When my 6-year-old American daughter speaks and reads Chinese, she surprisingly sounds like a child from China.
Since my Mandarin is limited and my daughter spends less than 2 hours per week with a native Chinese-speaking teacher, I attribute her Chinese fluency to large amounts of audio input.
Because she can learn Chinese from audiobooks, I believe that many other non-native families can benefit from these valuable and inexpensive strategies.
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Using digital media to learn Chinese
Among various audio resources, Chinese audiobooks have been the most useful for advancing my daughter’s listening and reading comprehension, vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation.
Chinese music and videos
Music is fun and inviting, but it doesn’t teach sentences, intonation, and dialogue.
Our children’s screentime, albeit limited, is intentionally restricted to Chinese because English is our native language.
Videos can be helpful if you can see the actors and actresses moving their mouths while speaking.
However, we restrict screen time due to its cumulative negative health and behavior effects.
Chinese audiobooks
Luckily, free Chinese audiobooks are widely available on the internet and apps.
Many Chinese audiobooks are also available on CDs. When my daughter and I first began to learn Chinese from audiobooks, we read very simple stories like the Mandy and Pandy series.
As our skills improved, we graduated to the 咔哒故事 app on iTunes which allows you to choose stories by book cover images.
Eventually, I buckled down and figured out how to use Ximalaya.
We were also gifted Luka Reading Robot which can read thousands of Chinese picture books and has made audiobooks infinitely easier!
Thanks to Ximalaya and Luka, we listen to Chinese audiobooks almost daily!
How to learn Chinese from audiobooks
In this post, I will share:
- How we choose appropriate Chinese audiobooks
- 5 ways we are learning Chinese with audiobooks
- Limitations of our Chinese environment
1. Chinese audiobooks for children: How to find the right stories
The ideal Chinese audiobooks will depend on various factors.
Trial and error might be inevitable before finding the right stories. It’s really important to keep this in mind, because another child’s favorite book might be too boring or too hard for your child.
For example, the Magic School Bus series was one of my childhood favorites in English.
Three years ago, I tried listening to it on Ximalaya with my daughter. Because the content and pace were too advanced for our level at the time, we were discouraged that we could not understand the narrator, and I gave up on Ximalaya for a while.
Related: Now, Magic School Bus is one of my daughter’s favorites in Chinese!
So, what are some important factors to consider when choosing Chinese audiobooks?
Level
What is your child’s age and Chinese skill level?
If you’re just starting to learn Chinese, you may want something repetitive like Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? and the Mandy and Pandy series.
More advanced learners can give input on selecting audiobooks with attractive content.
Content
For children, stories about daily life are most likely to be relevant and therefore understandable.
In addition, consider your child’s interests (eg, animals, solar system) and find audiobooks on those topics.
For our family, this means famous Tang poems are unlikely to make the cut in our busy day.
Narrator
The voice should be clear and without distracting background noise or music.
Some children may prefer a calm reading style while others may be intrigued by a dramatic narration.
2. Five Ways My Daughter and I Learn Chinese from Audiobooks
Now that we are comfortable with finding the right Chinese audiobooks, we can devour wonderful stories regularly and improve our Mandarin.
In order to learn Chinese from audiobooks, we try to listen in the car. When we are driving, my daughter is pretty attentive because there isn’t much to do besides looking out the window.
Occasionally, we listen to Chinese stories during meals.
If they seem distracted on something else, we turn off the audiobook or Luka. We don’t leave it on as “background noise” so they can focus on another activity.
Previously, my daughter is often listening to Chinese audiobooks alone.
My 3-year-old son recently has shown interest in listen to audiobooks with our Luka Reading Robot, and he joins big sister at bedtime. Otherwise, he prefers that I read to him for the bonding.
However, since I am not able to listen to Chinese audiobooks as often as my daughter, her Chinese language skills continue to improve beyond mine.
Even if I have time, I am not actively learning Chinese from audiobooks. I often zone out as I’m planning the day in my head.
Here are 5 general ways that we listen and learn Chinese from audiobooks:
1. Listen to Chinese audiobooks before reading the physical books
We often listen to stories by our favorite narrators on Ximalaya, even before purchasing the books.
Benefits include:
- Focusing on our listening skills.
- Leaving images up to the child’s imagination – kind of like how we adults often read novels before a movie so the video images don’t “spoil” our notions about a narrative.
- Figuring out whether we like the story enough to buy the physical book.
Generally, my daughter chooses which story she wants to re-listen to and when she wants to try new stories. Or I will just play a new story and see if it captures her attention.
2. Listen to Chinese audiobooks while following along the text
For the physical books that we have, audio narration allows us to read books that would be too hard for me to check all of the words in the dictionary.
This is where Luka Reading Robot is a game changer as the robot reads Chinese books page by page.
In order for a child to follow a narration, they need to:
- Understand 1:1 correspondence (each spoken Chinese syllable corresponds with a Chinese character)
- Keep up with the pace of a narrator
- Not be distracted by the illustrations
Because the illustrations in books will naturally attract children, I give my daughter plenty of time to take “picture walks” through each book that she wants to learn to read.
The ability to “read” illustrations is an important skill itself; it also provides context to the audio narrative.
When she’s satisfied with the visual exploration, she can concentrate on the Chinese characters better.
Then she listens to the story multiple times so that she can memorize new Chinese characters independently.
If we encounter unfamiliar Chinese characters, then we write each down on Post-It notes and stick it to the page.
Usually I’ll write Pinyin and English on the back of the Post-It for reference for myself.
3. Listen without ever seeing the books
For the bulk of the Chinese audiobooks that we have listened to, I won’t buy the physical books if the illustrations appear unattractive or if we already have similar books on the topic or reading level. Therefore, we listen to them like old-fashioned storytelling.
As mentioned above, this is very effective for honing the receptive language skills because there is no visual input.
As my daughter matures, I would like to encourage her to try drawing what she thinks has happened in the story by trying this myself!
4. Listen to Chinese audiobooks on repeat
Naturally, we listen to favorite Chinese stories on replay. My daughter loves to make her requests, and my son is starting to as well!
Each time we listen, we can learn more about the story, including details that we may not have noticed before.
In addition, listening to the same story helps with memorizing new Chinese phrases.
5. Discuss Chinese audiobooks and mimicking the narrator
After my daughter listens to her favorite stories, she is so excited to chat with me what so-and-so character said and did.
By discussing the plot, we both get a chance to use new vocabulary.
Talking allows this passive audio resource to become an effective way to practice Mandarin actively.
Another crucial way that we improve our Chinese speaking skills is by reading books out loud at bedtime.
My daughter will try to mimic the narrator’s reading style, which also means that she is imitating native Mandarin tones and pronunciation
3. Limitations of our Chinese learning environment
Chinese audiobooks cannot replace person-to-person interaction
Despite our progress with Chinese audiobooks, person-to-person interaction will always be the best way to learn Chinese. I wish I could read Chinese with her the way I can do in English.
We don’t listen to audiobooks in English, because nothing is better than a parent’s voice.
Currently, my daughter’s Chinese reading skills are more advanced than her speaking skills. I foresee this to be a long-term problem because of our English-dominant environment.
Although she sounds fluent and has memorized well over 1000 Chinese characters, her Mandarin vocabulary and grammar are probably average for her age due to lack of practice with various native speakers.
Chinese reading pens
The other limitation of most audiobooks is the lack of word-for-word narration. My hope is that over time and as technology advances, more reading pen options will be available on the market.
We loved the 樂樂文化 Le Le Chinese Pen Leveled Readers System for its clean design, individual word and sentence narration, and realistic illustrations – I’d love to see more audiobooks like this available on the market.
We can also download stories from Ximalaya and then upload the mp3 files into the reading pen…but we haven’t gotten around to it yet!
Conclusion
Regularly listening to Chinese audiobooks can improve both speaking and reading skills. I highly recommend incorporating audiobooks into your daily routine and involving your child’s interests in the story selection.
Does your family listen to audiobooks, and if so, what are your favorites? If not, what challenges have prevented the use of this resource?
Please feel free to share in the comments or questions below as many other parents share the same concerns!
FREE CHINESE AUDIOBOOKS
Ximalaya FM has thousands of free Chinese audiobooks for children! Our favorites are listed in this post.
Since the entire website and app is in Chinese, please refer to this guide on How to Use Ximalaya If You Cannot Read Chinese.
Also be sure to check out other Websites and Apps with FREE Multilingual books for Kids!
WHERE TO BUY CHINESE BOOKS FOR KIDS
For all book recommendations, please explore our favorite Chinese books for kids and follow my Instagram book account @chinesekidlit for special highlights!
If you’re wondering where to buy kids’ books, please click here for a list of the most popular online Chinese bookstores!
Tips on creating a Chinese learning environment at home
- Teach Your Child a Second Language at Home with 5 Key Steps
- Raising Multilingual Children as a Non-Fluent Parent: 7 Lessons Learned
- How To Get Your Child To Speak the Minority Language
- How to Find a Foreign Language Teacher for Your Child
- 5 Reasons Books are the Best Gifts for Multilingual Kids
- 15 Ways to Encourage Your Child to Read
- Create a Print-Rich Environment with Labels that Promote Literacy
- When Should My Child Learn Hanyu Pinyin?
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