"His hobby is listening to music."

Translation: 他的爱好是听音乐。

[Jacob862044]

Why is 是 required in this case?

[King184867]

The structures of this sentence are similar in Chinese and English. Let's make an one-to-one translation here:

His - hobby - is - listening to - music.

他的 - 爱好 - 是 - 听 - 音乐

Therefore, if 是 is omitted, just like saying in English "His hobby listening to music."

[Travis70234]

听音乐是他的爱好 is incorrect?

[Kovac031]

i don't know if it is generally not a proper sentence or not, but it's asking you to translate it from a specific form from English, starting with "His hobby..." So you should start with "他的爱好 ...".

[Kovac031]

After all those previous lessons introducing 在 to use as a modifier for verbs to make something present continuous tense, now we have "listenING" and we don't need 在.

Honestly at this point I think the only obstacle for learning Chinese are bad English translations of proper Chinese sentences.

[TJabraao]

In this sentence, the "listening" os being used as infinitive, and not present continuous. Thus, you can't use "在“ here