Ideas on super-charging listening ability?

Dear all,

Thanks for the input. Here is what is working.

Maybe it will work for others that want to consolidate a level and move to the next.

1) I put all the Elementary Dialogues (only) on the mp3 (thx azerdocmom).

2) I listen about an hour a day. Sometimes actively with pen and paper in hand, sometimes passively, i.e. lying around in bed when I first wake up. Also listening while driving and walking the dog is relaxing (thx julesong & brooke).

3) My problem boiled down to learning the vocab (thx johnb & mark)...It's clear I've been sheltered with PRC sponsored text books and overly polite Pimsleur.

3a) If I did not understand the dialogue at all, I bookmarked the lesson and studied the lesson. Jenny & Ken help make it stick. I saved all new vocab to the vocab manager.

3b) If I pretty much undersood the dialogue but missed a word or two, I looked up the vocab and saved the word to the vocab manager.

4) I spend (I'm still in the process of locking down all the vocab) about 15 minutes a day going through the vocab manager.

5) I just started using the flashcard Audio only (random / auto/5 sec). I listen to the word and try to visualize the character/pinyin. This seems to help me confirm which word sounds I'm picking up.

Thanks Chinese Pod Team & Chinese Pod Users/Contributors

"February 29, 2008 @ 03:34 pm

Oh, I see, I must be the only poddie experiencing the word-salad effect. For others, you only have to know each word in the sentence, and then it makes perfect sense, right? Wow."

For me, sentences usually make sense. My problem is grasping compound nouns - just a string of characters with something in common, but what is the overall sense...?

I really love Chinese TV, haven't watched anything else for ages. It's great that the speakers are almost always accompanied with subtitles. Of late, unfortunately, I can only use streams from cctv4 and sichuan4 (four seems to be a lucky number after all), no matter which source I use. Can anyone give me a hint how to increase the variety of my TV consumption?

jamestheron says Comments

February 29, 2008 @ 10:42 am

pinyin chart: http://chinesepod.com/pronunciation

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Doesn't come with the basic pay subscription. :(

Hey, bilm - you said: "strictly a blues fan...but none of the Kings are on my MP3...only CPod downloads...no lie."

Have you found any blues in Chinese? I have a song here and there that I've collected. :)

There are a couple in Mandarin on this CD (Blues in Asia): http://tinyurl.com/2a4j7t

And Abigail Washburn, who lived in China for a few years, occasionally sings in Mandarin: http://tinyurl.com/yt423x

Check out the song "The Lost Lamb".

She also sings/sang with a group called Uncle Earl. Check out "Streak o' Lean, Streak o' Fat" on this CD:

http://tinyurl.com/ysbhzs I call the song "Péi Gēn," myself. :)

This one's a bit silly, but still fun. Rick Scott and Harry Wong, doing the song "Nor Yau Chin."

http://tinyurl.com/25susa

This one isn't blues, but it's a favorite. Liu Fang's "Zhi Fei Ji (Paper Plane)"

http://tinyurl.com/2a22g7

Also note: I am hard of hearing and hearing aids improve the curve, but NOT always the clarity!

Learning to listen/hear Chinese is going to be very difficult or impossible for me. But I'm still much attracted to it!

So it IS good advice for anyone "older" (or who was addicted to loud rock music!) to, yes, have your hearing checked!

Sorry, thought I was on other thread.

My post above referenced something seen on the linked thread about favorite movies. Should I re-post question there?

Late to the party!

I went to PPLive site as it sounded great!

Earlier post had indicated 'click on green button' so I did. It started to download an .exe file. Is that some kind of

'viewer'? I use a Mac, so no .exe for me! Does that mean I'm out of luck? Is the download necessary to use the site? I'm not terribly savvy about some of these things - particularly if they are specific to "Windows". Can anyone provide more information/explanation/advice?

Thanks

(Very newbie!)

AuntieSue,

Ok, I'll fess up. There is a third problem for listening which is getting familiar with word order and word choice. Mentally, I tend to lump it into the "knowing enough words" category, because it also seems to just require lots of exposure to the language to get, and I believe that part of knowing a word is to know how to put it with other words and make a sentence with it.

对了， This might actually be a tip. Mentally, translating word by word doesn't work for me. Its too slow. I think my understanding is more by phrases, and probably works the best in those rare moments when I manage to let go of my English internal sound track entirely.

However, my basic point, whether you focus on word salad or vocabulary. Is that a lot of a language is made of of details that you just have to know in order to be able to understand it, and I don't see a shortcut to lots of exposure and practice.

maybe it helps if you try the tone pair drills from John Pasdens Homepage http://www.sinosplice.com/products/

(Hey John P. do I get a sinosplice T-shirt if I advertise your homepage more often? ;-) ) ^_^

I've been in China for over three years, and I still find my listening to be quite lacking as well. I can follow the gist of a majority of news stories, but still miss out on a lot of details, and sometimes (maddeningly) the entire point of the piece. But that's a lot better than when I started, as I've recently made it a point to watch the news at least once every two days. I think repeating a single type of program (like the news, a talk show, a specific drama series, etc.) is really helpful, as you'll slowly become familiar with all the names, other proper nouns, and the random series-specific terms they like to throw around. Then you can really start to concentrate on how they make sentences, and you'll really start to grasp how all the little helper words work.

No matter what, it's a long process, and for me, 前面还有很长的一条路要走。

One piece of advice that was given to me was to buy some Chinese DVD's that have subtitles in Characters (It seems that most do!) That way you can replay sections at will as well as help your character reading ability.

Lately, I've been watching episodes of Doraemon (机器猫). The dialogue is really fast and it's a bit silly but it's a nice break from my textbook.

You can find all episodes online here:

http://you.video.sina.com.cn/a/132877.html

Aunty Sue,

I'm not the best person to explain this, but there is a realtively specfic order of sentence construction in Chinese. For example, time usually comes at the beginning of the sentence. So when they throw out the salad, it is a matter of restacking or retossing if you will.

Oh, I see, I must be the only poddie experiencing the word-salad effect. For others, you only have to know each word in the sentence, and then it makes perfect sense, right? Wow.

Improve lyrics helpful triad, skip curious surprise turning, later here, trying day presents, look demographic gist.

melitu,

Thanks for the link. It's a real eye opener.

How about Chinese audiobooks?

http://www.radio.cn/yhtcpps/

has a bunch recorded. Harry Potter is on the easier end... and you can probably get the English version from the library. Read a chapter in English, and then see if you can get that same gist from listening to the Chinese audio of the same chapter. Repeat if necessary. (The site above has HP1 & HP3 in entirety.) You may also be able to find English versions of the other books, too.

While I won't 'fess up to having Meatloaf next to Cpod on my iPod, this may just be the Cpod demographic.

Mark,

Thanks. Had to look up phonemes in the English Dictionary and 捷径 in the Chinese dictionary.

As long as you're green you're growing.

I think there are two problems for listening. One is simply being able to distinguish Chinese phonemes. For that, I think it helped me to memorize some Chinese dailongs/stories and listen to them over and over again.

The second problem is knowing enough words to have some reasonable chance of recognizing most of them when someone presents you with a random sentence. This one I am still working on. 我认为那个问题没有捷径.

Five and a half years and I can get the jist, but not the details, of some advanced lessons. I have pretty consistantly spent about 10 hours a week listening to Chinese recordings (mostly CPOD for the past couple years).

chitty...

lol...you may have guessed I'm old enough to remember Meatloaf...however, never owned a record....strictly a blues fan...but none of the Kings are on my MP3...only CPod downloads...no lie.

more MP3 Tips...

Delete all the music on your MP3. Only have Chinesepod.

That way you cant get lazy and listen to Meatloaf.

If you need a good laugh Shaolin Soccer is great comic relief.

mandomikey,

If someone has a sample lesson I'll check it out.

brooke, azerdocmom:

Thanks. I've been doing both....I brainwash myself on the plane....I think I need to do the driving thing mentioned earlier.

no nothing in me noggin

Yes continuously listening to dialogues when you can is a good way. After a while youll be just listening to someone speaking to you...rather than it being someone speaking 'Chinese'.

billm

Here's my suggestion (if you have an MP3): create a playlist of just the dialogues; play it continuously whenever you can i.e. every waking moment. The music of Mandarin will work itself into your noggin.

Hi billm - I don't know if this will help you, but I've found that in learning Chinese in the beginning stages, I somehow got accustomed to hearing a sentence as a "long blurb of words I won't understand." Thus, I subconsciously developed the habit of tuning it out and not paying full attention.

One day, much to my surprise, I realized if I forced myself to really focus, I was able to understand quite a few individual words and guess the meaning based on what I recognized. The moral of the story, at least for me, is to consciously focus in on every single sentence to grasp its meaning, rather than letting my subconscious habit of tuning it out and feeling frustrated at not understanding take over.

Oh! And if you don't mind sappy dramas, check out Youtube. There are several Chinese/Taiwanese dramas that make for excellent (and free!) listening practice. Good luck!

pinyin chart: http://chinesepod.com/pronunciation

Pinyin chart? Where is there a pinyin chart??

billm, calkins,

Thanks much for the movies... I have added a bunch to my queue.

billm... re: Pimsleur, I once had the same thought as you (going in reverse by listening to an English program for native Mandarin speakers). In theory, seems like it would be a great way to test comprehension. If you get around to trying it, I'd be curious to know how it works.

If you don't want to read the entire thread, skip down to Laodai's very comprehensive list with details.

dhohulin, Here's an old conversation with lots of movie goodness: Favorite Chinese Movies

dhohulin,

I haven't checked out the pronunciation chart, but will do later today.

My favorite Chinese Movies are :

1) Eat, Drink, Man, Woman;

2) Shanghai Triad;

I downloaded the ChinesePod pinyin chart and found it to be really helpful. I set it to say all four tones and then select across a consonant series (e.g., ba, bai, bao, ban...) and also down a vowel series (e.g., a, ba, ma, fa...). I was having trouble hearing things in the dialogs, but a couple of days of doing the above made a dramatic improvement. Also, I have started renting Chinese movies and try and see how many words I can pick out (I would appreciate any recommendations on good Chinese movies). I'm really new to Chinese, so you may be well beyond this approach being helpful.

julesong,

I like the idea. I learned to speak the same way...blabbing out Pimsleur in the car....looking like a raving lunatic talking to myself (although it's more common now with hands free phones).

Problem with Pimsleur is that it prompts in English, then you speak in Chinese.

Maybe I need a reverse Pimsleur that asks questions in Chinese and forces me to answer correctly in Chinese.

I'll start with the CPod on CD.

Thanks!!

I find that I learn sounds better if I do lessons (or, in the case of memorizing lyrics, listening to songs) while driving. They just stick better. So I put the lessons on CDs and listen to them to and from work, in the car.

I can read whole passages of Chinese and understand every word, but I rarely understand a sentence. The same thing when I'm listening, each word is clear and familiar, but the sentence is word-salad. Why is that?

Johnb

Thanks. Good point on the vocab. The lessons here use a more natural colloquial vocab than most textbooks, for example, NPCR.

I've been going off into never-never land on simple things like ken3ding4 and jing1chang2.

I'll start to work the vocab.

This isn't going to be much help, probably, but: listen more. You'll get there, I promise -- my listening lagged behind for a long time, but it caught up (and surpassed) my speaking eventually. Also, bone up on your vocabulary -- the fewer words you're guessing on the more comprehensible the entire sentence is.