Chinese being almost two languages - one verbal, one written which don't overlap as much as in, say, European languages. I think simply spending more time trying to speak would be more help.

 

To Querido: Yes, I do actually have a whole pile of audio files for the 300-word level and 500-word level (both the Chinese Breeze series and others), and I should probably go back to the first level and relisten to them all slowly and on repition, with the blind hope that I will recognise more and more as I go along.

 

Roddy: I've been learning for about 18 months (in two distinct bursts of HSK1/2, then a 6 month break, then HSK3) and because I had only a short time in which to learn everything, I fear I may have overlooked the listening part in favour of the quicker-to-learn-yourself written part. I have been using my own flashcards for the HSK vocabulary along with the exam preperation materials by Huang Verlag (they are in German, but by far and away the best I could find). For the listening part, I have used the CDs that come with those Huang-Verlag 'Vorbereitungsbücher' and a smattering of mobile apps which give you a multiple choice answer for the meaning of a spoken word and, of course, ANKI. I have also been using the Chinese Breeze books, though have given more time to the reading part than my reading-out-loud or listening skills. Of course, I am now in a situation where I need to pull my reading-out-loud and speaking/listening skills up by its bootstraps to be the same level as my reading. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be as easy as I had hoped! I imagine that the pinyin for the characters hasn't really stuck in my head and so when I listen to a piece of spoken text, I hear one word, have to spend 20 seconds working out what that work means from its pronunciation, by which point I have failed to listen to the interim 60 words and am lost! The annoying is that I understand all the theory and the grammar and the pinyin/pronunciation of pinyin, it is just that I don't seem to be able to relate the pronunciation quickly and fluidly to the characters/meaning and vice versa.

 

I'm also aware that my ability to quickly distinguish tones isn't great either (blimey, I'm making myself sound quite incompetent!!) but that article you sent over makochan is really good. I have taken the vocab from HSK1-3 and colour coded it by tones (red, orange, green, blue) as I have been told that tones tend to stay in the head of westerners when there is a colour-coding, as our minds aren't wired to remember tones, as they are, to us, quite an abstract thing. Let's see if that helps. I am also intruiged by his post about listening speed. 

 

Well, I'll give this a go over the next few months and see how I fare at the end of it.

 

Thank you all again for your help in this matter - much appreciated, and sorry once more for the tardiness of my response!

[James3]

I've kind of approached this differently, in that I've been going through The Pimsleur Method (which is totally oral), and have simply ignored the written for now. If you're unfamiliar with The Pimsleur Method, maybe my simplistic way of describing it is to say it mimics the way a Chinese kid learns Mandarin - by trying to imitate what he/she hears. 

 

Each lesson is 30 minutes long. The way a Pimsleur lesson is structured, is they ask a question, or make a statement, and then pause...and you're supposed to provide the answer - outloud - while they're quiet.  Of course, the first time through, you have no idea what the answer is. You've never even heard this question before, let alone thought about it.  But the 5th time or 7th time through, your brain's had a chance to remember it...and so you'll begin to respond with the right answer. I've even experienced driving around in my car (i.e., driving to work and back everyday), and having a lesson playing for several days even though I think I'm too stressed or too busy to pay attention to it...and yet, out of the clear blue, when they ask a question, my brain somehow volunteers this phrase, or this answer, and it turns out to be the right one! Somehow, over the course of several days, my brains had a chance to kind of subconsciously pay attention, and figure out the answer!  I've been freaked out by how well this works several times. So, the method really works. Naturally, the more you pay attention, the quicker you can be done with one lesson and move on to the next.

 

Now, mind you, I've never been able to absorb something fully upon hearing it the first time, so it truly takes me several listenings before it sticks. How many depends on several things. For example, if I'm off one day, and decide to just listen to the same lesson as many times as I can stand it, then of course it will take fewer days for me to graduate to the next lesson, so to speak.  

 

I had a roommate in college who fully absorbed or "learned" something after hearing it only once. He never had to study, and made straight A's. Made me sick, lol.  I've never been like that. Memorizing something has always taken a while for me.

 

But anyway, back to your question...what they say to do is just stay on the same lesson until you can answer 80% to 85% correctly. Some lessons it takes me more listenings than others. But I feel it's very effective. I've got several language exchange partners, and they say I'm doing okay. For some reason, the tones for some words stick in my brain better than others. But I think if I simply review the lessons, it should take care of that.

 

Not sure if you've ever looked into this method, or not, but thought I'd respond from my experience.  My plan is to go through all the lessons a few times, and then look up (and memorize) the Pinyin for each lesson (including tone marks.) And maybe go through all the lessons again. The next time through, maybe I'll focus on the Chinese Characters. That's my plan.  Hope that helps. Oh, one last by the way: when I first decided to try The Pimsleur Method, I was able to check it out from my local library. Not sure if yours will carry it, or not, but thought I'd suggest that as a possible option.

[roddy]

Hashamyim, how are you getting on with improving your speaking / listening skills?

[hedwards]

There's several places where this could be going awry. If your perception of tones is weak, you're likely to have issues. if your knowledge and recognition of grammatical structures is weak, that's likely to be a problem. But, from what your describing, I think you just need to spend a lot of time with the radio on. TV would probably also work, but the goal here isn't comprehension, the goal here is getting used to the sound and the stress patterns.

 

I wouldn't waste too much time on it, but listening for a few minutes here and there throughout the day shouldn't take up too much time or distract too much from your studies.

 

Take a look at this, http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2008/01/21/seeing-the-tones-of-mandarin-chinese-with-praat

 

Once you've done that, it's also great to listen to audio where you have a transcript to follow along. Since you're wanting to develop listening skills, pinyin rather than characters is what you're looking for. And it's better if it's word for word. Once you've gotten better at that, then you'll want to move on to characters, translations and nothing.

[DrWatson]

It can depend on your learning style.  I'm very much an analytic type, and thus in any language I've studied the reading/writing came very natural, but the speaking was very painful.

 

I'd recommend that you just try to get as much practice speaking as possible.  And if you're shy like myself, it can be a real challenge.  In the early stages it is helpful to find someone who is very patient.  My Chinese "mentor" is adamant on making me speak Chinese, so she just speaks lots of Chinese to me, even if I cannot understand.  I have ask questions back to her about what she is saying, and that is helping me to build confidence as well as improving my listening skills.  I remember the first hour we were talking, I was just struggling to get out words.  But as we have progressed, it is getting more comfortable.  My speaking is still awful, but I can actually produce sentences that make sense for the most part.  Hopefully in a few months I'll make more progress!  

 

I've also tried groups before, but being an introvert and with all of the conversations flying by I somehow end up mostly listening.  And this is not surprising, because at a table full of English speakers I'm usually the one mostly listening.

 

So my advice is to find someone you can practice with one-on-one, and just speak.  It can help to agree to a topic before hand to talk about, and then prep for that topic with the right vocab fresh in your mind.  The conversation will go all over the place, but at least you have some starting point.

[Coys1991]

I have been watching some Chinese anime in hopes of accomplishing this same barrier you have. Rainbow Cat & Blue Rabbit:Legend of the Seven Swords 喜羊羊与灰太狼 are just several of the shows I have been watching in order to hear the tones at a normal pace.  Hope this helps.  

[hedwards]

Anime is definitely inferior for learning than video of actual speakers is. That's not to say that people shouldn't be watching Anime, just that cartoons in general don't give you much of a hint about how to read lips and reading lips is a huge benefit when it comes to identifying the words and sounds that the speaker is making.

 

But, if it's something you enjoy and you can't find any live action TV/Movies to watch, it's not bad, it's just not as good as learning to hear off of materials that show the facial expressions that correspond with various words.

[imron]

Surely that's a good thing though for improving pure listening skills - e.g. when you need to understand people over the phone or some other situation where you don't have visual clues.

[hedwards]

@imron, eventually that's good practice, but it's not necessarily a good place to start. If a person's listening and speaking are awful, then it's probably the wrong place to be getting practice listening. When you're learning to make the correct sounds it helps a lot to be looking at the face as there's going to be tons of hints about how to make the sounds correctly. Not to mention that you get practice identifying the correct emotions that go wtih the words.

 

On a side note, the phone is a particularly harsh place to be using Mandarin. Because of the way that the technology works, it interferese with some of the higher tones and can otherwise distort what's being said. Obviously, the Chinese use phones so it's a problem that can be solved, but it's not something that I would recommend to beginners until they've figured out how to understand undistorted Chinese.

 

It's a bit like starting to read by reading a regular book. Yes, you will learn and yes it's probably where you want to end up; however it's a lot more work than if you used a graded reader and learned most of the vocab before you started.

 

Like I implied, for people that really love Anime the motivation to watch and pay attention might well make up for the inferior source, but it's still better to watch video where you can see the facial expressions as lip reading is an essential skill for anybody that wants to reach higher levels of listening. I know that in my personal life I do a fair amount of lipreading to confirm that what I'm hearing is what the speaker is saying. Most people do it, they just aren't aware that they're doing it because it's so natural.

[imron]

When you're learning to make the correct sounds it helps a lot to be looking at the face as there's going to be tons of hints about how to make the sounds correctly

I agree with this when you're learning to make the sounds, but that's something that ideally happens in the first few weeks of learning Mandarin (with continual minor adjustments as you go along).  At 18 months in I had figured the OP was beyond that stage and was looking at how to improve general listening comprehension.

 

the phone is a particularly harsh place to be using Mandarin

Yes, but it's something every serious learner will find themselves using eventually.

 

as lip reading is an essential skill for anybody that wants to reach higher levels of listening

I disagree with this strongly.  My listening skills reached higher levels through listening to radio and breaking and looping and analysing the words until I understood, as described in this old post here.  No visual cues required, and it makes sure you're developing purely aural skills.  By definition, if you are relying on lip reading to help with listening comprehension then your listening skills have not yet reached higher levels (it is listening + lip reading that have done that).

[hedwards]

Imron, I strongly disagree with you here.

 

Native speakers make use of lipreading and facial expressions extensively when communicating verbally and it would be absurd to suggest that natives aren't fluent in their language. It's why you see so much arguing, disagreeing and confusion amongst native speakers when you have just text to work from. Native speakers will read the subtext so naturally that they don't pay much conscious attention to these other aspects of commuication. The actual words themselves only represent about 10% or so of the communication that's going on.

 

When it comes to radio programming, the register there isn't the same as the one you'll likely find on the streets in large part because it has to be self contained. The words themselves plus whatever sound effects can be brought to bear are all they have to work with. It will help you to learn to listen, but once the OP has the basic stress and intonation patterns down, it won't be anywhere near as efficient to learn from as other sources of material are. It's a case of subsidizing the markers of success without getting the comprehensible input that's needed to get that success in an efficient manner.

 

As for 18 months, it might well be that he's beyond the point where he needs video; however unless he's exaggerating how bad his speaking and listening skills are, I'd tend to recommend a more basic line of work until the results improve. 18 months of poorly pronounced Chinese isn't necessarily going to be any better than a month or two of properly pronounced Chinese and without actually knowing, I'd rather keep my recommendations on the conservative side. If they're too conservative, he can always move to things that are more challenging after mastering them.

[imron]

Native speakers make use of lipreading and facial expressions extensively when communicating verbally and it would be absurd to suggest that natives aren't fluent in their language

You're right, it would be, and that is not what I said or suggested.

 

Previously you said 'lip reading was an essential skill for developing listening skills'.  What you are talking about now is face to face communication - of which listening skills are just one part.  My post was talking about improving listening skills (which is one of the things the OP directly asked for), and from personal experience, this is the way that helped me break through the same listening skill barrier that the OP (and every Chinese learner at some point) is in.

 

I will also reiterate my point that if you need to rely on other cues for understanding (lip reading, subtitles etc), then your listening skills still have room for improvement.

 

I agree that the register on the radio is different from what you'll find in the streets - and that's ok, because it's not register that the above method works to improve, it's getting the brain to the point where it can listen and process the words at a speed fast enough that it can make sense of things without getting lost in a continuous stream of new words.  It goes well beyond things like 'basic stress and intonation patterns', and this is a skill that will readily transfer across from listening to radio or other audio to face to face communication.  You'll note the method above also makes extensive use on transcripts and works on small sentences at a time, building up as listening skills and vocabulary improve so you never need to be out of depth.

 

 

 

As for 18 months, it might well be that he's beyond the point where he needs video;

I didn't say he was beyond the point where he needs video, I said he should be beyond the point where he needs to be looking at people's mouths to figure out the correct way to pronounce something.  If not, then I agree it's something he should go back and work on - but that was not the problem he mentioned in his post.