“Didn’t you understand or are you being disobedient?”

When I was an elementary level Chinese learner I felt that listening was perhaps the most difficult skill in Chinese. I could write a few hundred characters already, the grammar wasn’t that hard yet and I thought I was ready for conversations with the locals. But then I noticed how hard it was to understand what everyone was saying around me!

Recently I received an email from a reader asking for help on how to improve his listening skills in Chinese. That gave me an idea to go over what different methods and tools I’ve used during the years that have resulted listening being my best skill of all four (listening, speaking, reading and writing).

How I improved my listening skills on different levels

Elementary

One of the first Chinese learning tools I discovered back in the day was ChinesePod. Funny and super useful podcasts on all the possible topics imaginable. I downloaded a bunch of podcasts to my mp3 player and listened to them whenever I had extra time. These days there are lots of podcasts available besides ChinesePod, like my affiliate partner ChineseClass101.

I’ve always taken Chinese classes, starting from 2008, but with listening skills you need to do a lot of work outside the formal classes in order to improve. My next discovery in Summer 2011 was Happy Chinese TV show that features an American Susan living in China, aiming to teach Chinese to beginners and elementary learners. I watched tens of episodes during those months.

Intermediate

I also wanted to try some real Chinese TV, shows that are meant for the natives and locals. I found out, that dating shows are usually on the easy side when it comes to vocabulary and topics. After all, it all revolves around love, marriage, daily life and dating. Shows that I watched weekly include the most famous 非诚勿扰.

Later when I got my two feet steadily into the intermediate phase, I started to watch even more TV shows. Recommended drama series include 夫妻那些事, 裸婚时代 and 爱的蜜方. Unfortunately I find it hard to find Chinese shows that I enjoy, but at the same time it’s been very crucial when improving my listening skills in an entertaining and easy way. I never took notes or stopped the video for checking my dictionary, even though that of course would speed up my learning. For recommendations on specific TV series, check out Chinese-Forums’ topic.

Advanced

Now on the advanced level I can watch Chinese drama without headaches, it’s not necessary to understand 100% to enjoy a show. If you live in China, Youku is your best friend in finding both easy and advanced videos in Chinese. This year I’ve found 飞碟说 (also on Youtube!) short videos, that offer a huge challenge in form of vocabulary and super fast speech.

Another thing that I’ve tried recently is listen to podcasts in Chinese on different topics. With my iPhone I can easily find listening material, like CRI 成长你我他 which features podcasts about education. By clicking the name of the show you can find these podcasts online with transcripts.

One piece of advice on how to improve listening skills in Chinese

How I have learned my listening skills in Chinese is probably far from perfect and far from the ideal route. I can’t concentrate on hours on something that doesn’t interest me and I can’t make my self to check the dictionary during the plot twists of a TV drama.

We all have to find out best way to learn. If you are a diligent student, perhaps you enjoy checking unfamiliar words and characters more often than I. Maybe you even make notes of the podcasts you listen and input the new words to a flash card software. You can find lots of amazing articles on how to learn listening on Hacking Chinese, the best blog out there to tell you how to learn Chinese.

In order not to overwhelm you, I give you only one tip and that’s the most important of them all.

Listen as much as you can.

Listen material that is one level above you, that you can follow but also offers you a challenge. Listen to podcasts, radio shows, TV and movies you love and enjoy. Notice how you can understand words and phrases you have learned from your textbooks or from your formal classes. Fill your smart phone or mp3 player with Chinese listening material to be listened when commuting, exercising or cooking.

This is how I have improved my listening over the years. Now I would like to hear what tools and methods you are using. Please leave a comment with your story!

If you have any questions about learning Chinese, I’m more than happy to answer those in the comments as well.

Recently I got an email from Alexander who wished for inspirational words and encouragement to help him push forward in learning Chinese. Here is his email:

Good morning, Sara

My name is Alexander. Yesterday I occasionally found your blog, where you talking and discussing passing of HSK.
This year I’m going to China,Harbin city for learning of Chinese language. Honestly say, I was and is impressed by your words, concerning passing of HSK, especially, I was inspired by the following expression: “LEAVING OF COMFORT ZONE IS THE RIGHT WAY FOR DEVELOPMENT”.
So, what I’m waiting for? Sara, could you please write me some supporting, inspiring words, words which will assure me, that learning of Chinese is not difficult, that this process is quite interesting, exciting and absorbing? Words, which will help to quit myself from fear of HSK passing? Your additional supporting words, tips and information are welcomed! =)

Thank you very much!

Regards,
Alexander

Unfortunately I can’t assure you that Chinese isn’t difficult, because most things in life worth pursuing are a bit difficult. But something being difficult doesn’t mean you should give up! Mastering Chinese is a challenge waiting for you to achieve.

You have probably seen a version of the picture above online. A simple picture can remind us that if we want to grow, evolve and improve, we need to leave our comfy sofa of comfort zone. Comfort zone is what we know already and we are comfortable in using. But you want to learn new vocabulary, phrases, grammar or characters, right?

To learn something new we also need to do something new, no one can gather information without doing anything. Learning Chinese truly is exciting, it opens the doors for a full new culture, history and a huge country with its people. But along the journey we sometimes forget why we started at the first place, sometimes we need to remind our selves of the reasons we are studying Chinese.

For example over a week ago I was going to an interview at the local TV station to be part of a TV show this Summer. A day before the interview I was terrified as I often am about new things. I even wanted to cancel! But then I remembered that one reason for me to learn Chinese was to experience new things! And what could be a better way than participating in a TV quiz show about Chinese language and culture.

Speaking of HSK, there are two ways you can look at the Chinese Proficiency Exam. One is to improve on your own speed and use the HSK as a level test to see where you currently are. The other way is to actively use HSK as your goals and motivate your self by passing the levels and preparing for the harder exam. For more tips read How to pass the HSK test.

Finally, I’ve always been inspired by learners on a higher level than me. A fellow Finn who has just translated his first book from Chinese to Finnish, Olle who is going to do amazing things on the field of teaching Chinese and John who has his own firm in Shanghai that helps people to learn Chinese.

Alexander, you are on the right path and there is nothing stopping you in achieving your goals! 加油! Add oil! as they say in Chinese.

How would you encourage Alexander to continue learning Chinese? Please add your recommendations in the comments.

Learning and improving Chinese pronunciation is something that pretty much all learners find challenging. I have been learning Mandarin for over five years now and my pronunciation still isn’t standard enough for me. One big reason for this is that I didn’t spend enough time and energy in the beginning to nail the pronunciation and the tones. So no matter how boring it might be to drill that pinyin, it really is worth it in the long run.

I’ve been avoiding improving my pronunciation for far too long, even thinking it isn’t that important as most Chinese people can understand me. But a standard pronunciation is very crucial for a future teacher and in my opinion also an important part in mastering Chinese.

Because having a clear goal is very beneficial to our studies, I decided to prepare for a pronunciation exam. My university offers PSC 普通话水平测试 Putonghua level exam twice a year and the next exam date is in October. My goal is to get those 60 points (out of 100) and pass the exam with the lowest possible grade (三级乙等). Even that is going to be very hard to achieve I believe, but it gives me a goal to work for.

Putonghua level exam

The PSC is actually meant for the Chinese themselves, especially those who want to be teachers, actors or news reporters on TV. China is full of different dialects which affects their pronunciation in Mandarin, so an official exam is needed to test how standard their putonghua really is. A special point to be made is that Beijing dialect aka beijinghua isn’t standard Mandarin.

The exam has four parts:

1. Read aloud the following 100 characters (3.5 minutes, 10 points)
2. Read aloud the following ~50 words (2.5 minutes, 20 points)
3. Read aloud the following text, randomly chosen from a collection of 60 texts (4 minutes, 30 points)
4. Speak about the topic, choose from two options (more than 3 minutes, 40 points)

Memorizing pinyin

In my practice book I have a list of 6593 words of frequently used Mandarin words, 4000 of them being the most common. I copy-pasted all of these to my Skritter* and chose to only study the pinyin and the tone of the words. I’m doing the list in alphabetical order for now and at the moment I’m starting to have words starting with D.

There is no pinyin in the exam, so  one of the challenges is to memorize the pronunciation for thousands of characters and words. As I have already passed HSK6 last year, I already know quite a few of these words. But of course there are lots and lots of words and pronunciation to memorize before October.

Improving my pronunciation

The practice book I bought for PSC includes a mp3 and I have already downloaded that to my iPhone. It includes the pinyin, fifth tone word list, erhua word list and audio for all the 60 stories. I will be listening a lot of this audio during the following months as listening is the first step in improving your own pronunciation. You have to know what standard sounds like before you can mimic it yourself.

I also need to make a habit of watching the news on TV as the news anchors has the most standard Mandarin you can find. This will probably be a challenge in it self, as it’s a new habit to be learned. Luckily I can watch the news online when ever I want to, before going to bed for example.

I’m also going to be meeting with a tutor once or twice per week to go over the texts and have him/her to correct my pronunciation. I will also be recording my self and spotting some of the biggest mistake by listening them.

I will probably come up with others ways to improve my pronunciation, including hearing your ideas in the comments, but I try to keep it simple. I have a habit of finding too many books, too many resources and then in the end being confused what to do.

Starting level

This will also be an experiment on how much I can improve my pronunciation in 4+ months and will be sharing the journey with all of you. In order to see my progress I will first share my starting level that you can hear on the mp3 below. This is me reading the first of 60 texts just today morning.

All advice and helpful criticism are welcome in the comments!

Resources to improving Chinese pronunciation

First of all John Pasden has an excellent resource on Chinese pronunciation on his blog Sinoplice, that I recommend for everyone, especially the beginners.

Olle from Hacking Chinese also has multiple great posts on learning to speak Chinese that are highly recommended as well.

The great Chinese-Forums.com has lots of topics and helpful posts on listening and speaking Chinese. All Chinese learners should register to this community. I’ve been a member since 2004, that’s four years before I started Chinese lessons at the university.

The tool I’m using the memorize pinyin is called Skritter* and I have already introduces it in this post. That little star means I’m an affiliate of them and when someone follows my recommendation and buys the subscription from that link, I will get a small share. Thank you for supporting my site if you do that!

Now it’s time to hear you out! What are you doing to learn and improve your Chinese pronunciation? Or if you are a native speaker or a teacher, what advice do you have for us foreigners?

It’s been a hectic week here in Guangzhou, can’t believe it’s Monday again! Those days last week before Friday all let to my thesis defence on the 29th. It was one of the most nervous days of my life, making me almost faint at the classroom!

I arrived early to the campus as printed out two pages of my thesis that had a terrible error on them. I wanted to show the teachers, that I had noticed the mistake my self which is better than wait for them to point it out. Of course I have noticed several small typos as well, wondering how tired my eyes were when I checked my thesis before printing it out.

We had our presentations in small groups, with me I had a Korean girl, Indonesian girl and an Italian guy, last two being ethnic Chinese. We were seated at one of the sides in the classroom, we would be speaking in front of the room and the teachers were seated at the back. There was also chairs for classmates to come in and listen to our presentations.

While I waited my turn, I was third, I started getting more and more nervous. Would I be able to finish my presentation in the 7 minutes allowed or would it be too short? Could I answer all the questions asked my teacher? Heck, could I even stand on my two feet?

Finally it was my time to take the spotlight. I had prepared a nice Power Point slide show about my thesis, but probably it didn’t really matter much. After I was done, I sat on the chair in front of the teachers. I had a desk in front of me and I placed my thesis on the desk. I had read it over a few times, making careful notes on mistakes and questions the teachers might ask.

I have no idea how long they asked me questions, and can’t remember all of them, but somehow I lost my nervousness and was able to be calm. I answered everything the best I could, but wasn’t given enough time to defend my thesis as much as I would have liked to.

Three of us received a grade good, one received average. It was a relief that I was able to get a good grade, but I would be lying if I said I was happy with it. Not being able to get the highest grade, excellent, was bitter.

There won’t be a change to do it all over again, but if everything goes well, I will be writing my master’s thesis in two years. What I have learned during these months is that it’s crucial to choose the best teacher to help you and start as soon as possible. Don’t leave anything at the last-minute and check your work numerous times before printing.

Writing a thesis in Chinese was nerve-wracking at times, but I learned a lot too. I’m happy to get it finally of my hands very soon and head for new challenges.

As many of you know, this Autumn I have started working at a Chinese language center where we train Chinese teachers and offer tutoring for foreigners in Mandarin Chinese. Tomorrow night will be the first event I’m organizing and I wanted to let everyone living in Guangzhou to know about it.

Click to view larger flyer

This event is all about the HSK test. Introducing the different levels of HSK, sharing tips on how to prepare, what to do on the exam and answer your questions about learning Chinese and testing your level. I will share how I learned Chinese and passed HSK6 and other students will share their own experiences.

You can register for the even on Guangzhou Stuff or sending me an email to sara (a) sarajaaksola.com. If you forget to register now problem, you are still more than welcome to join us!

p.s. I’m preparing a new blog post about cultural challenges you encounter even after several years in China. Please subscribe to my blog on the right sidebar to get new posts delivered to your email.