Comments on: Chinese listening strategies: Improving listening speed

By: Beyond tīng bu dǒng, part 4: Learning to process spoken Mandarin quickly and effortlessly | Hacking Chinese | Hacking Chinese

Wed, 01 May 2024 09:01:06 +0000

[…] need to be so familiar with the spoken language that you can process sounds and tones instantly, recall words without delay, and put them all together without needing to think about it. Naturally, this won’t happen […]

By: Beyond tīng bu dǒng, part 2: From sound to meaning in Mandarin - Hacking Chinese

Beyond tīng bu dǒng, part 2: From sound to meaning in Mandarin - Hacking Chinese — Mon, 28 Nov 2022 17:12:49 +0000

[…] This issue of listening speed in something I’ve discussed in a separate article, so I won’t dwell on it here, but this is one of the most important reasons why listening a lot is important and that you should practise extensive listening as much as possible. Simply being able to recall what a spoken word means is not enough, you have to be able to do it fast! We will also return to automated processing in an upcoming article in this series. […]

By: Daniel Eisel

Daniel Eisel — Thu, 15 Jul 2021 19:43:03 +0000

Hello together,

regardless of being a bit older already – the article is still just relevant and has lot of useful information to offer.

I might add another methodically effective approach to improve listening ability: install and apply a browser add-on to accelerate radio/video-stream velocity. Listening e.g. 1.5x or 1.75x of normal speech (news broadcast or documentary, daily soap show) and reading subtitles simultaneously is hard in the first place. However, after a while it’s possible to listen and to read and even to understand (tones, prosody, meaning). Of course this gives some leverage once the tricker is pulled back in a more normal language setting. This was my impression.

Cheers

By: The importance of knowing many words | Hacking Chinese - 揭密中文

The importance of knowing many words | Hacking Chinese - 揭密中文 — Fri, 25 Oct 2013 02:31:49 +0000

[…] it becomes an opportunity to learn and an automatic way to review that piece of vocabulary (see this related article about listening speed). However, if you don’t understand enough to do that, listening or reading might be next to […]

By: Olle Linge - Languages, literature and the pursuit of dreams · Chinese proficiency report 19

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 15:26:14 +0000

[…] of a lack of listening speed. In short, I don’t associate sounds with words quickly enough (see this article on Hacking Chinese for more about this). This might seem odd considering that I have heard many of these words hundreds, perhaps even […]

By: The importance of knowing many words | Hacking Chinese - 揭密中文

The importance of knowing many words | Hacking Chinese - 揭密中文 — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 15:20:46 +0000

By: Olle Linge

Olle Linge — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 16:23:45 +0000

In reply to Allan Ngo. I agree completely, I remember tests when the previous question was audibly still echoing around in my head. Then you find yourself in the middle of next question without even knowing what it's about. Parsing speed is very, very important, becaue if you don't have that, you will fail even if you know every single word, phrase and grammar pattern used on the test.

By: Allan Ngo

Allan Ngo — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 07:41:54 +0000

In reply to Olle Linge.

Yes, examinations are indeed a perfect example of this.

I have experienced that as well. The worst part is when your frustrations from ones you missed early on carry over to the succeeding questions, it creates a compounding effect that is hard to get out of.

Ironically, in this case, having a short memory (forgetting the preceding mistake) is actually beneficial when taking an exam 🙂

By: Fearchar I MacIllFhinnein

Fearchar I MacIllFhinnein — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 07:31:36 +0000

This article is bang on the money.

Another problem that isn’t quite related to dialects: if you’re trying to get standard Taiwanese Mandarin, most of the recordings generally available are in mainland Mandarin, and are stuffed full of neutral tones. The result? It’s hard to get examples with non-neutral tones, which woudl help in learning words.

By: Olle Linge

Olle Linge — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 06:23:25 +0000

In reply to LeeHunter. I agree, this is very interesting. This is the state we want to be in when sitting an exam, but this is of course even harder than doing it everyday life. I remember taking the advanced TOCFL in Berlin last autumn. I knew the listening would be the hardest part and was really nervous. I think I missed a few points simply from not being able to relax at all the first few minutes. I might have lost even more points later, because even though I got more and more into the exercises, I couldn't relax at all. Tests are a very special kind of situation which isn't necessarily related to what we do normally.