This past year I did a lot of listening while reading, and relistening multiple times to stuff I’d read before, which both helped my listening skills a lot. I also listen to condensed audio of shows I’ve seen that I liked, which has helped with my listening skills. But audiobooks and show audio (all that sort or scripted clearly pronounced stuff) is not how regular conversations sound. When I listen to podcasts I find it difficult to figure out the main idea or topic or what’s being said, when I have conversations with people it’s likewise more difficult, even if I know a lot of the words they’re saying. Because I don’t have context the way a show let’s you know setting/general topic visually, a audiobook gives you context description and setup, a regular conversation (or podcast or livestream) might bounce from topic to topic randomly because it’s how people actually talk. And in regular conversation people don’t always pronounce as clearly as in audiobooks and shows, there’s local accents and just less clear pronunciation.
I am wondering how I could work on studying specifically to get better listening comprehension for regular conversational stuff like conversations in person, listening to podcasts, watching livestreams.
I was thinking maybe watching shows that are more like reality TV might be helpful (like The Truth) since they’re a bit less scripted and more talking that is people discussing stuff and unsure of stuff (so not direct like scripts and topics changing more). Since reality TV type shows still have subs, so I could try watching with subs (to ensure I recognize the words I know) and then without (no subs as crutches).
I have been watching livestreams lately and it made me realize how much worse I am at following regular kinds of talking compared to scripted stuff. I was thinking maybe just brute force listening to livestreams more may help, but with no subtitles (obviously lol its live) I basically just guess if the word that sounded familiar is what I think it was (since topic frequently changes and local accents make it sound less like I’m used to in shows) then every few minutes catch a couple sentences I think I understood so I get some context for the topic, then topic changes and I get lost again and repeat. I am a bit concerned if I just try to brute force watch livestreams more (or podcasts where I don’t even have facial expression to help me figure out the topic) then improving might be slower than doing something else. (Like with audiobooks… listening while reading, then listening more Afterward improved my audiobook comprehension overall of all scripted audio faster than when I was just brute forcing audiobook listening with no text-with-audio preparation). In conversation with others this listening is easier as I can ask if they meant X when something sounds a bit different (like more -er endings than I’m used to etc) or if topic suddenly shifted I can ask “Hey are we talking about X now”. But I can’t do those things when listening to podcasts livestreams etc so I’m not sure how to improve listening comprehension for those.
I’m wondering how other people improved in this listening area?
It sounds like you might be beyond this, but if you’re at an intermediate level, I heartily recommend the Teatime Chinese podcast. It’s done wonders for my listening comprehension (and covers actually-interesting topics).
Just keep going, honestly. You’re halfway there. Your mind has the natural ability to pick up patterns in speech, filter out cross talk and false starts, and deduce meanings from context. You just need to get in enough hours of listening. Stick with topics you’re genuinely interested in and just listen to unscripted native content on those non stop.
If you are in the market for a talk show though I would recommend 21歲不睡, it was on for years and it’s all on youtube with subtitles
How many words do you know?
I have multiple approaches for listening.
Strategy #1
First of all, I will listen to podcasts with youtube channels such as the ones below and follow along with the subtitles. Stopping for new words. I have a 56k frequency excel list that I look them up with. If the word is >20k I usually don’t learn it, the subtitles are a “crutch” but its enjoyable, I get through around 20 minutes a day of material and since I know 7,500 words about, I’m not stopping too much. I do one pass through and that’s it
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1hOtoPVyJSwh05cihmZpRA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1hOtoPVyJSwh05cihmZpRA)
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQANiflsS1n_GCYaSRqarcQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQANiflsS1n_GCYaSRqarcQ)
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfsNycNoClXZA1FuUJSGT0w](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfsNycNoClXZA1FuUJSGT0w)
Strategy #2
Then with the one below, which I consider slightly harder – which is the best youtube channel in my opinion for upper intermediate. I will listen without looking at subtitles for around 10 to 15 minutes and do2 pass throughs. Then i will go line by line through the script to see how well I did. I’ll also do this strategy with authentic chinese news.
[https://www.youtube.com/c/MandarinCorner2](https://www.youtube.com/c/MandarinCorner2)
Strategy #3
Finally, for what I consider the hardest material —>on disneyplus and netflix and soon to be some chinese streaming websites I export the whole transcript and pass it through something called chinese text analyzer, which “knows” all the words I don’t know in the transcript and spits out the words I don’t know and ranks them by how much they were used in the program. Then I do a vlookup in my excel list and put a frequency on each of the words to see if they are worth learning (usually if they are below the 20k).
Chinese text analyzer works for any script, podcast, article, etc. And it’s the most hands off of the 3 different approaches.
Strategy #1 & #2 I can do every day because #1 (reading with the subtitles) is extremely easy to maintain and both very active ways of listening just 2 different styles. I think you need to find a mix of quantity and quality to make sure you listening to enough material but at the same time, doing literally the most active but tedious way to get through material – which is strategy #2 (although after a certain word count, maybe make things less tedious :))
Edit:
And IMO, don’t forget to read, I will alternate days where I read an article first and then do the listening exercises, and then the next day do listening exercises first and then read, so a lot of times it just ends up being—>Monday-read, Tuesday – listen, Wednesday – read, Thursday – listen (because I won’t have time to do both)…..but I can always either listen to a podcast in my car for my commute and/or do listening strategy #1 above every single day b/c they’re low maintenance. I think reading will actually help your listening on some level. But don’t think its necessary to cover that in too much depth here.