Listening resources for teaching and learning Chinese
How do you practice listening comprehension?
A list of resources for teachers and students at all levels
How is everyone holding up? 大家都还好吗？
Schools are closed in Boston. I feel a bit frazzled and nervous. As I'm transitioning to teaching online for next week, I can’t help but think about my colleagues who had completely shifted their practice overnight. I've consolidated resources for my students to "Choose Your Own Fun" for exposure and practice. Hopefully, letting them choose their adventure will keep them engaged with Chinese learning at home during this special time.
Maybe you’ll find one useful thing from this list of resources I have created!
Students can choose anything from the poster (enter your email below and I’ll send a copy to you!) that I created with these links and spend however long one can on any activity.
What are your favorite listening resources? Leave a comment below to share with me!
Audios on The Chairman's Bao
I’ve been using The Chairman’s Bao as a supplement in my classes for years. They have graded articles based on news which are relevant and interesting. There are a lot of great built-in functions too including audio tracks recorded by native speakers. It’s super important for my students to get used to listening to other Mandarin speakers so that they can comprehend various regional accents and colloquialisms! TCB has a bunch of free sample articles like this one for you to use. You can download the audio as an mp3 file.
Chinese Songs
Truth be told, I never felt comfortable teaching students Chinese songs. Why? I am a terrible singer! However, I know how powerful music can be by bringing people together! And, music videos also teach so many amazing things other than the language such as culture! I have created this list of music videos much liked by my students. I hope they will bring you joy. Some are very catchy with lots of high-frequency words for your kiddos to learn!
Movies and Shows on Netflix
As Netflix becomes more ubiquitous, don’t overlook the growing inventory of movies in Chinese! My personal favorite is the American Factory. It’s a documentary in both English and Chinese. It captures the ever-changing landscape of globalization as well as the opportunity and conflict that come with it. RADII is a media company based in Shanghai where a good friend of mine works. I can’t wait to check out the five movies and shows that they recommend!
Movies on YouTube
I have used other movies in my classes to teach language and culture. They offer content that is effectively contextualized, highly entertaining and visually powerful. The topics range from high school life, like 不能说的秘密 / Secret, 青春派 / Young Style, to travel and transportation like 人在囧途 / Lost On Journey. A few of these are available as full movies in HD quality!
Peppa Pig in Chinese
The globally loved cartoon series is the go-to learning material for my students. Each episode is only a few minutes long! It features repetitions, high-frequency vocabulary, a wide-range of topics and highly contextualized daily life content with visuals. You name it! All the great reasons to watch 小猪佩奇 for fun or use any episode fr a listening comprehension assignment!
Podcasts: Gushi FM + Slow Chinese
I love listening to Podcasts, from stories to crime series. Gushi FM is my favorite Chinese language Podcast. They publish fascinating stories of their own (mostly very recent) experience three times a week, told by Chinese speakers living around the world. So many perspectives and opinions from the story-tellers to train students identifying! Slow Chinese is my Chinese-learning friend’s go-to podcast.
Yabla
I personally haven’t used Yabla yet. During COVID-19 pandemic, they are offering free educational accounts to schools. I signed up right away and thought I’d share this resource too! If you have used Yabla, what are your discoveries?
My Favorite YouTube Channels
Over the years, I have come across lots of videos on YouTube made by amazing content creators. Some are native speakers and some are Chinese language learners who are incredibly inspiring and role models for my students. They are so much fun to watch too!
Interested in having a copy of those resources linked on a nice poster? You can simply share the poster with your students or pull up the poster whenever you need content. Enter your email to get a copy!
It seems a little passive when giving choice-based interpretive tasks. Well, this is just the first step! Next time, I'll share a template of comprehension tasks that students can do while listening to an audio track in Chinese.
Please take good care of yourselves. Stay healthy at home and stay tuned!
By Ms. X