Zhou writes: I'm a loyal English language learner. I've never stopped learning even after graduation from college. But I'm still unable to follow English news, for example, news on CCTV 9. Could you please give me some advice about that, which will help raise my listening comprehension? Or rather, give an example about how to understand a piece of news?

My comments:

There are two major reasons why we don't understand a news reader. One, we don't understand their vocabulary - he said "gobble-dee-gook", or something sounding like that. Two, we don't understand the subject matter being discussed. If you knew nothing about basketball, for example, you would have a problem understanding a discussion on the triangle offense run by the Los Angeles Lakers.

A third problem we face is with the speaker's accent. But this is a minor problem which usually ceases to be over time - after awhile we get used to accents, even on CCTV 9.

From your writing, I'm convinced that you have a considerable command English. Therefore, I don't think vocabulary is a problem for you (if it is, no worry, just build it). Whether you understand the various subjects making the news, on the other hand, will determine whether you get a hang of the news without kinks and hiccups, so to speak.

Let's take an example. This is the top news right now at BBC online, the international version - Chinese parliament meeting opens (March 5, 2007):

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