Resources for improving listening ability?

[Moshen]

Hi everyone,

 

Can you suggest podcasts or videos that would help me improve my Chinese listening comprehension?

 

In (re)learning Spanish, my two favorite podcast resources have been, first, "News in Slow Spanish" and a "Coffee Break Spanish" audio telenovela with English commentary.  Now I am enjoying "Nomadas," a travel program produced by Radio Nacional in Spain.  It's intelligent content that's interesting in its own right.  I also like "Radio Ambulante," which is a Latino version of NPR - like an audio news magazine.  And when I travel, I watch the Spanish newscasts on Telemundo, which we don't have at home.  I watched a couple of episodes of "Master Chef Latino" also, which I enjoyed tremendously.  This is just to give you a sense of the kind of content I enjoy and can stick with.

 

When it comes to Chinese, which I am also relearning and progressing in, currently at almost HSK 4 level, I've enjoyed the "Travel in Chinese" videos on CCTV with Da Shan, but I finished that.  I took Yo-yo Chinese's Advanced Intermediate Conversational Chinese course, but did not like it much.  Her method is too slow and pedantic for me (she spends 10 minutes explaining two or three sentences) and her content tends to be superficialities like who is pretty and who is not.  I sampled a couple of different Chinese podcasts, but found them either too difficult for where I am now or monumentally silly and adolescent in tone.

 

Your suggestions?  Thanks in advance.

[Luxi]

There are many posts on audio listening material and tools in the forums, but just as a starter while you get familiar with the structure and search function, these sites all have material at different levels from beginners to advanced, and touch on many different topics.

 

Slow Chinese
https://www.slow-chinese.com/

 

Slow & Clear Chinese (this is more for beginners) 
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdwdSGQsSbcapDmODtOr58g

 

iMandarinpod 

Better known as iTunes podcast for iPhone/iPad, but also has the podcasts on this website 
http://www.imandarinpod.com/hoola/index.php/special-chinese-transcript
(podcasts can be downloaded, the study guide is for pay subscribers but the transcripts or at least summaries of the audio are free)

 

And It includes 听新闻学汉语 (Listen to the news, learn Mandarin Chinese), with transcripts.
http://ichinesepod.com/hoola/index.php/component/podcast/2017-05-26

 

All before you graduate to the wonderful Ximalaya,  and a few other like it. 

http://www.ximalaya.com/

Ximalaya has quite a few very good podcast series with transcripts, but most of those are paid now (I believe it may be due to copyright laws).

[LuDaibola]

In addition to the above, you might want to check out this recent thread where we talk about Chinese historical dramas;

 

https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/56536-long-chopsticks/?tab=comments#comment-437235

 

Your Mandarin is advanced enough that you could just turn off the English subtitles while you watch.  In addition the Viki learn mode mentioned there, there is a company, Learning Chinese from Movies, that produces movie subtitles in Hanzi, English, and Pinyin: https://www.learn-chinese-from-movies.com/  

 

[大块头]

I listened to upper-intermediate and advanced podcasts from ChinesePod for a couple years, and when those got too easy I moved on to native-speaker podcasts. See a list I made on this thread:

https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/12072-chinese-language-podcasts/?do=findComment&comment=432430

[Moshen]

Thank you all for the suggestions, which I am looking at.

 

In the meantime, does anyone have any suggestion for general strategies for improving listening ability?

 

I have two problems I'd like to overcome:

 

1)How not to panic (or go blank) when I hear a passage that has a few key words I have never heard before.  If I could just stay calm about this, I might be able to figure out the topic from the rest of the context. 

 

2)How not to space out during listening exercises and tests.  Sometimes I just "go away" in my mind and don't really hear anything.  Again, this is more likely to happen with material that feels difficult.

 

Both of these are problems with any test (like HSK) where a listening item is spoken only once!

 

Any articles, blog posts about these issues?

 

Thanks,

Moshen

[imron]

This is what you need to do.  It's boring and tedious, but it works if you do it every day for a few months.  You'll need to find other source material because the links in that post no longer work.  See this thread for ideas.

 

10 hours ago, Moshen said:

How not to panic (or go blank) when I hear a passage that has a few key words I have never heard before.

More practice.  See above for the specific method.

 

10 hours ago, Moshen said:

How not to space out during listening exercises and tests. 

You are in control of your brain.  You're only spacing out because you allow it to happen.  If you catch yourself "going away", stop and force yourself to "come back".  If you do this every time you space out, your brain will quickly get the hint that you're not going to tolerate that kind of behaviour.

 

 

[Moshen]

So you mean this method?

Quote

 

This was read in 28 seconds and I think is around 140 characters or so. [snip]

Whenever I don’t understand a section I have little method: rewind listen to the section 1 or 2 more times, use the pause to try to break up the section word by word, and if all else fails and I still don't understand, THEN I look at the script. After seeing the script I listen to the section again all the way through to fully understand it. So, a few minutes of a program may take up a few hours, but hey no one said this was gonna be easy.

 

 

I subscribe to The Chairman's Bao, all articles of which have audio recordings, so I can use their stuff to practice this.  Up to now, I've been using that site to improve my reading - I go through each article slowly, looking up all words I don't know - then listening to the audios.  But I can reverse the order with articles I haven't read yet, listening first.  Maybe I should do this one level down from where I'm already comfortable, because there are always a lot of unfamiliar words in those articles that need definitions.  

 

Thank you!

[Luxi]

I think the confidence comes from actually using the language and talking to real people. It's the best way to develop sustained attention. You'll learn very quickly to fill-in the gaps in your understanding speech and getting the meaning. Can you find any Mandarin speakers in your area? Maybe Chinese students in a nearby University? I like talking to people directly better than through Skype or similar, but Skype can do as an alternative. 

 

Another suggestion: use headphones/earphones.

[Moshen]

Quote

I think the confidence comes from actually using the language and talking to real people. It's the best way to develop sustained attention.

 

Thanks for the suggestion.  Actually I am usually fine when in a conversation.  But for me that doesn't transfer to simple listening, as to the radio/TV/lecture or a passage on an exam. 

 

And I'm already using headphones when I study.

[imron]

2 hours ago, Moshen said:

So you mean this method?

Yes.  If you didn't read it already, see the follow up post regarding progress after 3 months.

 

2 hours ago, Moshen said:

I subscribe to The Chairman's Bao, all articles of which have audio recordings, so I can use their stuff to practice this.

That's perfect because you'll be able to adjust your level as appropriate.  Going one level down is a good idea because instead of having to focus on all the new words, you'll be able to spend the time developing listening ability, of which processing new words is just one part.

[大块头]

If your goal is to improve your HSK test score, another effective study strategy may be transcribing the audio files from HSK practice tests. That's what I've been doing for the past couple of months.

[Moshen]

Quote

If your goal is to improve your HSK test score, another effective study strategy may be transcribing the audio files from HSK practice tests. That's what I've been doing for the past couple of months.

 I found a lot of free HSK practice exams at https://www.allbusinesstemplates.com/topic/LAYZZ/ and they are indeed very helpful for listening practice, especially since you know they won't be hitting you with a lot of vocabulary you haven't been previously exposed to.

[pon00050]

On 6/14/2018 at 8:39 AM, 大块头 said:

If your goal is to improve your HSK test score, another effective study strategy may be transcribing the audio files from HSK practice tests. That's what I've been doing for the past couple of months.

 

 

Interesting. If you don't mind elaborating, I'd love to read about your experience with this method.

Do you mind sharing with us? Perhaps, that deserves a separate thread on its own.

[imron]

1 hour ago, pon00050 said:

Perhaps, that deserves a separate thread on its own. 

Ask and ye shall receive.

 

See also:

https://www.chinese-forums.com/blogs/entry/692-the-90-day-transcribing-challenge-first-complete-month/

https://www.chinese-forums.com/blogs/entry/631-publius-90-day-transcribing-challenge-first-week/

https://www.chinese-forums.com/blogs/entry/791-90-day-transcribing-challenge-final-update/