How to improve my listening skills in Chinese?

The most common language in China is Standard Chinese. With that said, China is one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world. 71% of Chinese speak a variety of Mandarin also call “Putonghua.” There are more than 70 million people belonging to 55 different national minorities living in China, and while each minority has their own spoken language, many minority groups do not have any distinguishable written form for their languages. About 1.3 billion people (or approximately 16% of the world’s population) speak a variety of Chinese as their first language. It is a language rooted in central Mandarin, however, the total amount of languages spoken in China is 302, according to the last Ethnologue survey. This is also the national language.

It’s no secret that learning a foreign language can be difficult. Even if you have outstanding reading skills, if you are learning Chinese, you can struggle with listening comprehension. You may also sound apprehensive about speaking Chinese. This does not have to be the case. You simply need to consider how you can improve your Chinese practice by immersing yourself in a variety of Chinese speeds, accents, and situations. Passive listening is a common suggestion. Often classes and texts advise students to listen to recordings or an audiobook. The strategy means that you can progress over time. Passive listening suggests that you listen to while driving to work, lying in bed, or doing other activities. Passive listening suggests listening while driving to work, lying in bed, or washing the dishes. Active listening requires you to interpret what you hear and answer in the same way as you will in a conversation. Active listening requires you to have an active part in processing the sounds. So you can respond as soon as you hear them.

1. Find a Chinese Speaker – To have the most productive and fun listening experience, you can engage in a dialogue with someone who not only speaks Chinese, but is also patient and, ideally, fascinating. When you talk to someone who is also learning a language, they are more likely to understand your language learning needs. That is, they would not order you to hurry up and get on with it while you are looking for a word for more than a minute or two.
2. Watch Chinese TV – Chinese language TV has a lot to sell the young Chinese speaker as well. If you are fortunate enough to live in a Chinese-speaking world, begin by watching children’s TV shows or the news, and then progress to more complex shows. Subtitles may also be used to improve comprehension.
3. Listen to Chinese podcasts – Podcasts have replaced radio as the new medium of communication. You can listen to them anytime you like, skip ahead to any parts that don’t interest you, and take them with you on your phone or tablet. Listen first to get a sense of what’s going on, and then slowly repeat sections of the podcast and continue and collect facts. If you want to concentrate on listening for information, it’s fine to waste half an hour finding out five minutes of a podcast.
4. Watch Chinese film – Movies, like real life, have the additional advantage of including both auditory and visual clues to help you find out what’s going on. There are many excellent films available to help you progress. In terms of the podcast, you can watch a portion of the movie to get a general understanding and then watch it again to learn more. You can even read the subtitles while listening to the audio and then watch without the subtitles until you’re more comfortable. 
5. Keep a detailed list of your new Chinese vocabulary – After you’ve learned the definition of your new Chinese vocabulary, make a note of it. This could include saving it to your tablet, writing it down with a transcript, or drawing an image of the word in your notebook. In general, you can understand words better if you can recall where you learned them, so writing down the meaning will be a very helpful tools for later remembering what the word means. The more detail you have in your notes, the more likely it is that you will not only understand the expression but will also be able to use it in the future.

So, there you have it: a few ways to improve your Chinese listening skills. It is not difficult to improve one’s listening abilities. It’s simply a matter of time.

Nanjing Mandarin became dominant at least during the officially Manchu-speaking Qing Empire, despite a lot of officials and commoners speaking various Chinese dialects.  The Empire also set up Orthoepy Academies to make pronunciation conform to the Beijing standard. It was finally during the last 50 years of the Qing Dynasty in the late 19th century that the Nanjing Mandarin standard was finally replaced in the imperial court with Beijing Mandarin after a multitude of efforts. The new Beijing Mandarin court standard also remained fairly limited. This situation, however, changed in modern times, with the creation of an elementary school education system, that committed itself to teach Mandarin as a Standard Chinese language.

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