The more you understand, the more you will learn. That doesn’t mean that it’s completely useless listening to things you don’t understand at all (you can still pick up intonation, sounds and so on), but it’s not good. In a similar manner, the more you focus the more you learn, but again, you will notice a lot even if you do other things at the same time. I have written more about this here.

1) Is it important to have ANY IDEA what’s going on in the audio? Compare the value of listening (as a beginner) to …. an audiobook of children’s nursery rhymes vs. Chinese political debates? This is different than “vary the difficulty” – this is more about how much you get out of something you don’t know the meaning of.

2) Is it important to focus on the audio? Compare the value of listening to (for instance) BBC Chinese as background while I work/workout vs. sitting down in a quiet room with headphones on, listening, taking notes, saying some words out loud.

thanks!