I downloaded the latest real player this morning. When I went to the radio link I searched for China to bring up radio stations listed in China. I couldn't connect to a lot of them but I did connect to China National Radio 6. I found a radio drama being aired. It was a really weird experience for me. I could recognize about 40 to 60 percent of the words but they were speaking much faster than the TV dramas I've been watching and there were no visual cues to help me follow what was going on. I had trouble processing the information. It was just so fast and while hearing the voices I kept expecting to see something. There was also this slight echo and all of that combined made me feel like I was in a dark room hearing voices and couldn't see the people speaking. While it all sounded familiar I wasn't making sense of it. I found myself trying to concentrate on the words and trying to make sense of the familiar words I was hearing. All of that runs contrary to my present methodology.
Right now there is a story being narrated by a woman. The speaking speed is much slower. But still I need to concentrate on the words. I guess the visual information is important to distract me from thinking so much about the words. I will go back to the TV method.