Celebrating a listening comprehension milestone (feel free to share yours, too) -- I understood a live performance!

[艾墨本]

I've been waiting for the past two years to go and see a Broadway performance in Shanghai after seeing Matilda but COVID has rendered that impossible. I decided to try out a Chinese production of Tennessee William's "A Streetcar Named Desire" at 上海话剧艺术中心 yesterday. First of all, the whole production was amazing. The performances for Stanley and Blanche were something else entirely and I've already purchased tickets to the Chinese production of Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman."

 

On the language side of things, though, I was stoked to walk out of the theater having understood nearly all of the performance! There were roughly three moments where I really just didn't understand a few sentences, one of which was a joke that got quite the laugh. Beyond that, though, it was all smooth sailing, even picking up on some new puns added during the translation to Chinese. I'm not sure when I crossed the line to being able to understand Chinese at this level (native speed, good enunciation, lots of colloquialisms, no subtitles/live, non-ideal listening environment with distracting secondary noises) but I'm elated that I have. This was a good boost as I've spent nearly all of my reading time this summer reading books in English despite originally having a goal of adding a lot of advanced vocabulary.

 

Additionally, this was also a moment where I realized this is another way I can study the language in a rewarding way. I'll be purchasing the translation of "Death of a Salesman" to study the language in advance. Aiming for as close to 100% comprehension as I can get. I'll look for some quality Chinese dramas if the experiment with "Death of a Salesman" goes well.

 

Are there any listening comprehension milestones that other's have passed? Did it just kind of sneak up on you or could you see yourself getting closer and closer to it?

[markhavemann]

Nicely done! Watching and understanding something on stage is a pretty big acheivement, and I think quite a bit ahead of me right now. No subtitles is one thing for easier audiobooks, but being in a theatre definitely takes the game to a whole different level.

 

My own recent milestone was recently when I finished watching 《赘婿》. About two years ago I remember saying to someone that I wished I could watch Chinese shows for fun in the same way I watch English. I'm not at 100% understanding all the time yet, but 《赘婿》was definitely closer to fun than study. I've also found that the experience of reading novels is getting kind of close to reading for fun in English.

 

[NinKenDo]

Mine's not nearly as "exciting" or "fun" but I found it really encouraging. I'm about to start my last semester of Chinese for now and we have a series of textbooks we use. In preparation for class, since I haven't actually attended a full language focused class since 2019 (my previous two subjects were more literature focused), and I was skipping a semester since I wanted a challenge, I picked up the listening textbook used in the two Chinese classes above that. To my surprise, on first listen to the recordings I was able to understand maybe 60% without preparation, and 80-90% on a second listen. Considering I'd done no explicit listening practice for at least a year, including not having watched any Chinese shows, I was pretty stoked that my listening ability actually appeared to have improved a lot.

[Woodford]

I appreciate this post, because my summer has been spent almost entirely on listening practice (90-120 minutes a day). I've read a ton of testimonies on this site about reading success, for instance, and it seems like most people follow a similar course. Once they start reading native-level novels, they feel "good" about their reading after 8-12 books. However, there are less success stories about listening comprehension--maybe because it's a more difficult skill to precisely benchmark, and also because many people either don't attempt it or give up on attempting it. My listening skills have been lagging, simply because it doesn't feel as good to practice listening. Whenever I would try listening to something (even lower-level material), it would go in one ear and out the other. My brain couldn't get traction. I only understood a word here or a word there, and it felt fruitless. When reading, on the other hand, the words on the page would be kind to me. They would sit still and give me plenty of time to comprehend them!

 

Over the past four years, I have casually listened to Chinese podcasts--while mowing the lawn, driving in my car, going for a walk, engaging in repetitive tasks at work, etc. And it has indeed gotten me to an intermediate level. What used to be totally incomprehensible is now manageable. And I think it's due to, in large part, the interplay between reading and listening. I would understand many things while listening, simply because I encountered and grasped the language in a book first.

 

But I've been meaning to get over this hump of intermediate learning. I need to just sit down, focus all my attention, and consume tons of audio content. To be honest, I don't know what to expect, or how good I'll be after the summer. June-August isn't a lot of time (Chinese study takes years, of course, not months), but I'm hoping for a little boost. Maybe someday, my listening will improve to the point where I can derive more benefit from passive listening--i.e., much like when I listen to English podcasts in the background while doing something else, I can (somewhat) understand Chinese podcasts playing in the background. Then I can reserve that more active/deliberate time for other things, like reading Chinese novels or speaking with a tutor.

 

So these days, I grab whatever looks interesting on YouTube and make a playlist out of it. For each video, I try it first without subtitles, then again with subtitles (looking up unknown words and making Pleco flashcards out of them), then again without subtitles. The next day, I listen to it with subtitles, then again without. On day three, I listen to it once, without subtitles. I think it's slowly paying off! I'll try to evaluate my progress by the end of Summer, and then go back to focusing more on books.

[abcdefg]

On 7/16/2021 at 2:47 AM, 艾墨本 said:

Are there any listening comprehension milestones that other's have passed?

 

One that surprised me was going to see movies in Kunming (in the theater) and later not remembering if the dialogue had been in Chinese or English. I remembered the content of the film, remembered the characters and the action, but just hadn't thought about the language enough to know what version I had seen. (Sometimes these were American films released on the Mainland in Chinese editions 中文版。)

 

I also remember being caught up short a couple times when part of a film  moved to Thailand. Whoa! What are they saying? It was startling to suddenly not be able to understand. Had to start reading the Chinese subtitles, and that was an unwelcome struggle. 

 

 

[NinKenDo]

I love that effect, happened with a Chinese drama for me. I would get 20 minutes in to an episode and suddenly my brain would whisper "oh hey, just FYI this is in Chinese, I noticed you forgot" and it was the strangest sensation for my brain to suddenly become cognisant that it was hearing Chinese and not English.