🎧 Listening in Mandarin Chinese + Resources

Where to begin when listening in Mandarin Chinese | Shows, podcasts and resource reccomendations for Mandarin learners

📚 Why Listen in Mandarin Chinese?

Listening is not only important when communicating with people but also when watching media such as dramas and videos.

Not all listening materials are the same. Speech in some dramas can be clear while podcasts may include slurred speech with multiple people talking over one another. One way to improve your listening skill is to listen to a variety of speakers in different contexts.

💭 What To Consider When You Start Listening

Active and Passive Listening

Active listening occurs when you are completely focused and able to understand what you are listening to. An example of this is watching a show you comprehend or that is made comprehensible through subtitles or other tools.

Passive listening, on the other hand, involves partial focus. This can involve listening to a podcast that you don’t completely understand due to a lack of vocabulary or multitasking while listening.

Comprehensible Input

Comprehensible input in Mandarin is hard to come by when you have a limited understanding of the language. Content made by teachers for Mandarin learners is often made to be comprehensible based on skill level. Native content such as videos and podcasts can be made comprehensible with subtitles or vocabulary lists.

Subtitles

Beginners may wonder if substiles should be used when listening. Some people question whether subtitles reduce the benefits you get from purely listening.

The use of subtitles depends on your skill level. If you have not yet started reading in Mandarin, target language subtitles may not be helpful. However, listening to your TL with English (or native language) subs can be useful for a Beginner. While you may not understand everything you hear, the media you consume will be understandable because of the subtitles.

The majority of Chinese shows have hardcoded subtitles. These are subtitles that you cannot toggle on or off. If you are watching a drama on youtube with Mandarin hardcoded subtitles, you can benefit from toggling on subtitles in English as well. The result is having both TL and native language subs visible at the same time. Learning new words and making connections is easier with the help of dual subtitles.

Mainland Dramas or Taiwanese Dramas

At the start, you’ll barely be able to tell a difference between accents spoken by various Mandarin speakers. I’d recommend watching whatever peaks your interest and is available to you. Don’t worry about accents unless you have a strong preference for one over the other.

My Experience Listening in Mandarin

It’s been over 5 years since I started learning Mandarin. Listening was the first skill I started developing. I watched dramas with English subs to get exposed to the language. At the start, I couldn’t identify different accents or notice the differences between the ways people spoke.

All the listening I did helped me understand native speech. Even though my speaking skills are lower than my listening, I am able to have conversations with people since understanding is a big part of communicating.

💻 Apps to Make Listening Easier

1. Language Reactor

2. Language Player

Language Reactor

Language Reactor (LR) is a tool that makes learning with native material effective. The extension adds dual language subtitles along with popup dictionaries for videos on Netflix and YouTube. LR also has many other tools that enable you to learn vocabulary from the content you watch.

Language Player

Language Player (LP) has a similar goal as Language Reactor. With LP, you get interactive transcripts to look up words as you watch a show. My favourite feature is having the ability to search a word and find hundreds of examples of the word being said in video clips.

When I started sentence mining, I used Language Player to make Anki decks with audio from the shows I had watched.

🔊 Listening Resources + Recommendations

1. Dramas/Shows

2. Videos/Streams (YouTube/Bilibili)

3. Podcasts

4. Audiobooks

📺 Dramas/Shows

There’s always a new Cdrama to watch. To find dramas and shows to watch, I use MyDramaList. You can watch shows on Netflix, YouTube, Chinese websites (IQIYI, Tencent etc) and other streaming websites such as Viki.

Viki was my website of choice when I started watching dramas from Mainland China. To help language learners, Viki has a feature called Learn Mode. Learn Mode provides dual subtitles and allows you to interact with words.

Drama Recommendations

Here is a list of dramas in different genres I’ve watched or plan to watch. They mostly fall into the sci-fi, mystery and contemporary genres.

1. 开端 (Reset)

2. 三体 (Three-Body

3. 棋魂 (Hikaru no Go)

4. 庆余年 (Joy of Life)

5. 隐秘的角落 (The Bad Kids)

6. 都挺好 (All Is Well)

7. 你好，旧时光 (My Huckleberry Friends)

8. 家有儿女 (Home With Kids)

Share your drama recommendations in the comments!

Variety Show Recommendations

Variety shows feature a lot of natural native speech. The list of shows I provided range from game shows to talk/debate shows.

1. 明星大侦探 (Who’s The Murderer)

2. 王牌对王牌 (Ace vs Ace)

3. 拜托了冰箱 (Go Fridge)

4. 奇葩说 (I Can I BB/U Can U BB)

📷 Videos/Streams

You can watch native content on YouTube and content made by Mandarin teachers to improve your listening. Bilibili is a Chinese video-sharing website like YouTube. It’s perfect for getting specific content from people living in China without having to sort through English videos.

If you already watch content in your native language on YouTube or other streaming websites, I recommend finding Mandarin speakers who also make the same content to listen to. Do you like watching gaming videos? Find a Chinese gamer to watch. Do you enjoy reading? Search up book recommendations on Bilibili to find people who talk about books.

An easy way to find TL channels to watch is by creating a separate channel on YT and setting your location to a country where Mandarin is spoken. Once you start watching videos, the YT algorithm will suggest similar videos to what you’ve already watched.

🎙️ Podcasts

Podcasts are great for both active and passive listening. Podcasts that are made for learners sometimes include transcripts and vocabulary lists to make your listening more comprehensible. Since some podcasts don’t have visuals, you can listen to them passively while you multitask.

Personally, I found that I preferred listening to podcasts with more than 1 speaker. Back-and-forth conversations are sometimes easier to follow since words may get repeated by different speakers. Multispeaker podcasts also expose you to how people naturally communicate with one another.

You can find podcasts on audio streaming platforms like Spotify, 喜马拉雅 (ximalaya). If your region doesn’t have access, you may have to use Himalaya instead of 喜马拉雅.

Podcast Recommendations

1. 打個電話給你 (One Call Away)

2. 瞎扯学中文 (Convo Chinese)

3. TCTL: 解答这个迷茫的时代

📚 Audiobooks

Audiobooks may be ideal for you if you already enjoy reading and prefer books to visual media. You can usually search for the name of a book and add “有声书” on YouTube or Google. 喜马拉雅 (or Himalaya) and 微信听书 have a large library of audiobooks that are free to listen to.

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What is your experience listening in your target language and what listening resources do you use?

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📌 Other Mandarin Resources:

Thank you for reading!