Listening, very very confused

October 30, 2018 at 11:52 PM

Hi everyone,

I have been studying Chinese for a year, i have HSK 2 at the Confucius Institute of Bologna Italy.

I would like to improve my chinese listening, but i'm very confused because i don't know how i have to begin.

Everything seems too difficult, podcasts, cartoons, manga, tv series, films, cctv. Perhaps my level is too low.

When i see a tv serie, for example, is better with eng, ita or ch subtitle?

What do you raccomend to start with? I should have an hour a day for listening.

Many thanks

红龙

October 31, 2018 at 12:56 AM

Hong Long,

Are these too easy for you?

October 31, 2018 at 01:19 AM

At HSK 2 (300 words right?) native material will be inappropriate.

However the Chinese breeze series is good. You could also try Chinese pod . They have a huge amount of lessons .

The Chinese Graded reader series (PLECO version much easier to use) is not bad. The stories are quite lengthy however they all seem to be focusing the same theme and a little dull.

It is important to find the right level of difficulty when listening otherwise it becomes quite a chore. Plenty of great posts on this website.

October 31, 2018 at 02:52 AM

Unfortunately, you will need several years of studying before you can start to tackle things like TV shows and films. I have been studying Chinese for over two years now, and watching TV shows is quite a chore. A 40 minute episode will take me hours to get through if I actually want to understand it.

This means that as you're building up your listening skills, you have to face the somewhat uncomfortable fact that you must spend a while listening to rather dull audio materials. As your listening abilities improve, the complexity of materials you can understand will increase, but the day where you can sit back on your couch, grab a drink, load up a Chinese drama, and just calmly enjoy it lies yet some years away. Stay dedicated and you will get there, the human mind is an amazing thing.

For now, I suggest trying to mix your audio input a little bit. You should have some input that you expect yourself to be able to fully understand. As you're listening to this, focus carefully and make sure you understand precisely what is being said. Don't be satisfied hearing some keywords and extrapolating the meaning. On the other hand, you should also have some audio that is slightly above your level. When listening, your goal is not to understand completely, but rather to stretch your mind and familiarize yourself with the next level - usually a slightly faster pace, some more colloquial expressions, and new vocabulary (that you won't understand).

There was a YouTube channel I came across a while ago with really amazing videos, it's called Slow & Clear Chinese. There should be a good amount of material there. Sadly the creator stopped making videos, she said she was working on a new app that would be released soon. That was a long time ago, and I'm not sure if the app ever was released.

October 31, 2018 at 04:37 AM

1 hour ago, Apollys said:

As you're listening to this, focus carefully and make sure you understand precisely what is being said. Don't be satisfied hearing some keywords and extrapolating the meaning. On the other hand, you should also have some audio that is slightly above your level. When listening, your goal is not to understand completely, but rather to stretch your mind and familiarize yourself with the next level - usually a slightly faster pace, some more colloquial expressions, and new vocabulary (that you won't understand).

Yes i agree with this, i really don't believe in this slap and dash approach to listening or reading (like a HSK exam). However I do recognise that you do need to pick up a skill where you can get the general gist of it and filter out unknown information. For example when talking to people you can't stop them every word to confirm what is being said. I found when interacting with people everyday my listening improved but only the ith words I already knew, so in effect it just reinforced information already studied. However to improve I simply needed to go through audio materials line by line, word by word. There was no way around that, roll up the sleeves get the coffee pot on and and get stuck in.

With every language teacher I had, they all had this approach whereby you are supposed to get the general gist and move on to the next lesson. That never worked for me and my colleagues, we just saw no improvement every after several months. Thus we became more and more mildly irritated at the stubborn approach by some of the teachers. Only When we insisted that the teachers go through these line by line and explain everything (as we were paying for a private class), we all improved.

For me I need a 85% comprehension rate min before you move on.

As for how to listen, i find using audio material with VLC player on PC very efficient. It's easy to jump back 10 secs or so, slow down, speed up the audio with a shortcut key, without interrupting the flow of the audio too much. This assumes you have the MP3 file, movie file, streaming already . Not useful for youtube though

October 31, 2018 at 11:08 AM

One way to make sure the material is at the appropriate level is to use a text book that comes with audio. I use New Practical Chinese Reader and there are CDs included that have listening exercises that match each lesson, the new word list and more.

There are also videos on YouTube that go with each lesson, 2 per lesson as with the audio.

I agree that you should achieve a certain level of comprehension before moving on, but also I like to sometimes just have some Chinese audio or TV on in the background just to tune my ear in to the rhythm and cadence of the language, if you understand a couple of words or phrases it can feel quite rewarding and is encouraging.

October 31, 2018 at 03:33 PM

Thanks very much to all.

@Ninjia: these videos seems better, obviosly i don't understand all they seems easyer.

@ Davy. thanks for chinese breeze, for youtube I think is possible to download MP3 file and listens it with VLC

@ Apollis: it is true try to understand something more difficult, the problem is understood if it is not too difficult

@ My textbook has a CD for dialogues and words every lesson, but the quality is very poor, I'll take a look at your text book and cd

A friend of mine suggests me to see Mo dao zu shi Manga or Meteor garden tv series but I think they are a bit difficult .....

If someone have some other advice or links in this forum......

谢谢红龙

October 31, 2018 at 03:56 PM

Hong Long,

These are a little more difficult. Can you understand these?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSDFz1DafnE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBbCZbETK1s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ygp95PC1P1I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQSWY03_vfE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixrNIFO5SCU

October 31, 2018 at 04:31 PM

I'll try these too. Are there chinese script of the videos?

Many thanks

红龙

October 31, 2018 at 05:17 PM

Yes, the scripts are embedded right into the videos.

November 1, 2018 at 04:37 PM

Hong Long,

When you have been through these two sets of videos, the next set of videos I recommend is Mandarin Corner:

Mandarin Corner
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2fAiRQHRQT9aj9P_ijYeow

November 1, 2018 at 04:56 PM

On 10/31/2018 at 12:37 PM, DavyJonesLocker said:

It's easy to jump back 10 secs or so, slow down, speed up the audio with a shortcut key, without interrupting the flow of the audio too much. This assumes you have the MP3 file, movie file, streaming already . Not useful for youtube though

Youtube has speed controls these days There are also plenty of websites that will allow you to download youtube content as audio or video, and then you can playback, loop, slow down etc using VLC, Audacity or your favourite audio tool.

It just keeps getting better!

November 1, 2018 at 05:31 PM

On 10/31/2018 at 12:37 PM, DavyJonesLocker said:

As for how to listen, i find using audio material with VLC player on PC very efficient. It's easy to jump back 10 secs or so, slow down, speed up the audio with a shortcut key, without interrupting the flow of the audio too much. This assumes you have the MP3 file, movie file, streaming already . Not useful for youtube though

youtube : back arrow = jump back 5 seconds

November 7, 2018 at 01:37 PM

Hello, for your case, believe it's about the method when you do Chinese listening practices?

When you do your study, you can try audio learning.

The suggestion is:

Learn with textbooks, along with audio. When you're learning a new text, fist, start with listening to the text once, then read and learn the new words. Finally, listen to the audio once more, without reading the text. Translate the context to yourself to ensure all is well understood. Then, you may then go for the listening exercises of that text (usually textbooks come with workbook which has listening practices), and should find that easier. Repeat this method whenever a new text comes by, and in time, your listening skill should improve.

Regarding the TV and cartoons, believe you can leave that later until you're upper beginner level. But you can check this out: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCipQJmg3yqouy6MRtPv_0Bg, as they have many beginner level's stories and songs.

November 8, 2018 at 01:39 PM

If you don't mind paying I've been using Chinesepod and find it useful. I normally wait for some promo code or discount but they have quite a few free lessons that you might be able to try. There are quite a few free lessons from them on youtube and also apple podcast https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/chinesepod/id914400734?mt=2

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Listening, very very confused

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