How to listen well when learning a new language?

Question

I am Chinese and am currently learning mandarin. I am a CBC (Chinese born Canadian) so I pretty much know no chinese except a few phrases such as telling my mom what I want for dinner, etc.

One of the main problems I have when learning a language is understanding someone else's speech. I seem to be great at remembering the different characters. I studied a bit more than the rest of my class. But the problem is, I'm behind most of my classmates when it comes to understanding the teacher. The same thing happened when I was learning French, which caused me to drop it.

How can I improve my listening skills to foreign languages? It's a real pain. I've tried watching spongebob in chinese with subtitles but it doesn't help too much because I've only been learning for 9 months (but 1 class every week so its like 30 classes cuz of holidays) and dont know most of the words.

Your suggestions are appreciated.

Answer 1

When you watch programs in Chinese, don't use the subtitles. If you can read the English your mind doesn't need to pay attention to the Chinese. In fact, what you can do is watch a DVD one time in English so you know what's going on, and then watch it again in Chinese and try to understand as much as you can. You can listen to the same things in Chinese over and over if you want. But don't use the subtitles.

You have the right idea with doing more listening in Chinese. You don't have to understand all the words; as long as you are understanding even a little bit you are learning. I gather that your mom speaks Chinese, right? So you can ask your parents to talk to you in Chinese too, if they are willing and it wouldn't seem too weird to you. Again, they don't have to translate for you, they can just tell you something. Like for example, you could do something together at home like washing dishes, and your mom could talk to you about washing dishes in Chinese. There is no need to translate back and forth to English. Just try to understand as much as you can and don't worry about what you don't understand. When I was learning Spanish I used to watch the Spanish-language news program basically every day. When I first started I felt fortunate even if I could figure out what the main topic of the news story was. Now I can understand the broadcast quite well.

Even when you hear a language you understand very well, you don't usually understand every single word, so don't stress out about being able to understand everything at first. Just keep it up. I hope you have a great experience!

Answer 2

I take Spanish 2 in school, and I remember my first year seemed pretty easy at first, then quite confusing when she started forming verbs and words into the questions. Then it started getting easy to understand after I looked at my vocab right..

See, you have to make sure that you've got your facts right. Let's turn that 'pretty good' vocab memory to 'flawless'. Keep practicing the words and pronounciations, and if there is any new words you gotta learn, be sure to remember it. Write down Every word/vocab you learn.. as painful it can be,, it helps! That way you can look back on it as reference.

Now that you have your words right, try translating them. From english - mandarin. Not sure about if mandarin matches english and the way its fit into the sentence completly.. but it did for spanish!

Keep practicing translations and start forming your own sentences and start putting them to use. Maybe a friend or family member can help you speak in mandarin and try to make you understand.., start understanding them and KEEP PRACTICING. finally, you've got a more accelerated speed and all toned and understood and can understand.

you need to practice! speed doesn't matter so much, but some speakers talk fast and you have to learn how to understand it fast too, so try to increase the pace everytime. If you don't understand something.. then ASK, because then things are clear and cool and otherwise its all muddy and you'll jumble things up..

So..yeah.. :)
Hope that helps and goodluck!: )

Answer 3

Haha, I'm an ABC (American-born Chinese). Anyway, for me, learning different phrases helps, and then when you listen to people talking, look out for those phrases. They more you hear them, the better you are at identifying them. Listening to your parents talk to you in Mandarin is good too because they know not to go too fast for you. Once there are enough phrases you understand, it's easier to differentiate beteween the ones that sound alike. Ask about how exactly to say it, since saying different words differently helps you to hear which parts sound different. Good luck. :)

Answer 4

Music is very helpful in these situations. Not only does it help you to get a hold of pronunciation, but you get used to hearing the language and get better at finding the breaks between words.

It always takes a little while to get your ear adjusted to a new language, but once you've been listening for long enough it gets much easier.

Good luck.

Answer 5

Thanks for helping me solve my sleep problems, I'll try to help u in this one.
I am a Bangladeshi at South Asia.
My mother tongue is Bengali But I'm also fluent in English & Hindi.
My secret of learning languages is watching movies, because that it self attract u & u try willingly to understand more about what their saying.

And more of that i am continuosly improving my vocabulary, i believe thats the main thing of a language.
i guess that would help.
bye