Learning Through the Screen: How Chinese TV can Become Your Chinese Teacher
Learning Through the Screen: How Chinese TV can Become Your Chinese Teacher
No matter how much I love learning Chinese, studying from a textbook can start to get boring after awhile. While the textbook’s explanations are clear, sometimes I just need to see a word used in a different context to gain a clear understanding of it. One thing that helps me to overcome these difficulties while continuing to improve my Chinese is watching Chinese TV shows.
Of
course, this idea isn’t completely unheard of and is actually a relatively
common practice amongst many language learners. Coming from someone
who enjoyed watching Chinese TV shows in her free time, it isn’t as simple as
just watching TV. There is a bit of planning and work that must happen for it
to actually improve your Chinese.
It
is best to choose the right TV show – one that uses vocabulary that is
appropriate for your level – and to use the right method, depending on what you
want to achieve. Chinese TV shows can help improve your Chinese listening,
speaking, reading and vocabulary if used appropriately.
In
this article, we introduce how you can use Chinese TV shows to improve
different areas of your Chinese learning.
Listening
Practicing listening can be quite
difficult, especially considering the many dialects and accents that you can
encounter when talking to native Chinese speaker. When practicing listening
with strictly audio-based content, speed, accent, and lack of vocabulary all
become obstacles to understanding and render the whole process inefficient and
boring. The added visual aspect of TV shows helps to solve this problem.
To
practice listening while watching TV shows, there are just a few things that
you need to do.
First, I would recommend using a TV show
that you have already seen and understood, or at the very least, one that you
are familiar with. When you already understand what is happening, it makes it
easier to concentrate on what you are hearing and infer what the characters are
saying.
Second, I recommend excluding any kind of
subtitles from the show when you are watching it. While Chinese subtitles may
seem helpful, they become a crutch for practicing your listening. It is
important for you to get used to only relying on your ears.
Last, make sure to stay focused. When
re-watching a TV show, it can become easy to lose focus and stop paying full
attention to the audio. So, make sure to pay consistent attention, even when
the characters may be saying things you don’t understand.
The
fact that TV shows are an audio-visual resource makes them more conducive to
building your auditory capabilities. As humans, we have a natural ability to
gain meaning from body movements and facial expressions, so having those added
hints while practicing makes for a more natural and enjoyable process.
Speaking and Pronunciation
The optimal way to improve one’s
Chinese speaking ability is to speak to a native Chinese speaker, but that does
not mean there’s no way for you to practice by yourself. Using TV shows, you
can practice your speaking and pronunciation without any added pressure.
To
practice speaking, it is very important to use a TV show that contains
vocabulary that is at your level. I would also recommend watching with Chinese
subtitles on since that would make it easier to be sure of what is being said.
Practicing speaking and pronunciation with TV shows is very easy. You simply watch the show and when you hear a sentence you understand, repeat that sentence out loud. Be sure to mimic the character’s speech and intonation as best as you can. It may feel silly to do this at first, but as you keep doing it, you will become more familiar with Chinese speech patterns and tones, and they will come out more naturally the next time you actually speak. It goes without saying that this practice should be done in a place where you will not disturb others and will feel comfortable.
Keep
in mind that this is not a replacement for your conversation practice, it is
simply a way for you to improve your pronunciation and get more familiar with
speaking in Chinese.
Reading
Similar to speaking, reading is
better practiced with more appropriate resources like books, articles and other
such materials. The language that can be read from Chinese TV shows is
generally colloquial spoken language, which differs from that used in written
resources. However, using TV shows to practice reading can help you get better
at recognizing Chinese characters at a faster rate.
To
practice reading with Chinese TV shows, you must simply watch a show with
Chinese subtitles which shouldn’t be too difficult since practically all
Chinese audio-visual media include subtitles. As you are watching, be sure to
read the subtitles while paying attention to the audio. This will train your
brain to associate the sound and meaning of the characters with their
appearance.
Practicing
reading with simpler more stimulating material like TV shows allows the
transition into reading longer written texts to be much smoother.
Vocabulary
Acting as the building blocks of
language, vocabulary can be acquired via practically every language resource.
Of course, this also includes TV programs, but I would argue that TV media is one
of the best resources to acquire vocabulary from. The audio-visual properties
of the medium allow learners to receive visual, auditory and contextual
references for every word they encounter.
When
watching a TV show in Chinese, you are likely to come across many unknown words.
There are a variety of practical ways to deal with such an abundance of
vocabulary. I would like to offer a disclaimer that the method written below is
one that I personally use and is not the only way to learn vocabulary from
Chinese shows.
First, have a pen/pencil and notepad with
you as you watch the show. Make sure that you have chosen a show that is
appropriate for your level and only contains Chinese subtitles that you have
already seen. This allows for maximum clarity with minimal distraction.
Then, enjoy the show while looking out
for sentences where you understand all but one or two words. When you encounter
such a sentence, write it down and look up the words you don’t understand.
Doing it this way ensures that you understand the meaning of the context in and
the usage of the new words, and increases the likelihood that you’ll remember them.
It also allows you to enjoy the experience more rather than pausing the video
at every second to write down words that you don’t know.
By
the end of an episode, you’ll surely have a whole list of new words and example
sentences noted down. Whether you choose to further study those words is
completely up to you, but the process alone is already a good way to expand
your vocabulary.
Now, having taken all of
this in, I’m sure that your approach to watching Chinese audio-visual media
will be at least a little bit different. While Chinese TV shows may be a
versatile and practical tool for your Chinese learning journey, it’s important
to keep in mind that the key point of using them for language learning is to
have fun in the process. The methods listed above should be taken as
informative guidelines of how a Chinese show can help you to improve your
Chinese skills rather than strict rules to follow whenever you sit down to
enjoy your favourite show. Just remember to have fun as you explore Chinese
language and culture through television!
For a list of suggestions of Chinese TV shows (click here)
For many other Chinese learning resources (click here)
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