i don’t really understand..

Hi! Very interesting reading. i think many (most) learners face the same problem as you do. It’s the case for me now as well sometimes. It’s very rare that I don’t understand what’s said after listening several times and listening just one extra time usually increases comprehension quite a lot. There are many reasons for this, of course, but i still feel that I simply haven’t listened enough and that this is what keeps me mack.

I’ve read this very insightful article several times and, finally, I devised a test that uses your method as a benchmark to assess my own (disappointing) listening comprehension and establish a diagnosis.

If anyone’s interested, it’s in my language learning log, message # 352.

Thanks for your help and the inspiration, Olle.

Transcribing speech became much less stressful for me after I resolved that it’s OK to rely on subtitles at first, especially when listening to fast informal speech. Some words and phrases are nearly impossible to transcribe in pinyin, unless I’m already familiar with the vocabulary. I used to become frustrated when I transcribed films and dramas, because the speakers used many contractions. I couldn’t hear what was written in the subtitles, no matter how much I slowed the audio down. I didn’t have enough vocabulary to guess from context, and I wasn’t confident enough in my phonological awareness to know whether I could trust my ears and write what I heard (“are they really pronouncing 他 as /ha/? Am I losing my mind?”). I wasted a lot of time listening for sounds that I was never going to be able to hear.

Once I listened a few times while reading the subtitles, I was able to understand without looking at them. And, I was more likely to understand the vocabulary when it came up in other media.

You might have encountered this already in your phonology work and in The Phonology of Standard Chinese, but articles such as this one about contractions helped me quite a lot. I haven’t seen any non-academic articles about contractions in Chinese though.

I don’t see the connection between listening and reading that Sara makes. Reading is 100% controlled by the person. Listening is 100% reactive (including conversation). I agree with her that for a language learner there can be a large lag between hearing and understanding. Some Chinese people tell me they know every word in a sentence said by a native English speaker, but they do not know the meaning of the sentence. Fundamentally listening is a different skill than reading– even the way the mind tries to extract meaning is different, in my opinion.

我當然不介意，這應該是第一次有香港同學用中文留言，我感到很榮幸！至於「聆聽速度」，請看 Sara 的留言，她將這種能力分成兩個部分：一是認出聲音的意思，二是將這些意思合併成有意義的語句。我不是完全同意你對「語感」的想法。如果將速度放慢而聽得懂，我不覺得問題在於「語感」這方面，反而在於「聆聽速度」上。也就是說，對我而言，語感跟速度無關，比較是跟深入理解語言更深層次的含義有關。你最後的句子所提到的「語感」就是了。

看你與 Sara 的留言，我就發覺了這篇文章缺乏一個滿重要的部分。我本來把「語感」包括在「詞彙」裏頭，但看你們的留言考慮之後，我就認爲應該是分開的。就是說，瞭解某種語言不只是跟上述的因素有關，因爲還有一層較深入的含義。學習者也必須掌握這個才能夠完全聽懂此語言。

This is disckussed in The Phonology of Standard Chinese albeit not at great length. I have spent serious amounts of time transcribing audio and if you’re after a practical approach, I can recommend that. When you listen to a sentence dozens of times with a transcript, you’ll find lots of peculiarities with pronunciation and tones. It’s hard to write down or categorise, but I’m quite sure it helps.