High Level Numbers and Dates 怎么加强听力？

[RichS]

Hi all, so I passed HSK6 some time ago, spent some time outside of China and I'm back now. Looking to strengthen some areas which I suck at。

 

So I still totally suck at numbers and dates when I hear them in things like news reports. I'm trying to listen to news reports on Ximalaya FM and stuff, but I think some more targeted practice may be in order. Whenever I hear a Chinese number above 一万 I still have to do a laborious conversion in my head to know what it really is. Even for things as simple as dates when they are read naturally and quickly, my brain rarely absorbs it as quickly as it should, I'm usually processing it a second later or just letting it wash over me and thinking "Some numbers yep". When I hear something like "Profit has risen by 3.245 billion yuan in the last year" as soon as they say shenme 三十二亿四千五百元..... I just dont understand a word, not even sure if the number I translated was correct.

Any suggestions?

[889]

Find something with a lot of big numbers in it, like a company's financial report. Ask a Chinese friend to read you the numbers, plenty and plenty of them, at increasing speed. While you write the numbers down.

 

Boring and tedious as can be. But I think it'll work. Over time.

[vellocet]

This sounds like a situation for rote learning and drill if I've ever heard one.  Nose to the grindstone, if you passed HSK6 then you're certainly familiar with the procedure.  

 

The first language I ever tried to learn I had terrible problems with numbers.  So, each time I tried to learn another, numbers were the first thing I got down.  I still have trouble with 亿 but 万 and the rest don't give any problems.  I can usually tell when a Chinese person made a mistake translating 万 into English and can offer a helpful clarification.

[RichS]

For anyone interested the best resources I've found is here.

http://www.howtosayinchinese.com/chinese-number-practice-listening-test/
https://futureboy.us/fsp/ChineseWorksheetGenerator.fsp?numDigits=8&font=serif&fontsize=14&casual=y&rows=60&cols=2

The first one is basically exactly what I'm looking for. Just saying numbers quite fast for me to transcribe, the only problem is is that its a fixed recording rather than a "generator". The second basically generates sets of numbers up to 8 digits with no audio.

 

This seems like it should be quite an easy tool to make, infact I'm astounded no one has done it yet. Just an app that reads of random Chinese numbers up to however many digits you want. Maybe in groups of 10 or 15 or 20 or whatever, for you to listen to and try to interpret. Just generate random numbers and remember what is generated so you can check your output. On the reverse, generates random numbers for you to say out (receptive and productive skills).

[mungouk]

Shame the first one is TTS rather than a human voice.

 

I started making a web app something like this for Hindi (where the number system is very irregular) when I was learning it a few years back, but got stuck with audio not working properly and abandoned it.  

 

Like you said, for Mandarin it should be pretty straightforward.