Mandarin A2 listening practice

 A2 汉语听力练习 more

Mandarin C1 listening practice

C1 汉语听力练习...more

Mandarin B2 listening practice

B2  汉语听力练习...more

Mandarin B1 listening practice

B1 汉语听力练习... more

How to improve your Mandarin listening skills

Listening skills of Mandarin are another issue when learning this language. Many learners are struggling with listening even though they can speak good Chinese.

Shall we clarify whether you have the ability to listen or not? Some people, including myself, are an example - even if they understand their own native languages, they are not good listeners. A good listener has the ability to be willing to listen, to pay attention to details, to identify certain sounds, to remember, to take clear notes etc.

There is divided opinion as to whether foreign language learners should learn listening first or speaking first. For adult learners, I don’t think you can separate listening and speaking.
To improve listening skills, (if you are not a child), my personal teaching experience is that students should understand writing before listening. Just imagine, if you don’t understand the writing, how could you understand when other people say it?  So to improve your listening skills, you must:

• Be a good listener – improve your native language listening skills first especially those listening skills mentioned above.                                                           
• Increase your range of vocabulary and understand the sentence structures. 

• Understand the background and context.                                     

• Listen for gist or details.

• Train your ear to get used to a Mandarin speaker’s sound in different ways - watch videos, films and listen to the radios or different audio materials as a regular practice every day 10 - 20 minutes.

• When learning a new topic (not revision), not forget to completely understand the text of whatever you are listening to. Then retell what you have heard.

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How to improve your Mandarin reading skills

The most difficult part of reading Chinese is character recognition. For beginners, if you are a part time learner, it would be beneficial to learn and recognise at least 25 characters per week, so after one month, you would be able to recognise 100 characters. After 10 months, you would have learned 1000 characters, then you will surprise yourself about character recognition.

There are two main reading skills to develop apart from Chinese character recognition:

1: Scanning

When you have limited time to read, you need to do scanning. For short text, a tip is to recognise key words that indicates the author’s ideas.

2: Reading in depth

When you read an article in Mandarin, to completely understand the article, it is called reading in depth, or reading all the details. To help to understand a long article you must:

• Understand the structure of the article or text

• Find out specific information or opinions by those conjunctions or linking words.  What are conjunctions or linking words.
  

• Understand and recognise special expressions or implied meanings. e.g. Chinese idiom 五十步笑百步  literally it means ‘50 steps laughing at 100 steps’. But it real meaning in English is ‘The pot calling the kettle black’.

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How to improve your Mandarin speaking skills

There are so many aspects to discuss with topics like ‘how to improve your language skills. To improving speaking skills in Mandarin, there are a few aspects should pay attention to:

1: Pronunciation 
When you say a sentence in Mandarin, it is important to give the correct pronunciation of each word especially the easy confused words. e.g 我今天晚上出去吃饭。In this  sentence, the word 出去 chūqù - go out  should be pronounced clearly, otherwise might sound like 不去 bù qù - not going.  

2. Intonation 
When you say something in Mandarin, the Intonation of each sentence is very important. It shows and expresses your attitude, the facts that you would like to emphasise, as well as the key information you want to give.  Correct intonation is especially important when many words are grouped together in long sentences. For example, When speaking我昨天收到了在北京学习的朋友发来的电子邮件, this sentence should be grouping words together like this:  我昨天   收到了   在北京学习的朋友  发来的  电子邮件   (I received an email yesterday sent by my friend who is studying in Beijing.  The key information is  ‘ I received an email’ 我 收到了 电子邮件 which should be stressed and emphasised. Therefore learners should learn about sentence stress and when to pause for effect.

3. The speed of speech and the fluency
The final aim of speaking Mandarin, to sound like a native speaker, is the fluency.

The speed of speech
Try to speak naturally, at a reasonable pace. The average rate of a native Mandarin speaker is 180-220  words per minute (each character is one syllable.) For example, if making an 800 word presentation in Mandarin, it should be a short talk lasting 4.5 minutes. Beginners can practise saying the sentences a little bit slower, at the rate between 150-180 words per minute.
    
Fluency                                                                                                                      
Fluency and accuracy are sometimes contradictory, specially when you don't know exactly which words to se. Therefore, the advice for speaking Mandarin fluently is:

• Have enough vocabulary.
• Word order - say the correct sentence with the right word order, especially the long sentences.
• Using the correct conjunctions or linking words - to connect different ideas. e.g.
  

          “不管你喜不喜欢社交网络，我们都得认识到它影响了年轻人的生活方式。虽然这种基
          于网络的社交方式对老年人来说有点奇怪，但是我们就是生活在这样处处有数字技术的
          时代。”

In this long sentence, there are three conjunctions like ‘no matter what’, ‘although’ and ‘but’  to  xpress different opinions.

4. Listening and Reading 
Finally and most importantly, one cannot improve speaking skills without listening and  reading. One can learn how to say the simple words or phrases correctly just by listening, but sometimes one can say the words without understand the meanings.
    
Therefore, reading authentic texts, dialogues or articles is a very important part of  improving your speaking skills. This is because you can learn the right ways to say things by reading. Good reading materials contain rich and useful vocabulary and a wide range of grammar and sentence  structures which you can use as in your own speech.
   
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How to improve your Mandarin pronunciation

It is important for foreign learners, both beginners and those who have been learning for a while, to pay attention to the pronunciation. To improve your pronunciation in Mandarin, you should pay attention to:

Initials and Finals 
There are a few difficult initials and finals to pronounce in Mandarin. i.e. j-q-x-r, c-ch, s-sh, z-zh, en, u, ü, üe etc. If you can identify the differences between them, then you can pronounce them properly. The key is to know the tongue or mouth positions or  the places of articulation when you say the words with above initials and finals. For example, when you say 去qù,  the sound must come from between the lips. When you say 吃chī, this obviously has nothing to do with the lips, but your tongue should be curled up. When you say 车chē  the tongue flattens out. In conclusion, when you say the easy confused words in Mandarin, like去qù, 吃chī and 车chē , your tongue or mouth position needs to be different. 

Places of articulation
So it is important to learn about places of articulation, as BBC advises:   "The articulators are the parts of the mouth we use to turn sound into speech, after looking at places of articulation, practise making the movements that native speakers use when they speak."

Tones
There are four tones (marked like this: first tone ‘-’, second tone ‘/’, third tone ‘V’, forth tone ‘ \’), there is also a neutral tone. There are many words that sound similar in Mandarin but with different tones. When the tone changes, the meaning of the word changes. For example, 八bā，爸bà， 吧ba. As you can see, these three words all have the same sound ba, but first word八- bā is with the first tone, it means eight; 爸bà with the third tone, means dad; 吧ba with a neutral  tone, has different meanings. e.g, guessing, making suggestion etc.

There are some technical tips to pronouncing these four tones correctly. But a tip is to not pronounce the tones too high, apart from first tone, like 吃chī, 京Jīng.  When you say words with the first tone, it should be pronounced high and flat. A common mistake is to make the third and forth tones sound like the second tone.

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