Bad 汉语听力教程 tapes

[youpii]

I'm using 汉语听力教程 as listening course

http://www.blcup.com.cn/picture/A0174.jpg (new cover)

http://www.blcup.com.cn/picture/A0160.jpg (old cover)

I bought the 中级 tapes but the quality is awful

Is anyone here also using that course and luckier than me with the tapes ?

And anyway, why are they still using tapes and not CD / mp3 ?

[dalaowai]

Unfortunately that's the case.

I just dropped out of my listening class at JiaoTong University because of the tape quality issue. I complained to the Student's Affair Office and they assured me that the tapes were clear.

After insisting that they weren't clear and I wanted my money back, they followed up and found out that there aren't any cds/mp3s available.

Listening is a small part of Chinese learning. I suggest to concentrate on reading and speaking, then watch Mandarin TV/Movies to work on your listening. You'll learn useful Chinese that way.

[roddy]

Doesn't suprise me at all. Quality of tapes for Chinese-produced material is consistently low.

I actually bought a complete set of books recently (当代中文, not recommended) on the basis that they had CDs and would therefore be a) easier to convert to mp3, and B) would be nice and clear.

However, all they'd done was take a dodgy tape copy, and put it direct on to CD. No extra clarity at all. And as if that wasn't bad enough, they'd only recorded about 20-30 minutes worth onto each CD, and (and this really made me mad) there were parts of the CD where you could actually hear the distortion caused by the tape machine they were using slowing down / speeding up - and they'd obviously either not listened to it, or listened to it and thought, 'ah, who cares'.

Roddy

[Craig]

We use the same series in class. The only plus side is the quailty is on par with the HSK recordings, or so i'm told.

[deterius]

PECKING University Press's 汉语口语, while the following isnt 听力 books per se. I found these have the clearest quality CD;s ever. The CD's have crystal clear sound and I love them.

Maybe there is a ting li version of em?

[chenpv]

I agree that voice quality in most cassettes is discouraging and unpleasant to the ears. But don't giving up practising listening so easily for the sake of some unhandy facilities, IMHO.

To my experience, of course in learning English and German, it is the cassette that helps more than mp3 and CDs. Because cassette can sound differently in differently cassette players, with or without headphone, at low volume or high volume. I think it is just the meaning of listening --------- you practice to understand what the voice conveys but not the voice per se.

I use several ways to practise my listening skills which I want to share with other people here. These methods do not apply to every person, but if it can inspire you to go on, or find your own proper method, I will be glad.

(1) Intensive listening: Find a recording and its transcription, adjust the player to normal playing speed and play the recording sentence by sentence. Listen carefully make sure you hear EVERY word/character of the sentence, (as for English, pay special attention to 'a/an' 'the' 'to' etc; as for Chinese, pay special attention to '的') At the same time, jot down every word on a piece of paper while repeating it orally. This process can effectively uncover what you dont know firmly about the language and examine whether or not you have UNDERSTAND the recording. Make the best try on one sentence, then go on to the next until you finish the whole passage. Use transcription for correction, then repeat the whole process until you can UNDERSTAND and note down every word correctly in the passage. When you do this, you will find that you can hear a sentence correctly but have difficulty in repeating or writing it, which suggests that the voice you have heard havent been truly incarnated. And this process just helps truly hear something not as a sound but as a meaningful sound. However, dont choose too long a passage to discourage yourself and do it once a week is enough since it is very time-consuming.

(2) Varied Intensive listening: It is a backup practice to see if you have indeed understand what you have listened. Drop the headphone, change the playing speed, or turn up the voice a little so that cassette player will generate a vibration noise, or play one of your favourite song with another facility while listening to this material. If you can still be able to repeat what the passage is, then you have no problem understanding the relevant information in the future in other materials.

(3) Selective listening: This is very univeral in English listening materials here which asks you to get some useful messages from the recording. This process helps you to get familiar with the background of the recording which is unfamiliar to you in your culture. Most of the times, people understand others not because they hear what others say, but because they are exceedingly familiar with the background and environment. I believe everyone has the experience that you understand another person from his mouth movement rather than his voice.

(4) Extensive listening: Immerse yourself into the language even though you don't understand a single word. News, radio programs, movies, TV shows etc. can be categorised in this group. If you like, listen to them as you are doing other business, it helps quietly. Of course, you can find a nagging native speaker talking to you all day long, and that helps more.

Just my personal experience, nothing special.

[mr.stinky]

i originally had several hours of the tingli 1:1 sessions, but dropped them immediately.

the 'class' was run by a dodgy grad student, using a crappy boombox, playing 3rd

generation tapes, in a room that was more of an echo chamber. bought the tapes

at the uni bookstore, and practicing was much better on my own. of course, half the

sound on tape 2 was missing, but fortunately the bookstore exchanged it (holy cow,

without a receipt!!)

won't get much more use out of them tho. first 5 lessons plus review (tapes 1+2)

can be done, but from lesson six they do some screwy listen to the speech and

pick the correct answer. nope...maybe in a couple months, when i've actually learned

the vocab they use.

wouldn't it be nice if the comprehension materials were coordinated with the conversation

and writing materials? or is that too much to ask?

[Jive Turkey]

The problem for most of the listening materials from the PRC is not that they're on tape rather than on CD or in MP3 format. The problem is that they're not usually recorded in a proper studio. They probably just use a simple tape recorder and do it in a teachers' lounge. The interference from the turning tape alone will make a recording sound like shit. The problem isn't really tapes at all. If anybody ever has any contact with the people who throw this stuff together, suggest that they at least use a digital camera in a quiet room with all appliances and AC turned off if they can't get access to a proper studio. At the college where I teach in HK, we usually record in a proper studio, but on occasions when we've needed something urgently and couldn't get time in the studio, we used the above described method. Sometimes it comes out just as good as a studio recording and it's a lot cheaper and convenient.

[sui.generis]

At YNNU, they copied the original tapes for use in each class, so as not to wear out the originals I assume. hanyu tingli jiaocheng was one of the series we used, so imagine the quality you got, and subtract quality for doing a two box recording session with them

que sera, sera

[Shadowdh]

We are using Hanyu Jiaocheng and Kan tu shuo hua for the course I am on and while the tapes were too bad they were pretty quiet and the noise was noticeable... luckily we have an IT guy in the class who transferred them to MP3 and cleaned them up tremendously... makes a big diff...

BTW I just bought the cds for New Practical Chinese Reader and had to return the CDs for the 2nd text book as the last one wouldnt play or transfer to pc... so its not just the tapes which are substandard at times...

[youpii]

The recording sounds fine, I think it's a duplication problem: the sound volume varies greatly within seconds and I can hear other tapes being duplicated in the background !

It's really a pity because I think that material is quite good for intermediate level and HSK prep.