Chineselanguage101.files.wordpress.com



chineselanguage101.

[pic]

Listening Skills Practice Guide & Checklist

by Khariyya Jia Li

with

Chinese Please

PLEASE READ BEFORE CONTINUING: These drills are organized in order of level in listening comprehension as well as by days. For example, if you’re a beginner in the world of listening comprehension, start the Beginner drills, or otherwise known as “Day 1.” The next day, however, you will move on to the Intermediate section, or “Day 2.” If you are an intermediate level listener, however, feel free to skip the beginner section and to the intermediate, completing both day 1 and day 2 drills at once. Same for advanced listeners. Again, this does not refer to the level of conversational fluency you have achieved, but the level of listening comprehension you have achieved.

Beginner (Day 1)

Step 1: Choose a song in the language you’re learning. Preferably a song that’s slow and popular in that country.

Step 2: Listen to Verse 1 thru the Chorus. Without doing anything else, just listen to it. Pay close attention, however, and try to spot out words you know just by hearing.

Step 3: Take out a sheet of paper and a pencil. Preferably, notebook paper with lines and a pencil rather than pen so that you can erase instead of creating more chaos, since we will be doing so later on.

Step 4: Restart the song and listen to the first line. Listen to only the first line and then pause it immediately after. Take your pencil and write down in pinyin (Romanization) what you heard.

Step 5: Continue doing so throughout the whole first verse. Pause the song line after line, take dictation of the lyrics in pinyin, and repeat. You can restart the song however many times you like if you’re stuck on a certain line or word, but after 3 repeats, move on. Don’t stress about one little word, that already tells you that you need to improve your listening skills.

Step 6: Skip a line for the pre-chorus and/or chorus on your paper. Another reason to use lined notebook paper instead of regular. Skip a line when the chorus, or pre-chorus if your song has one, comes on and continue the process. However, don’t go past the chorus.

Step 7: Try to identify the verse, pre-chorus and chorus. You don’t only want to listen for the words in the song, but also the structure of the song. Listen to the beats, note when they change, etc. It gives your mind a multi-tasking duty and exercises your skills even more. Whenever you have passed or think you have passed a certain point in the song, skip a line for organization purposes. You can even label them if you need to.

Step 8: Pause the song after the chorus.

Step 9: Look up the action lyrics (in pinyin/Romanization) to the song. Not the English translation, the lyrics, as in, pinyin lyrics. This is the reason I told you to choose a popular song—for popular songs you can normally find several websites that contain only the pinyin lyrics, which should look very similar to your notebook paper. DO NOT READ ANY ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS!!! That’s for later!

Step 10: Compare your lyrics to the actual lyrics word-by-word. Do not read a whole sentence and determine if yours is right or wrong. Instead, have the patience and read it word-for-word to see if yours matches. If so, what you heard in the song was correct (even if you don’t understand it yet). If not, you misheard and your listening skills need to be practiced a little more.

Step 11: Critique your lyrics. When you come across a wrong or “misheard” word, use a different colored writing material (such as a marker, pen, etc. MAKE SURE THAT IT IS NOT THE SAME COLOR OR TOOL THAT YOU USED TO WRITE ORIGINALLY) to tell yourself what went wrong. Scratch out wrong words and put above them what the singer actually said. If you missed a letter, add it in using your new writing tool. When you use a different writing material, you can easily see how well you did and how many mistakes you made.

Step 12: Write down the REAL lyrics. Once you have corrected your lyrics, on a new sheet of notebook paper write down what the singer is actually saying (still in pinyin. No English is to be used whatsoever in this exercise). Now listen to the song again, verse 1 thru the chorus without stopping it. While you listen, read your new lyrics (the correct ones on a clean, uncorrected sheet of paper) along with the singer. You should be able to tell that the words he’s saying and the words you are reading match.

Step 13: Don’t touch the song for the rest of the day. You have completed all the listening exercises you need for the day, and don’t touch the song until tomorrow. You don’t want to overdo or rush anything. Now you have provided yourself with an outline of where you stand in your listening skills. You should be able to tell if the song was way too easy for you and you need more of a challenge, or if you need more practice and your skills are still on a beginner level.

Intermediate (Day 2)

Step 1: Repeat day 1’s assignment. Toss your corrected lyrics aside for now, you shouldn’t have look at them at all today or listened to the song at all. The last time you touched the song was yesterday when you completed the very last assignment. Now repeat Day 1 and see if you’ve made any progress. You’ll find out once you compare your corrected lyrics with your new lyrics.

Step 2: Repeat Day 1 for Verse 2-Chorus 2. Do the exact same thing you did yesterday for the second verse through the chorus. If you didn’t complete the beginner section and are jumping to intermediate, go ahead and do all of verse 1 thru chorus 2.

Step 3: Listen to the whole song leading up to where you stopped with corrected lyrics. This should be the very beginning of the song, second verse, and the second chorus. Pretty much, you are at the 75% marker of the song. Read along with the singer using your CORRECT lyrics sheet.

Step 4: Listen to the song up to your stopping point WITHOUT any lyrics. Continue to identify the verses, pre-chorus, and chorus as you do so. Listen to it up to your stopping point without looking at any of your papers. However, PAY ATTENTION FOR WORDS YOU KNOW. You did this yesterday and most likely you didn’t find many, but see if you can spot the same ones or any new ones today. Chances are, with every time you listen to the song you’ll spot a new one or two you’ve studied in the past.

Step 5: Get out a new sheet of paper. Organization is key—use notebook paper and also be keeping track of your previous papers. You should have 4 sheets now (day 1 sheet, correct lyrics sheet, day 2 sheet, this one).

Step 6: Write what you think the basis of the song is. You haven’t look at any English translations yet, but you’ve been playing with Chinese words and hunting for them for a while now. On your new sheet of paper, write a paragraph or two about what you think the overall idea of the song is, based on words you’ve found that you know or other clues.

Step 7: Listen to the song again. Your choice, you can read along with the singer or not. However, listen to the song this time with your overall idea in mind. Do you view the song any differently?

Advanced (Day 3)

Step 1: Listen to the whole song. This is the first time you have listened to the song the whole way through. Congratulations! Also, if you’ve had it in your head for the last 2 days, that’s a very good sign.

Step 2: Continue to point out words you might know. You want this to become second nature. Make it a habit that every time you listen to a Chinese song, drama, cartoon, commercial, etc., you’re on a search for words you know. Soon this will become second nature and it won’t be such a chore.

Step 3: Repeat the day 1 process with the rest of the song. If you haven’t completed day 1 or day 2 and jumped to advanced, go ahead and do it for the whole song.

Step 4: You should be noticing a decrease of corrections. Are there fewer scribbles on your notebook sheets of you correcting yourself? I hope so! The more you listen to the language the more adapted your ears become to it.

Step 5: Begin translating. Take out a new sheet of paper (you should have 5 or 6 now) and once again, copy down ALL of the correct lyrics to the entire song. Yes, WRITE. I hope you’ve been writing by hand all this time, because writing drills it into your head a lot better than typing does. Now that you have your second sheet of correct lyrics, begin translating words and phrases you know to English. For example, if you spot where the singer says “ni,” write beneath it the translation: “you.” (On a new sheet of paper.) DO NOT USE ENGLISH SUBTITLES!

Step 6: Take out your “song summary.” Take out the paper you used to write down what you thought the basic idea of the song was. Compare it to your translation. Do you still think the same? Make some adjustments if you need to.

Step 7: Look up an actual English translation.

Step 8: Compare your translation to the actual one. Just like we did with the pinyin lyrics, compare your English lyrics. How close did you get? Also, compare the actual meaning of the song to your “song summary.” How close did you get on that one?

Step 9: Highlight words you don’t know. For extra vocabulary practice, look them up in your dictionary and add them to your flashcard decks. Learn the words. Soon, you’ll find yourself understanding every part of the song. Plus, if they’re in this song, odds are they’ll be in another one or two.

Step 10: Listen to the whole song again.

Step 11: Begin listening to the song in the background of your everyday life. Now that you have been paying close detail to the song, it’s time to exercise your passive listening skills. Let the song play as you run, work, write, sleep, etc. In other words, don’t study the song. It may see like it’s doing no good anymore, but it actually is doing its work when you don’t realize it. Make listening to it a DAILY THING.

Step 12: Start over with a new song the next day. You want to keep your listening skills sharp and always improving. Plus, learning one song won’t do you much good. You need to be well rounded, so repeat the process with a new song. After 3 days of studying the new one, add it to your “passive listening playlist.” Make sure you never completely abandon the songs. That’s basically throwing away all of your hard work.

One week later

Step 1: Bring back the song. After a full seven days of only passively listening to it, bring it back to your full attention. Repeat the process of day 1, taking dictation of what you hear in pinyin. Compare. You should see a huge improvement.

Step 2: Translate to English. The NEXT DAY, translate the song, in your own words, line for line, word for word. You should have been studying the words you didn’t know all that week, since you highlighted the words on your lyric sheet and added them to your vocabulary. By now, you should understand at least 90% of the song.

Step 3: Begin listening passively again. After translating to English yourself and comparing it to the actual translation, begin listening passively for another seven days and then repeat steps 1 and 2 week after week.

Step 4: Repeat the process with song 2. Remember, you don’t want to ever fully abandon any of these songs. Repeat this process of ‘one week later’ with all of your songs seven days after last studying them intensely. You’ll find your listening skills sharp and excellent in no time, as well as fluency growing closer around the corner.

COMPLETION STATUS:

Day 1 __

Day 2 __

Day 3 __

RECOMMENDED SONGS

This is just a list of the songs I used for this drill and in order of which I used first. I sorted them in difficulty, studying the easiest first to the hardest. Feel free to use mine or create your own on the next page!

Song #1 – “Kiss Goodbye,” Wang Lee Hom

Song #2 – “I Come From the Prairie,” Phoenix Legend

Song #3 – “Father,” Chopstick Brothers

Song #4 – “Sing Out Loudly,” Phoenix Legend

Song #5 – “Golden Love,” Phoenix Legend

Song #6 – “Most Dazzling Folk Style,” Phoenix Legend

Song #7 – “Little Apple,” Chopstick Brothers

Song #8 – “Horse Running,” Phoenix Legend

Song #9 – “Still in Love with You,” Wang Lee Hom

Song #10 – “Excited,” Lu Han

MY SONGS

Song #1 – ___________________________

Song #2 – ___________________________

Song #3 – ___________________________

Song #4 – ___________________________

Song #5 – ___________________________

Song #6 – ___________________________

Song #7 – ___________________________

Song #8 – ___________________________

Song #9 – ___________________________

Song #10 – ___________________________

[pic][pic]

chineselanguage101.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download