9 Tips to Improve Mandarin Listening

Is “ting bu dong” one of the sayings you most used when you started learning the Chinese language? Or, are you after months of mandarin language learning, still afraid of talking to native Mandarin speakers?

Probably, most of the period, you can make yourself understood to native Mandarin speakers. But, when they’re impressed by your Chinese and really excited to answer your questions, it’d be so frustrating for you to find you still need to answer with “ting bu dong”, even after months of learning mandarin.

This is because native speakers often use vocabulary outside of your HSK. Also, native mandarin speakers can talk so fast, or have an account that might make you wonder if you are listening to a totally alien language.

Despite all the issues in listening, you unlock the capability to hear all the Mandarin words that native speakers say. Just follow the tips below for you to become a better listener.

Know what level your Mandarin listening skill

Before you start your listening practice, ensure you really know where you’re in terms of Mandarin language progression. You can either take a level test CCHATTY or from a professional mandarin language tutor. You cannot fake being a better Chinese listener, your hunger to connect must be real and it starts with your mindset, not only your skillset. 

Here’re 4 tips to improve your Chinese listening mindset:

Be interested in others – How many people do you connect who are only interested in themselves, their agenda, their own main perspectives? They have a closed mindset. If you want to become a great listener, you have to cultivate an interest in other people and see every discussion as an opportunity to learn and increase your understanding and knowledge. This also allows you to connect completely with others to assist them to grow.

Be present – The study shows that most people speak at about 120-150 words each minute, but we can think about over 4 hundred words each minute. Be aware of what you are doing with all that separate bandwidth! Thinking about what is for dinner? Worrying about another program, you are working on? Ensure you bring yourself back to the discussion and focus on listening.

Be willing to delay your plan – We all have a plan, whether it is how we want to move forward with a business project, what we want to do at the weekend, or only our viewers on the subject of discussion. If we forever have our plan in mind, we will be listening to respond, rather than listening to empathize and understand. It is natural to have a plan, but we need to be able to delay it and listen.

Be open – Having some outcomes in mind also means that we are tempted to control the side and content of conversion. There’re times when this is a useful skill, but be careful not to overuse this ability. If you are truly listening, you go where the mandarin speaker wants to go with the topic.

Quick work on active Chinese listening 

If you have been looking for tips for efficient listening, you have probably come across active mandarin listening. Typically includes:

• Ensure your body language is attentive and open
• Maintain eye contact
• Smile, nod, and show that you are listening
• Encourage the mandarin speaker to continue with fast verbal queues such as “I see”, “Yes”, “uh-huh”.

All of this is vital, if you have got the right mindset these listening abilities will come naturally, with slight tonight. And if you do not have the correcting listening mindset, no amount of faking it with smiles and nods is going to make you a better Chinese listener!

Behaviors of better listening

These key behaviors are the listening skill set.

Do not interrupt – this is the most noticeable Chinese listening tip, but an area that several of us can improve. It is a simple law, but hard to apply consistently.

In response, don’t offer your own experiences – if somebody tells you they have just been made redundant, do not tell them about the time that you were made redundant. It is not the same. Their personal experience is not an opportunity for you to start showcasing your experience. Instead, ask questions to understand their experience better.

Listen to your emotions – listening is not only about the words spoken, there’re several kinds of research that prove body language and the voice tonal communicate for more than the words. As you are listening, always be aware of all that the speaker is communicating, via their voice tone, eye contact, body language, and facial expressions. Be aware of any moves in commendation, the emotions being conversed, and the real meaning behind what’s being said.

Ask open, big, questions to explore more – Asking questions is one of the strongest listening methods, if it’s used rightly. Big, open questions encourage the speaker to go on to share, without leading the conversion in a certain way.

• What were you thinking at that period?
• How did that make you think?
• What is making you say that?
• What did you learn from that individual situation?
• Always looking forward, what do your agenda to do?

Make a plan for listening practice through recordings

You need to get ears to get used to the Mandarin language, tones, and accents, but do not take it too seriously. Just make a small term listening agenda and follow it, so make a plan for the first month. It’s highly recommended to set aside 30 minutes each day to do active mandarin listening with 1 or 2 recordings (you can learn a lot more about active listening below).

You can practice listening daily or give yourself 1 day off from the week, even you skip a few days, just go on and do not blame yourself. The main point is to know you’re on the way to master mandarin listening and keep going on and on.

Train your ears

Active listening means listening to a recording repeatedly to know all or almost everything. It sounds boring to listen to a similar recording several times, but as your strength training at the gym, active mandarin language listening helps you become “dou ting de dong” (understand all) from “duo ting bu dong” (nothing understand) by forcing on mandarin listening. The whole procedure generally includes the following 4 steps:

Listen to the complete recording without understanding the transcript – You do not need to catch every detail, just focus on understanding the mean and try to know as much as you can. At this part, you can play the entire recording 1 or 2 times, write down how many Mandarin words you can understand generally.

Listen to the recording and take transcription – You replay for a few times until you can examine every single mandarin word out. It is better to pause and replay all sentence by sentence (no more than words you hear).

Check your transcription notes by understanding a dictation of the recording – When you’re reading the transcript, keep in mind to look up any word or Mandarin Grammar construction you do not understand. After reading this, you can evaluate how much you’re able to know the recordings and it’ll be clear to know what you get trouble with. Keep in mind to note down your perfection rate, and do not discourage if you do not get a high score just yet.

Read the transcription loud and do multiple shadowing exercises – Sometimes you might find native mandarin speakers are talking so fast that you can’t understand what actually can understand. It is because can’t speak as fast as you actually hear, your ears are also used to your own pace so that you can’t catch up with others. Here shadowing exercises, is highly recommended: answer the recording and mimic it with 1 sound delay while playing. You also need to practice continuously until you’re able to repeat the content as fast as the recording.

Check your milestone and make proper alteration by month 

Something you might ignore is to check how much progress you’ve made, but it's a vital part to boost yourself up. After you complete your listening practice program after a month, go back to the recording you practice with listen multiple times. If you have just understood 70 percent of the recording, then you’d find yourself understand much more of it!

Additional Tips

If you feel tired of the active Chinese listening practice, that is good, you are learning! But feel free to have a few changes. You can try wide mandarin language listening practice as an alternative. It means you don’t need to understand every single word of the recording you utilize, but just need to listen to as much mandarin as you can. In this method, you can listen to anything you wish, such as Chinese TV shows and podcasts.

Do not worry if you can’t understand them at all, and make use of subtitles or transcriptions of the audios. Attention, extensive mandarin listening aims to help you get a sense of the mandarin language. If you want to enhance your listening comprehension slowly, you have to spend at least 3 to 6 months on active listening practice and even add it to your daily routine for long-term mandarin learning.

Any sort of practice only works when you paste it into practice. So make some time to plan your mandarin listening practice and just start it.

Key Tips for efficient listening when your emotions are running high

All of this is great and works well most of the time, but how to become a better mandarin listener when your emotions are running on a high note? Here’re the tips for mandarin listening that’ll help:

• Regain control of your mandarin listening mindset – remind yourself of the wish to know the other person (though annoying they might look to be at the time!). Always focus on what you can learn from it, regain your attendance, and be willing to suspend your plan.
• Be aware of your early warning signs – this way alerts your increased emotion. Maybe you cross your arms, or you feel a slight flushed, or your voice rises? Learn to recognize some major early warning signs in your behavior.
• Regain control of your personal behaviors – with proper mindset; start to reapply the skill set. Do not interrupt, do not offer your own experience in response, listen for meaning and emotions, and ask open, big questions (as I discuss above).

Steps to becoming a better mandarin listener

Learning how to become a better mandarin listener more than just a right awareness of the listener’s skillset and mindset, becoming a better listener needs that you change, to better! Here is a quick guide to assist you to focus your effort and achieve the change as efficiently as possible.

Become self-aware of your mandarin listening abilities – spend some time just self-monitoring to boost your awareness of your mandarin listening abilities. Use the eight points above to guide yourself and evaluate your presently listening. It’ll help if you identify specific occasions when you will do this.

Identify the areas that you need to improve – Once you have become aware, identify one or two points (from the tips above) that you would like to improve, that’ll have the most impact.

Develop a performance enhancement plan – Be high intentional about when you are going to focus on your mandarin listening skills and what specifically you are going to do differently. It’d be your team meetings or when you first get home from the office in the evening or calls with your manager.

And be obvious should what behavior changes you are going to apply. Perhaps you’ll stop interrupting. Or stop your mind wandering and be completely focused. Or tune into the speaker’s emotions efficiently. Or ask questions, whatever it’s, know specifically, what you are going to do differently.

Lastly, allow some time for a slight self-reflection. Schedule a bit more time for yourself and reflect on how you are doing and what you can continue to improve.