Chinese subtitles and transcripts: Reading before, while or after listening

Subtitles and transcripts can help you understand spoken Chinese, but do they also help you become a better listener?

Should you read along, read first, or save the text for after you’ve listened?

This article is based on a lesson in my video course The Fluent Listener: Navigating Spoken Mandarin Like a Fish in Water. You can watch the entire lesson for free on YouTube here:

Tune in to the Hacking Chinese Podcast to listen to the related episode (#285).

Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and many other platforms!

Should you read before, while or after listening?

In this article, we’re going to explore the following:

• Listening and reading: Why are you listening?
• The benefits of using text support
• Subtitles in your native language: useful, but not for listening practice
• Chinese subtitles: better, but still not realistic listening practice
• Listening to learn more: When comprehension matters a lot
• Reading before, while or after listening?
• Option #1: Reading before listening
• Option #2: Reading while listening
• Option #3: Reading after listening
• More reasons to listen before you read
• Finding, buying or creating Chinese text support
• Conclusion: Text support is great, but only if you use it correctly

The Fluent Listener: Navigating Spoken Mandarin Like a Fish in Water

This course will help you become a fluent listener, no matter your proficiency level. It guides you in building an immersive listening environment and equips you with essential listening strategies.

Strengthen your listening to connect with others and navigate Chinese culture with ease, feeling 如鱼得水 (rúyúdéshuǐ) or “like a fish in water”.

You can read more about the course here: The Fluent Listener: Navigating Spoken Mandarin Like a Fish in Water.

If you prefer to read about subtitles, transcripts and when to use them, the rest of this article is for you. It covers roughly the same content as the video lesson.

Listening and reading: Why are you listening?

To talk about subtitles and transcripts in a useful way, we need to start with a key question: Why are you listening? What are you trying to achieve?

In practice, your reasons usually fall into three broad categories:

1. To comprehend. You need to understand what is being said. Maybe you’re listening to something important: a lecture, a colleague, a recorded message from your spouse, an announcement, and so on. Your goal is the information itself.
2. To develop your listening ability. Here, the goal is to get better at understanding spoken Chinese. You want your listening comprehension to improve over time.
3. To improve in other areas. Listening can help you build vocabulary and grammar, which in turn supports speaking, reading and writing. Or you might be listening mainly for enjoyment, motivation or cultural exposure.

All of these are valid reasons to listen. They can overlap, but more importantly, they can also be in direct conflict with each other.

If your main goal is pure comprehension and nothing else, then listening in your native language is more efficient. If something can be translated or you can switch languages, doing so might give better results immediately. But that doesn’t develop your listening ability in Mandarin.

The same tension shows up when adding text support. Seeing what you are listening to written down can help you understand much more, but it can also reduce how much actual listening practice you get. Which one matters more depends on your goal.

The benefits of using text support

I’ll use “text support” as a catch-all term for subtitles, transcripts, captions, or any written version of what is being said.

There are several clear benefits of using text support:

• Extra path to comprehension: If the audio doesn’t click, the text gives you a second chance. Even if your listening is better than your reading (which is not the norm), it’s still sometimes helpful to see things written down.
• Easier lookups: Audio can be ambiguous (tones, word boundaries, segmentation). Text shows you exactly what to copy-paste and search for (or use a pop-up dictionary).
• Pause and study: With subtitles or a transcript, you can pause, replay, and keep the content in front of you while you check things. That’s just not possible with pure audio.
• See what you can’t hear: If you keep mishearing the same expression, seeing it written down often makes it click. Sometimes, it’s possible to hear a common word or phrase dozens of times without really hearing it, in which case seeing it can alert you to its existence. If you want to go one step further, try transcribing short sections (see Transcribing Chinese audio as an active form of listening ).

Because of these benefits, I generally recommend choosing listening materials that come with transcripts or subtitles, even if you don’t plan to use them immediately. Having the option is valuable.

Still, as mentioned earlier, comprehension is not everything. Just because you understand more when you turn on subtitles, it doesn’t automatically follow that this is good for your learning.

A good example of comprehension not being everything is using subtitles in your native language.

Subtitles in your native language: useful, but not for listening practice

If you watch a Chinese movie with English subtitles, are you actually listening to the Chinese?

Maybe, but often the English text is so easy to process that you mainly read. If that happens, the activity becomes “reading English while Chinese happens in the background”. That can be enjoyable, and it can be motivating if the content is good, but it’s not a great way to improve Chinese listening comprehension.

That’s fine, as long as the goal is motivation, cultural enjoyment, or basic access to information, not listening practice.

Chinese subtitles: better, but still not realistic listening practice

Subtitles in Chinese clearly have more benefits for developing your language proficiency, but it is still not ideal for listening practice.

The reason is that you’re focusing on the wrong type of connections. Listening is about connecting spoken form with meaning, but when reading, you’re not even trying to do that. Understanding what something means by reading it is fundamentally different from understanding it through listening.

Listening to learn more: When comprehension matters a lot

Still, even if comprehension is not a goal in and of itself, it’s generally true that understanding is good, and often necessary, for learning.

If you understand nothing of what you listen to, you won’t learn much either. You can’t learn vocabulary or grammar if you don’t understand the sentences they are embedded in.

In that situation, transcripts and subtitles can be very helpful. If reading enables you to understand more, then using text support can directly increase how much you learn.

It’s worth noting that you need to have reached a certain level of fluency in reading before it becomes helpful. If your reading is not up to par, subtitles might hinder more than they help.

Reading with audio support is a worthwhile activity, but again, it’s not ideal for developing listening ability.

Reading before, while or after listening?

Now we get to the core of this article. Assuming you have access to a transcript or subtitles, when should you use them?

There are three main options:

• Read before listening
• Read while listening
• Read after listening

The order matters a lot, so let’s have a look at each option in turn.

Option #1: Reading before listening

If you read first, your reading becomes meaning-focused: you are primarily trying to understand the content through text.

Then, when you listen, you already know what is happening. You know the topic, who is speaking, what the key points are, and often what the next sentence will be about.

That means the listening is no longer meaning-focused. It becomes something else, such as:

• linking spoken and written language
• noticing pronunciation details
• confirming how a word is said

There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not great if your goal is to improve listening comprehension, for reasons we have already discussed.

If you want to read before listening, read for context

Previewing is helpful. In real life, you rarely enter a listening situation with zero context. Reading headlines, a short summary, bullet points, or a few keywords can activate prior knowledge and make listening easier without removing the need to listen.

Reading a word-by-word transcript before listening essentially spoils the listening (see Listen before you read: Improve your listening ability ).

Option #2: Reading while listening

This is the case we have already discussed, including watching a video with subtitles or reading a transcript while listening to a podcast. Let’s just summarise the pros and cons:

Pros

• Extra path to comprehension
• Lets you pause to look things up
• Links spoken and written language
• Lets you see what you cannot hear

Cons

• Requires good reading skills
• Can distract you from listening
• Can turn listening practice into reading practice

So again, it comes back to the same question: Why are you listening?

If you are listening primarily to improve listening comprehension, this is usually not the best default approach.

Option #3: Reading after listening

Reading after listening is the preferred option in most cases.

The basic idea is simple:

1. Listen once.
2. Listen again (if you can).
3. Only then check the transcript or turn on subtitles.

If you want to read more about why listening more than once is awesome, see Listen more than once: How the replay button can help you learn more Chinese.

Listen more than once: How the replay button can help you learn more Chinese

This sequencing gives you the best of both worlds: You get meaning-focused listening practice first, and then you use the text to clear up what you missed.

Reading after listening can help you:

• resolve ambiguities
• look up things you couldn’t hear
• solidify your understanding
• link spoken and written language
• search and revisit content later

If you do it this way, there are very few downsides to using text support, and you get all the upsides, too.

More reasons to listen before you read

Beyond the pedagogical reasons discussed so far, there’s also a very practical reason to listen before you read:

It’s easier to find good reading materials than listening materials.

Good reading material is everywhere. Good listening material that is level-appropriate and enjoyable is harder to find, even if The Fluent Listener comes with a library of listening resource recommendations, sorted by level.

I wrote more about this topic here: Listen before you read: Improve your listening ability

There is one important exception to the “listen first” principle: if you’ve already read something for another reason, listening to the audio is great for reviewing and re-encountering the same content in spoken form. The prime example of this is listening to the audio for a graded reader you have already read.

Finding, buying or creating Chinese text support

Text support can be found, bought, or created. The easiest method by far is to choose listening resources that already come with transcripts or subtitles, however.

Here are some options:

• Use resources with text support: Many learner podcasts and platforms offer transcripts, either free or as a subscriber perk. If you have options, pick the one that includes text. Please note that platforms like YouTube and Spotify often automatically generate captions and transcripts. If you need recommendations for YouTube videos or podcasts, start here: The best YouTube channels for learning Chinese and The best podcasts for learning Chinese.
• Pay for transcripts: For creators, transcripts often fund the project. If you love a podcast, buying transcripts can be worth it and saves you a lot of hassle.
• Generate transcripts with tools: You can create subtitles or transcripts with AI transcription, but remember that time you spend fiddling with software could have been spent listening to more Chinese instead.

The best YouTube channels for learning Chinese in 2025

Conclusion: Text support is great, but only if you use it correctly

Subtitles and transcripts give you an extra path to comprehension and make it easier to look things up, pause, and work with the content.

The downside is that text can pull attention away from the audio, especially if your goal is to develop listening ability.

If you want to improve listening comprehension, listen first and only turn to the text after you’ve given the audio at least one (preferably two or more) honest attempts.

If your main goal is understanding or learning from the content, using text support is often the most efficient way to get there.

The Fluent Listener: Navigating Spoken Mandarin Like a Fish in Water

If you want a whole course dedicated to helping you improve your listening comprehension in Mandarin, check out The Fluent Listener: Navigating Spoken Mandarin Like a Fish in Water. The course will help you make the most out of your listening by improving what you listen to, how you listen and how much you listen!