How to Improve Your Chinese Listening Skills in Six Ways?
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Today, let’s talk about how to improve your Chinese listening skills.
A lot of people have a misunderstanding about listening and can easily fall into common traps. You see, listening isn’t an isolated skill or ability. It’s not as simple as just listening more and expecting your listening skills to improve. Listening is actually a comprehensive skill that includes your ability to recognize sounds, your vocabulary knowledge, and your understanding of the content. Only when these three aspects work together at their best will your listening skills truly improve.
Often, people focus too much on just the act of listening, which is why their progress is slow. So, today I’ll share six tips on how to improve your Chinese listening skills.
The first tip is: Quality over quantity. This misconception about listening is what holds many people back. They think that the more they listen, the better their listening skills will become. But is that really true? Think about your own experience—why does your Chinese listening level improve so slowly? Why can’t you break through? It’s because the method you’re using is wrong. Many people rely on extensive listening, but often they don’t really understand what they’re hearing. So, I believe that to improve your listening skills, you should focus on intensive listening rather than extensive listening. For example, listen to the same audio or video ten times, rather than listening to ten different audios or videos just once. Since Chinese isn’t your native language, your ears aren’t as familiar with it. You need to listen repeatedly to help your ears get used to the sounds and pronunciation.
Now, let’s move on to the second tip: Choosing the right materials. I’d like to break this down into four smaller points.
First: Use videos whenever possible. Videos allow you to see the speaker. Language is more than just the sounds coming out of someone’s mouth—it also includes facial expressions and gestures. These non-verbal cues act as context clues to help you guess the meaning.
When it comes to video materials, I think YouTube is an unbeatable resource.
Second: Choose materials that are at natural speed. Many people listen to slow-paced materials and end up developing a false sense of confidence, thinking that Chinese is easy. But is it really? When you’re in a real-life Chinese-speaking environment, you might find yourself thinking, “Why do they speak so fast? Why can’t I understand anything?” That’s because you’ve gotten used to slow speech, which makes it harder to adjust to natural-speed conversations.
Third: Try to choose videos with just one speaker. For example, videos like this one. Our ears are easily distracted, especially when it’s a language you’re not very familiar with. Distraction is dangerous because your ears need time to adapt to a particular way of speaking.
Fourth: The speech in the video should be as natural and conversational as possible. I don’t recommend learning Chinese through TV shows or movies because the way people speak in those is often quite different from how we speak in everyday life. In normal conversation, people talk in a more relaxed and steady way, and that’s the kind of language you should be learning.
The third tip is: Don’t stress about understanding everything. It’s okay if you don’t catch every single word in a video. If you don’t understand a part, just let it go—there’s no need to get hung up on it.
The fourth tip: Build your vocabulary and improve your comprehension skills. Like I mentioned earlier, these are the foundation of listening. Yes, your ears are important, but these two aspects are even more crucial. Think about it—if you don’t have a solid vocabulary or good comprehension skills, what’s the point of recognizing every sound if you can’t understand what’s being said?
So, how do you do this? Vocabulary can be built quickly by reading novels, but since we’re focusing on listening, I suggest building your vocabulary through listening materials. The vocabulary and expressions you encounter in listening materials are more conversational and practical. After watching each video, take note of the vocabulary and sentence structures you come across. Just like I mentioned in my last video, “How to Quickly and Effectively Memorize Chinese Vocabulary,” you can use memory clusters to help you remember.
The fifth tip: Get your ears used to Chinese pronunciation. Have you ever had the experience where you can read and understand a sentence, but when you hear it, you don’t recognize it? This is an issue with your ears. Like we say in Chinese, you need to “磨耳朵” (train your ears). Since Chinese isn’t your native language, your exposure to it is limited, so your ears haven’t had enough chances to really get accustomed to it.
How can you fix this? A lot of people approach this problem the wrong way. They think that simply listening more will solve it, but it’s not that simple. That method is time-consuming and less effective. When your ears aren’t fully adjusted to the sounds yet, you can use text as a bridge. Watch videos with subtitles or text, and follow along as you listen. The more you do this, the more naturally you’ll connect the sounds with the words.
The sixth tip: Learn about Chinese culture and history. Since Chinese is primarily used in China, it’s naturally influenced by local customs and unique expressions. Things like historical references, idioms, and social phenomena can all be reasons why you might struggle with listening comprehension. If you don’t understand these aspects, it’s hard to grasp the content, and if you can’t grasp the content, how can you understand what you’re hearing?
So, how can you learn about Chinese culture and history? You can start with basic Chinese learning materials like the book *Integrated Chinese*, which includes a lot of cultural and historical content. You can also watch more Chinese documentaries and variety shows, like *A Bite of China* and *National Treasure*, which will give you a deeper understanding of Chinese culture and history.
I believe that as long as you put in enough effort and use the right methods, there’s no problem that can’t be solved. Chinese isn’t as difficult as it seems, and listening shouldn’t be a barrier to your Chinese learning journey.
A lot of people have a misunderstanding about listening and can easily fall into common traps. You see, listening isn’t an isolated skill or ability. It’s not as simple as just listening more and expecting your listening skills to improve. Listening is actually a comprehensive skill that includes your ability to recognize sounds, your vocabulary knowledge, and your understanding of the content. Only when these three aspects work together at their best will your listening skills truly improve.
Often, people focus too much on just the act of listening, which is why their progress is slow. So, today I’ll share six tips on how to improve your Chinese listening skills.
The first tip is: Quality over quantity. This misconception about listening is what holds many people back. They think that the more they listen, the better their listening skills will become. But is that really true? Think about your own experience—why does your Chinese listening level improve so slowly? Why can’t you break through? It’s because the method you’re using is wrong. Many people rely on extensive listening, but often they don’t really understand what they’re hearing. So, I believe that to improve your listening skills, you should focus on intensive listening rather than extensive listening. For example, listen to the same audio or video ten times, rather than listening to ten different audios or videos just once. Since Chinese isn’t your native language, your ears aren’t as familiar with it. You need to listen repeatedly to help your ears get used to the sounds and pronunciation.
Now, let’s move on to the second tip: Choosing the right materials. I’d like to break this down into four smaller points.
First: Use videos whenever possible. Videos allow you to see the speaker. Language is more than just the sounds coming out of someone’s mouth—it also includes facial expressions and gestures. These non-verbal cues act as context clues to help you guess the meaning.
When it comes to video materials, I think YouTube is an unbeatable resource.
Second: Choose materials that are at natural speed. Many people listen to slow-paced materials and end up developing a false sense of confidence, thinking that Chinese is easy. But is it really? When you’re in a real-life Chinese-speaking environment, you might find yourself thinking, “Why do they speak so fast? Why can’t I understand anything?” That’s because you’ve gotten used to slow speech, which makes it harder to adjust to natural-speed conversations.
Third: Try to choose videos with just one speaker. For example, videos like this one. Our ears are easily distracted, especially when it’s a language you’re not very familiar with. Distraction is dangerous because your ears need time to adapt to a particular way of speaking.
Fourth: The speech in the video should be as natural and conversational as possible. I don’t recommend learning Chinese through TV shows or movies because the way people speak in those is often quite different from how we speak in everyday life. In normal conversation, people talk in a more relaxed and steady way, and that’s the kind of language you should be learning.
The third tip is: Don’t stress about understanding everything. It’s okay if you don’t catch every single word in a video. If you don’t understand a part, just let it go—there’s no need to get hung up on it.
The fourth tip: Build your vocabulary and improve your comprehension skills. Like I mentioned earlier, these are the foundation of listening. Yes, your ears are important, but these two aspects are even more crucial. Think about it—if you don’t have a solid vocabulary or good comprehension skills, what’s the point of recognizing every sound if you can’t understand what’s being said?
So, how do you do this? Vocabulary can be built quickly by reading novels, but since we’re focusing on listening, I suggest building your vocabulary through listening materials. The vocabulary and expressions you encounter in listening materials are more conversational and practical. After watching each video, take note of the vocabulary and sentence structures you come across. Just like I mentioned in my last video, “How to Quickly and Effectively Memorize Chinese Vocabulary,” you can use memory clusters to help you remember.
The fifth tip: Get your ears used to Chinese pronunciation. Have you ever had the experience where you can read and understand a sentence, but when you hear it, you don’t recognize it? This is an issue with your ears. Like we say in Chinese, you need to “磨耳朵” (train your ears). Since Chinese isn’t your native language, your exposure to it is limited, so your ears haven’t had enough chances to really get accustomed to it.
How can you fix this? A lot of people approach this problem the wrong way. They think that simply listening more will solve it, but it’s not that simple. That method is time-consuming and less effective. When your ears aren’t fully adjusted to the sounds yet, you can use text as a bridge. Watch videos with subtitles or text, and follow along as you listen. The more you do this, the more naturally you’ll connect the sounds with the words.
The sixth tip: Learn about Chinese culture and history. Since Chinese is primarily used in China, it’s naturally influenced by local customs and unique expressions. Things like historical references, idioms, and social phenomena can all be reasons why you might struggle with listening comprehension. If you don’t understand these aspects, it’s hard to grasp the content, and if you can’t grasp the content, how can you understand what you’re hearing?
So, how can you learn about Chinese culture and history? You can start with basic Chinese learning materials like the book *Integrated Chinese*, which includes a lot of cultural and historical content. You can also watch more Chinese documentaries and variety shows, like *A Bite of China* and *National Treasure*, which will give you a deeper understanding of Chinese culture and history.
I believe that as long as you put in enough effort and use the right methods, there’s no problem that can’t be solved. Chinese isn’t as difficult as it seems, and listening shouldn’t be a barrier to your Chinese learning journey.