Tips for Improving Your Mandarin Chinese Listening Skills

by Antonio Graceffo

Mandarin Chinese will have some new sounds for you, and you actually won’t be able to hear them until you have studied for a while. Moreover, you will not be able to pronounce words well until you can hear them correctly. So don’t let anyone kid you into believing that running your dialogues in your group Chinese class with some guy from Holland is going to help you pronounce Chinese better…

 

In the beginning, your primary task should be listening. Listen to the same short conversations again and again and again.

 

John’s Two Cents

Podcasts, free audio or video programs distributed through RSS, are the absolute best source for short listening content. There are literally thousands of Chinese language podcasts to choose from, with something sure to fit your interests and ability level. The best bet is to automatically subscribe through iTunes so that new episodes are downloaded automatically to your computer when they become available.


Mandarin Chinese Tones

First and foremost, Mandarin Chinese is tonal language (like Thai and Vietnamese). Saying the same syllable with a rising, versus a flat or falling tone changes the meaning completely. For example, both “buy” and “sell” are the same basic sound mai but with a tonal difference. Perhaps the most famous example of this is are the words “mother” (媽), “hemp” (麻), “horse” (馬), and “scold” (罵), all of which are pronounced ma, but with different tones (high, rising, falling-rising, and falling respectively).

 

John’s Two Cents

The good news is that many of these similar sounding words share a “radical” (the basic building blocks of Chinese characters.) You’ll notice that the “horse radical” (馬) is used in 3 of the above words. This means that if you know how the radical is pronounced (which are usually the most basic characters you will learn first anyway), you can often guess the pronunciation of the unfamiliar character. There are of course many exceptions, but this trick can help you learn written Chinese far faster than learning each charcter’s pronunciation by rote.

 

The Challenge of Monosyllabic Words

Another challenge beyond tones themselves is the fact that many Chinese words are only one syllable. A friend of mine who was an advanced student of Chinese once told me, “With a five syllable German word, you can screw up the first three syllables, get it right at the end, and people will understand you. But with Chinese, the second you open your mouth, you have to be perfect.”

Studying Trumps Socializing

Many people think that by having a Taiwanese boyfriend or girlfriend they will magically absorb the language. Or they believe that if they hang around with Chinese friends they will somehow learn without putting in any effort. There are two problems with this equation:

  • If you don’t know any Chinese, how can you have a conversation?
  • Your brain is conditioned to listen to things you already know.

Believe it or not, your brain actually rejects things that it doesn’t know. So, when someone starts speaking Chinese, your brain strains itself to listen and understand. But after just a few minutes, when the brain is certain that it doesn’t understand anything, it tunes out.

Once you are intermediate or above, having contact with Chinese speakers and particularly a significant other is extremely important to practice your Chinese. But that will only happen if you conduct your relationships in Chinese instead of English. Having a Chinese girlfriend who you talk to in English won’t work wonders for your Chinese fluency.

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