{"id":6422,"date":"2015-03-20T06:33:31","date_gmt":"2015-03-19T22:33:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hackingchinese.com\/?p=6422"},"modified":"2023-10-09T08:27:59","modified_gmt":"2023-10-09T06:27:59","slug":"adjust-your-listening-practice-to-your-current-state-of-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hackingchinese.com\/adjust-your-listening-practice-to-your-current-state-of-mind\/","title":{"rendered":"How to adjust your Chinese listening to the right level"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"listening-chart\"<\/a>

If you listen a lot, most of it will have to be passive listening. The proportions here are somewhat arbitrary, but passive listening will take up much more time than active listening.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

In a previous article, I discussed three steps to more and better Chinese listening practice<\/a>. In short, you need to find interesting audio you can understand, you need to make it easily available and, finally, you need to find a way of maintaining your listening habits for a long time. That last step merits a more detailed discussion!<\/p>\n

Improving listening ability in the long run<\/h3>\n

I have learnt Chinese for seven years now, and I know how hard it is to keep up listening practice while being busy with other things. I mentioned the key to success in last week’s article, but there simply wasn’t room to explain it properly. This is what I wrote:<\/p>\n

It\u2019s very hard to listen to difficult audio for longer than ten minutes. If I listen to something where I have to really, really concentrate to understand what\u2019s going on,\u00a0 I start feeling tired quickly. It\u2019s simply not possible to force yourself to take in difficult audio for hours on end. Instead, you should strive to find audio on different levels. Some audio you can listen to when your energy levels are high, other sources are more suitable for when you feel tired.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Listening a lot is difficult, not because it’s hard to listen in itself, but because it’s not easy to find the amount of listening material you need and manage it properly. You should find audio that is comprehensible, but as we all know, what is comprehensible varies.<\/p>\n

If I’m well rested, I can understand more difficult audio than when I’m tired. If I listen actively I can understand more difficult audio than when I’m doing something else at the same time.<\/p>\n

Therefore, you not only need audio suitable to your level in general, you need to be able to adjust the audio to the current situation. This is related to what I have written about studying according to your current productivity level<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I sort my audio into two categories, let’s call them “hard” and “easy”. I recommend that you create actual folders on your computer and\/or phone. Feel free to use more than two categories if you want, but I’ll keep it simple here.<\/p>\n

Category #1: Hard
\n<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Audio in this category is for active listening<\/a>. It’s audio you need to focus on seriously to understand. If you listen more than ten or twenty minutes, you start feeling tired. Because of this, the bulk of the audio you listen to and therefore the audio you need to have available is not going to be in this category.<\/p>\n

I currently\u00a0 listen to \u767d\u9e7f\u539f by \u9648\u5fe0\u5b9e and it falls firmly in this category for me. I find this audio book very hard to follow and I need to focus 100%, otherwise my thoughts start flying all over the place and I lose track of the story. I typically listen 10-20 minutes each time, usually when talking a walk. I can’t do anything more complicated at the same time, I need all my concentration on the audio.<\/p>\n

Naturally, what you think is hard depends on your proficiency level. Beginners will find it hard to listen to new chapters in their textbook, intermediate learners will struggle with learner podcasts mainly in Chinese. Advanced learners will struggle with anything they aren’t used to already.<\/p>\n

If you don’t understand much even when you concentrate 100%, you should put the audio in a third folder called “too hard” and leave it there until your listening ability has improved.<\/p>\n

Category #2: Easy<\/h3>\n

The audio in the “easy” category is for passive listening<\/a>. It needn’t be extremely easy, but it should be the kind of audio you can keep up with for extended periods of time, preferably even while engaged in other tasks at the same time (nothing too complex, I mean things like cooking, driving or doing the laundry). Since you can listen for long periods of time in many situations, you need much, much more audio in this category. The more the better.<\/p>\n

I put two types of audio in the “easy” category:<\/p>\n