I FINISHED MY FIRST EVER AUDIOBOOK!!!!

I originally wrote this up for Reddit, but it got removed for no apparent reason. Oh, well. I do actually like Chinese-Forums better. Anyway, the background for this is that I posted here a few weeks ago lamenting how my listening comprehension was crap and it made me feel like crap. 

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You may or may not know me from my previous posts chronicling my learning process (which you can see here if you are interested). I've largely been on hiatus from studying Chinese. Since I last posted, I've been busy working on other languages, and also I learned a surprising amount about baking bread and making noodles!

Anyway...

One of the things that has consistently bothered me throughout my entire learning process has been my rock-bottom listening comprehension skills. It got to the point where I was reading literature aimed at young adults (or in some cases even a little bit beyond YA literature), but could barely follow along with Peppa Pig without the aid of subtitles. It really, really sucked, and it meant that a huge amount of stuff that I in theory could have been using my Chinese for (watching the news, listening to audiobooks, movies, TV shows, podcasts, vlogs, etc.) was simply off-limits for me.

Ever since I set Chinese on the back burner a few years ago, one of the things I've been working on in a very on-again, off-again fashion---and by no means in any rigorous kind of way, mind you---has been improving my listening comprehension. One of my big go-to's was RFI 中文's news broadcasts. I'd listen to it here and there, sometimes for an hour or more, sometimes for just a few minutes. When I started, I could understand nothing at all. It sounded like pure noise. The thing is, I knew that much of what I was hearing should in principle be comprehensible, because I have (and had) zero problems hearing tones or anything else to do with pronunciation, and I could read news articles from RFI 中文 just fine, so I definitely had the vocabulary. My brain would just refuse to parse the speech it was hearing into words.

About a year ago, I could feel that something was starting to shift. I was starting to be able to understand the beginnings of certain phrases, or I'd pick out names or titles in a discussion, or I could tell, sometimes, when a speaker had reached the end of a phrase. Comprehension had crept from near zero to what felt like a tantalizing 3-4%.

Then, a couple of months ago, another crack in the dam appeared. Now it felt like 10%. I was picking up a lot more phrases, and I was starting to have an inkling of what general topic was being discussed on the news, even though I couldn't really follow what was being said on the matter. It really felt like I was brushing a much fuller comprehension with the tips of my fingers---like my brain was lagging just a bit too much behind what was being said, and if I could only process the speech just a little faster, I'd be understanding almost everything as it was being said.

With that feeling, I knew I had to be close. So I started keeping a spreadsheet and logging the time I spent listening to Chinese. My first big breakthrough was that I watched my first ever TV show completely in Mandarin, with no subtitles. I chose the Mandarin dub of Avatar: The Last Airbender because I know every episode like the back of my hand. Now, listening comprehension felt like it was starting to give a little bit more. Now it felt more like 40-50%---enough to follow the story, even though I couldn't really repeat the lines back to you that I was hearing. For some scenes, comprehension started to rocket up to 80%, but I knew that was only really because (a) I already know all of the lines in English, and (b) the visuals are an excellent assist. It truly felt unreal that I was actually, for real, watching a TV show in Mandarin.

In Mandarin! OMG.

I got a really nasty reality check when I tried to watch native content right after. I tried an anime that seemed interesting---百妖谱---and was crushed to discover that comprehension without subtitles was right back down to like 3%. I was genuinely depressed about it for a couple of days, not gonna lie.

That's when I had my next breakthrough. I stumbled across a travel vlog on Youtube, and realized, holy crap, I understand basically everything this guy is saying! Some more clicking around revealed that it wasn't lightning in a bottle, either. Depending on what I was listening to, listening comprehension was yo-yo'ing between 5-95%.

I'm not sure what prompted me, but I decided to click around and see how I did with audiobooks.\

You know where this is going.

I found out that I was able to understand the Mandarin translation of The Magician's Nephew with maybe 50-60% comprehension. Low, but enough to vaguely follow the story given that I had previously read the book in both English (as a child) and Mandarin (as an adult). And as of a couple of weeks ago---

I did it. I finished my very first audiobook in Chinese. After more than a decade of learning---sometimes lackadaisical, sometimes quite rigorous---I listened to a god damn audiobook in Chinese.

And you know what else?

That was a few weeks ago. Since then, I've also completed The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Horse and His Boy. I got real tired of children's books, and that's when the latest breakthrough happened. Do you know what I'm listening to now?

Metro 2033（地铁2033）

And do you know what my comprehension is at now?

60% when I listen to a chapter for a first time, and 90% when I listen for a second time.

This feels fucking incredible. Oh my god. I'm listening??? to an audiobook???? written for young adults??????

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Real talk now. I've got a ways to go. My goal is still to be able---eventually---to understand Chinese at an academic level, suitable for watching historical dramas, donghua, science fiction, fantasy, wuxia, and highbrow literature aimed at adult native speakers, and to be able to read scientific and historical texts regarding a range of topics. I am not there yet. Realistically, I know I am going to need to add probably at least another 20-40k words to my vocabulary on top of passive acquisition.

I still can't really follow the news. Listening to RFI 中文, I'd estimate that my comprehension hovers at around 30-40%. I can generally follow what is being discussed, and may even glean some details, but I miss too much to tie everything together into a meaningful news article. But I know it's only a matter of time now. Like I said before, I can read the news articles in print just fine. I know I have the vocabulary. It will simply take a few more months. Maybe more, maybe less.

Anyway, that's my big victory that I had to share with you all. It's crazy to me to think of how much my Chinese has developed just in the past year. I am looking forward to seeing how things progress from here.