As you all know, listening is very important when learning a language. Good listening habits help with word recognition and pronunciation skills for speaking Chinese.  

 I have been teaching Chinese for 10 years. During that time, I found that just listening to the MP3s that come with text books is not enough to help you become a fluent Chinese speaker. Some students understand that, and they try to watch news or TV shows. This does help, but not in the most efficient way, because there are still so many words and phrases you don't know. It takes a long time to learn the structure of the language, the vocabulary, phrases and expressions without a native speaker's help. Again, it must be said, without good listening you cannot speak Chinese very well!

That's why I created these 10 real stories. Each story will play three times. The first time the story is only in Chinese. During the first play, you will listen, roughly know the meaning and pay attention to the parts you don't know. The second play is with Pinyin and Chinese character subtitles, so you will find some words which you know, but did not recognize during the first play. The third play is with Pinyin, Chinese characters and English subtitles. In this third play, you will learn some new words you don't know.

Trust me, after studying these 10 stories, you will have taken a solid step on your way to fluency. In addition, the selected stories will not only help you learn Chinese, but to understand and know the culture of China as well.