Listening skill confusion needs help

[echoinvalley]

Hi every one! I’m a new comer here and have a question needs your help.

 

As a Chinese I have been learning English for many years and have a long-standing question around my mind that can only be answered by foreigners who learn Chinese.

 

Upon my experience understanding standard English news broadcast is much easier than English TV dramas or movies. An intermediate level English learner could get most of the standard English news broadcast after 3 to 4 months of intensified listening practice on a daily basis(1~2hous/day). But it’s a totally different story when comes to English TV dramas and movies. I find understand it is way much harder!!! It could take a great deal of work and time but still goes nowhere. I’m still struggling with it......

 

I came across some post on line of a foreigner who talked about his experience of learning Chinese. He commented that it was pretty easy for him to pick up Chinese TV dramas or TV entertainment program and understood it fully when he was living in China. But it was quite hard for him to get a rough idea of the local news broadcast even he had lived in China for over 3 years. In that thread I found pretty some foreigners who learn Chinese agree with him.

 

In the past I assumed that those who learn Chinese as a foreign language will probably have the same difficult situation as we Chinese learn English. I think they would find Chinese live TV program or TV dramas, movies are more difficult to understand just as we think of English. But sounds like it’s not the case.

 

Since I don’t know a foreign soul, let alone any foreigner who learns Chinese, so this is something I really curious about but cannot get any answer.

 

Can you help me to shed some light on my puzzle?   ------ As a foreigner who learns Chinese as a second language Chinese TV dramas, movies are much easier to understand than Chinese standard news broadcast for you, is this the case？

 

I’ll be appreciated for you kind reply. Forgive my grammatical mistakes in my poor English witting.

[Flickserve]

4 hours ago, echoinvalley said:

Chinese standard news broadcast

 

It probably uses a wide variety of vocabulary that is never heard in daily life.

 

If you had a TV program/entertainment show that few people understand, then you won't get any viewers. 

[abcdefg]

 

On 9/28/2018 at 1:47 PM, echoinvalley said:

Can you help me to shed some light on my puzzle?   ------ As a foreigner who learns Chinese as a second language Chinese TV dramas, movies are much easier to understand than Chinese standard news broadcast for you, is this the case？

 

News broadcasters tend to speak clearly, but rather fast. That might add to the difficulty you are experiencing. (It does for me.) 

 

I'm a native English speaker who is learning Chinese. I like to watch the news on TV and I think most of it is not too difficult to understand because I can see the pictures that correlate with what they are saying. If they are talking about a big storm, they show pictures of rain, trees bending, and water in the streets. If they are talking about a train crash, we see derailed train cars and flashing lights from emergency vehicles. 

 

Where it gets tricky for me is when the news report is about something more abstract, such as a trade imbalance or a population shift or a new political theory. The news program may have charts and graphs to make the information easier to grasp, but I still don't always get it.  

 

The most difficult thing for me with lighter entertainment Chinese-language TV shows is humor. The jokes often sail over my head. 

[Zeppa]

I am British and I can't understand Chinese very well.

 

At one time I wanted to understand the Chinese news better. As abcdefg says, the graphics on TV make it easier. But I would have learned a whole lot of names of regions and cities and political institutions and economics. I don't think this stuff is in HSK. I began to learn it for myself but I didn't get very far.

 

What English news did you understand so well? I taught English in Germany for a long time but I couldn't stand listening to CNN and BBC World News because they used a very simplified language, intended for global listeners/viewers. I think if you heard today's local news here in London with Sadiq Khan against Brexit and Theresa May referred to as the Maybot, you might be mystified!

[XiaoXi]

On 9/28/2018 at 1:47 PM, echoinvalley said:

As a Chinese

As a Chinese person.

21 hours ago, abcdefg said:

News broadcasters tend to speak clearly, but rather fast. That might add to the difficulty you are experiencing. (It does for me.) 

Yes this is a habit that doesn't happen in the west. Newsreaders if anything speak more slowly than normal.

21 hours ago, abcdefg said:

I'm a native English speaker who is learning Chinese. I like to watch the news on TV and I think most of it is not too difficult to understand because I can see the pictures that correlate with what they are saying. If they are talking about a big storm, they show pictures of rain, trees bending, and water in the streets. If they are talking about a train crash, we see derailed train cars and flashing lights from emergency vehicles. 

Good points, with visual aids we understand so much better. Often in a movie or TV show there are visual aids, often there are not. The hardest things to understand would probably be something like standup comedy. Almost no visual aid at all and often very colloquial language etc. Depends on the comedian but in general it's harder since it's pretty random jokes with no plot to follow.

[Moshen]

My Spanish ability is much farther along than my Chinese, and maybe my experience with Spanish listening will be helpful to you.

My ability to understand the news in Spanish changes greatly whether they're speaking with a Castilian (Spain) accent or a Mexican one. I could be wrong, but it feels like the Spanish newscasters speak much more quickly than the Mexican ones.

I have watched at least 10 multi-episode telenovelas on Netflix or Youtube, with Spanish subtitles on. Two were Colombian and the others were Mexican-American. Most of the time I can follow the story even if I can't understand every word, but the subtitles are essential for me.

I also listen on my MP3 player to "News in Slow Spanish" and radio dramatizations in Spanish (like "El Gran Apagon"). I can understand 95% of that news program (intermediate level) and about 85% of the dramatizations (these are from Spain, not Mexico) that have dialogue. If it's narration without dialogue I understand less because there may be more words I don't know and longer or more literary sentences.

With that said, the ease of understanding changes a lot with how much slang there is, how much of the context is familiar and how dense the talking is. What I mean by that is, dialogue in a movie isn't constant or steady. It comes in bursts. Newscasts can give you a torrent of words words words with no mental space to absorb or figure things out.

My suggestion for you is to expose yourself to as much variety as possible, as each kind of material or medium has different easy points and challenges. From the telenovelas I know words like "blackmail," "betray," "trap" and so on, and from the news I know words like "earthquake," "racist," :environment," and so on.