A Chinese podcast · Same story, 4 levels
美国大公司 T-Mobile 的电话，突然都不好了
T-Mobile Nationwide Outage Lasts Hours
About this story
A simple beginner Chinese listening story about the day T-Mobile's phone service went down across America, and how much everyone relies on their phones. HSK 1 Chinese listening practice.
This is an HSK 1 Chinese listening episode that runs about 1 minute. The full Mandarin script is shown with tap-for-pinyin and a line-by-line English translation, so you can listen and read at once — comprehensible input in the sense of Stephen Krashen's i+1 theory. It teaches 8 key vocabulary words such as 电话、高兴、想 and walks through 3 grammar patterns, each explained in English with examples. The same news story is retold at 4 difficulty levels — use the level selector above to find the version that is challenging but still understandable for you.
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原文Read the complete story in Chinese. Reveal pinyin and English only when you need them.
English transcript reference
T-Mobile is a very big American company.
T-Mobile does phones.
In America, a great many people use T-Mobile.
One day, many people's phones stopped working.
Many people couldn't make calls.
Everyone was upset.
The phones were down, and many people didn't know what was going on.
After a few hours, the phones worked again.
Everyone said: we can't do without our phones.
Without phones, many people didn't know what to do.
Now, the phones are fine.
And many people are happy.
Listen again
Try it without the transcript and notice what sounds clearer.
What vocabulary does this episode teach?
词汇不能打电话 = can't make calls.
大家都很不高兴 = everyone was upset.
很多人都想 = many people thought.
不知道要做什么 = didn't know what to do.
电话又好了 = the phones were fine again.
不知道是什么 = didn't know what it was.
一个很大的美国公司 = a very big American company.
很多人都用 T-Mobile = many people use T-Mobile.
* beyond level超纲词
What grammar patterns appear in this episode?
语法是做……的
是做 X 的 = "is in the business of X / does X for a living".
T-Mobile 是做电话的。
不能……了
不能 + verb + 了 = "can no longer …".
很多人，不能打电话了。
不能没有……
不能没有 X = "cannot do without X".
我们不能没有电话。
Proper nouns
专有名词Free account
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