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Despite being frequently overlooked due to its challenging nature, listening skills are nonetheless critical for language learners. While some might encounter more difficulties based on their location, experience, or personality, the numerous benefits Chinese-language listening brings about — a stronger vocabulary, quicker grammar acquisition, and better word retention to name a few — are ones you don’t want to miss. What’s more, even just improving your listening skills is extremely rewarding, both for communication and entertainment consumption purposes.
Thankfully, in this modern digital age, even if you don’t live in a Mandarin-speaking country or have access to a large Mandarin-speaking community, listening can still be practised and improved. There are veritable mountains of accessible listening materials designed for language learners, as well as native media such as audiobooks, TV shows, music, and podcasts. All these resources provide you with the opportunity to ability to practice listening at home and on the go.
In this guide, we’ve divided recommended listening resources into three sections: beginner to novice, intermediate, and upper intermediate to advanced. We’ve also shared loads of general and specific tips drawing from our combined 10+ years of Chinese learning, so do read even those parts that may not be directly relevant to you just yet! And finally, before we get into the thick of things, consider the below…
<aside> 📖 Nothing is ever stopping you from dipping into native content, regardless of your language skills. There’s no need to wait until your skills are at a very advanced level. Many TV shows and donghua **(动画 — Chinese animation) have English subtitles, and there’s nothing wrong with turning those on to enjoy the content.
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<aside> <img src="/icons/user-circle-filled_yellow.svg" alt="/icons/user-circle-filled_yellow.svg" width="40px" /> As a heritage speaker, if you have some degree of Mandarin listening comprehension, combining listening with reading can be a great way to quickly boost your Chinese literacy at any stage of your journey. However, be mindful not to jump too far ahead as—depending on the content—the language and vocabulary found can differ greatly from what you’re used to in everyday conversations.
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Many learners find listening to be a struggle in comparison to reading, usually resulting from one or more of three reasons: a lack of vocabulary, the speaker/s themselves, and the presence of multiple native speakers. You can listen to a deeper discussion of these factors and some others that have an impact on listening difficulty on this episode of the You Can Learn Chinese podcast.
That being said, don’t let any of these issues discourage you! Instead, take them more as thoughts about what areas you can focus on to improve or explanations for why you feel your listening skills may be plateauing.
Start with short, easy content — Like with any skill, good second-language listening takes time and practice. Start off with short, easy content made for learners, and don’t rush yourself too much.
Listen with earphones/headphones — If you are serious about listening and want to invest, consider buying high-quality earphones/headphones if you don’t already have a pair. The sound quality will be much clearer and you’ll be less distracted by the sounds in your surrounding environment.
Come back to previous content — Whether for practice or to track improvement, it’s always a good idea to re-listen to content you first encountered sometime in the past (at least a few weeks or months ago). Each new time you listen to the material, you should notice that you can understand more than before. This is a great way to motivate yourself by allowing you to see (or rather hear!) improvement and also allowing you to pick up on anything you may have previously missed.
Begin by focusing on one genre and speaking style — When just starting with serious listening, try sticking to content created and/or spoken by the same person; branch out when you have more experience. The same rule holds true for genres — you’ll see the best overall gains after you gain confidence in one style.
But later do vary content and speakers — When you reach a more experienced level, it’s definitely worth exploring different types of listening content to broaden your vocabulary in a more comprehensive manner. We suggest doing the same for speakers as well, to accustom yourself to a variety of accents, genders, ages, and intonations.
Don’t compare yourself to others — It’s very easy for you to start comparing your progress with that of someone else, but can be hard to stop. Every learner’s background and circumstances are different, factors which will massively affect their rate of progress. As such, if you must compare yourself to someone, only choose one person — yourself. Being better today than yesterday is more important than narrowing any gap.
Don’t shy away from subtitles or transcripts — ****While the ultimate goal is to be able to listen to content without any form of subtitles or transcripts, there’s no need to rush this. Having a written version available is often a good thing; using it in tandem with the listening material can improve both literacy skills and character recognition. What’s more, it also means that you’ll be learning not only the sounds of words but their character ‘makeup’ as well.
And do remember that Chinese subtitles are hardcoded into TV shows and movies for a reason — even natives sometimes struggle with parsing out words or even whole sentences!
Read while Listening — Consider finding some audiobooks for whatever books it is that you are reading, and play them as you read — this is a great way to work on both listening and reading skills at the same time. Do note, however, that it’s best if this audio is from a native, not by an AI — machine learning is just not quite there yet. Luckily, even native recordings can often be adjusted to match your reading speed.
Enjoy the content — There is nothing worse than doing something you don’t enjoy. Thanks to the internet, more and more Chinese media is becoming available overseas. Search around and we’re sure you’ll find something you enjoy!
<aside> 📌 When learning a language, comprehensible input is key. We highly recommend the below video for more details on what comprehensible input is and why it’s so important: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_EQDtpYSNM
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Below are a handful of our favourite tools for improving listening, all suitable for those at any level.
Pleco is a free Chinese-English dictionary app available on Android and iOS. Additional add-ons can be purchased, which provide extra features such as a flashcard (SRS) system, Chinese to Chinese dictionary, stroke order, additional native sound packs, OCR, and graded readers. Pleco is a must-have app for learners of all stages, and its Basic Bundle is a very worthwhile investment.
Ideally, this app should utilize spaced repetition, so that you only learn words when you’re on the verge of forgetting them.
Anki is a spaced repetition flashcard software, available on Mac OS, PC and mobile devices with cloud syncing. It’s customizable with plugins for extra features such as dictionaries and audio. While free on Windows, MacOS, and Android phones, it is priced $25 for iPhone users.
Onto Pleco: as well as being a brilliant dictionary, it has a $10 spaced repetition flashcard add-on. This has the added benefit of native audio and a dictionary right out of the box and is specifically catered to Chinese learners.
Regular review of vocabulary, pronunciation, and phrases using spaced repetition is highly recommended at all stages of your Chinese learning journey.
There are browser extensions that enable you to hover over any Chinese word to see its pinyin and definition. Some additional features include audio, dictionary look-up, and add-to wordlist. We recommend Zhongwen or Zhongzhong — try these two extensions and see which you prefer.
Available on Chrome and Firefox.
Must-have for all learners.
Guide to setting up OCR on a Windows computer Nad and Casiyus of our 看剧学汉语 Discord server wrote this guide to setting up OCR on a Windows computer, showing you the tools and steps you need to set up OCR on your Windows computer. This’ll be a boon when playing games, reading manhua (漫画, Chinese comics), or reading the hardcoded subtitles of Chinese TV shows.
Microsoft Edge's TTS uses Azure, one of the best AI speech synthesizers out there. You can choose between 12 different male and female voices (6 Mandarin, 3 Cantonese, 3 Taiwanese), which range from ‘young’ to ‘old’ in their speaking styles. This TTS even has the option to flavor what is returned with emotions such as anger, surprise, or happiness.
Additionally, you can view its page in an "Immersive Reader" mode, which gives you more options, e.g. customizing background color, text size and spacing, and column style. You can similarly choose to use its "Line Focus" feature to help you focus while reading by having one, three, or five lines highlighted.
Language Reactor is a browser extension (currently only available on Chrome) that allows you to watch content with dual subtitles, save words, view the definition of individual words and lots more. The tool works on Netflix and Youtube, so for those watching Chinese content on these platforms, it’s well-worth looking into.
<aside> 📖 If you've been learning Chinese for a while but haven't had much experience with listening practice, it’s a good idea to begin here rather than proceeding directly to later sections.
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Onto our individual sections!
The beginner-to-novice stage is one where native Chinese media will mostly be incomprehensible, with most words sounding like gibberish. During this period, listening material created for second language learners is your best choice.
Of course, there’s an exception to this rule. Content created for second language learners is the perfect type of material for active listening practice, but native Chinese media can be consumed at any stage for entertainment purposes and/or passive listening sessions. It’s a good idea to include both types of listening in your routine!
Active listening is when you focus on the material and try to understand everything. This means that you may need to pause occasionally to look up words.
Passive listening is when you’re not fully focused on the listening material and are rather listening to it while busy with something else. Although not as effective as active listening, it’s still useful as your brain is working in the background to make sense of the sounds it hears.
<aside> <img src="/icons/playback-play_red.svg" alt="/icons/playback-play_red.svg" width="40px" /> For more free intermediate comprehensive listening material check out the Youtube & Bilibili (视频)
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Now at the stage where learner-geared materials are starting to be in short supply, you’re likely itching to move onto the sea of those made for natives. Most native media may still feel somewhat incomprehensible at this stage, but there’s easier content that you can definitely begin diving into.
The gap between content for learners and content for natives is currently quite big, and one of the most difficult aspects for you as a learner to bridge. Some learner platforms such as Little Fox Chinese and DuChinese (see below) do have some harder content that can help you bridge that gap a bit easier. Take your time as it will eventually click.