extremetronics1 Newbie Israel Joined 4935 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes
| Message 1 of 6 24 May 2011 at 8:45am | IP Logged |
Hello fellow forumers
To my belief, I have reached quite a comfortable level in my English comprehension, in which I can understand what people in movies or in news (bbc, fox) etc say even without subtitles, but I still don't manage to have that "passive" understanding. Meaning: In order not to get some words "swallowed" I would really better concentrate and focus on what they say, not like my native language, in which i can even "sleep" and understand what they say.
Any Ideas as for why that is happening and how to fix it? I would like more comfort in comprehension like I said
Edited by extremetronics1 on 24 May 2011 at 8:47am
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Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6013 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh
| Message 2 of 6 24 May 2011 at 3:34pm | IP Logged |
I believe that all understanding of language is a matter of comparing the language you hear/read with your internal model of the language.
The further the "input" language from your internal model, the more difficult it is to understand.
Maybe working on your pronunciation would help...? If you start pronouncing things more like a native speaker, you should be able to notice them better.
I don't know what your particular problems are likely to be, but I know a lot of European learners of English can't hear English prepositions properly, or longer words, due to the difficulties in dealing with unstressed syllables.
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simonov Senior Member Portugal Joined 5591 days ago 222 posts - 438 votes Speaks: English
| Message 3 of 6 24 May 2011 at 5:40pm | IP Logged |
Cainntear wrote:
I don't know what your particular problems are likely to be, but I know a lot of European learners of English can't hear English prepositions properly, or longer words, due to the difficulties in dealing with unstressed syllables.
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"A lot of European learners of English"??? Who are they? As far as I know most European languages have prepositions, longer words and deal with unstressed syllables. On what concrete examples are you basing your theory?
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extremetronics1 Newbie Israel Joined 4935 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes
| Message 4 of 6 25 May 2011 at 8:13am | IP Logged |
Cainntear wrote:
I believe that all understanding of language is a matter of comparing the language you hear/read with your internal model of the language.
The further the "input" language from your internal model, the more difficult it is to understand.
Maybe working on your pronunciation would help...? If you start pronouncing things more like a native speaker, you should be able to notice them better.
I don't know what your particular problems are likely to be, but I know a lot of European learners of English can't hear English prepositions properly, or longer words, due to the difficulties in dealing with unstressed syllables. |
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Yeah that's true. I've noticed that since starting to work a little on my pronunciation it improved.
Any more suggestions?
EDIT: very helpful, interesting theory. I'm afraid subtitles accelerated part of the learning but ruined another. thanks again :0
Edited by extremetronics1 on 25 May 2011 at 10:08am
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Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6013 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh
| Message 5 of 6 25 May 2011 at 10:34am | IP Logged |
simonov wrote:
Cainntear wrote:
I don't know what your particular problems are likely to be, but I know a lot of European learners of English can't hear English prepositions properly, or longer words, due to the difficulties in dealing with unstressed syllables.
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"A lot of European learners of English"??? Who are they? As far as I know most European languages have prepositions, longer words and deal with unstressed syllables. On what concrete examples are you basing your theory?
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All languages have unstressed prepositions, yes, but English is almost uniquely difficult to deal with. Not only is English stress-timed, making unstressed syllables hard to detect for speakers of syllable-timed languages such as Spanish, but even speakers of other stress-timed languages can have problems due to English's weakening of vowels. (German is stress-timed, but most of its prepositions still have clear vowels.)
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Monox D. I-Fly Senior Member Indonesia monoxdifly.iopc.us Joined 5137 days ago 762 posts - 664 votes Speaks: Indonesian*
| Message 6 of 6 16 June 2018 at 5:26am | IP Logged |
extremetronics1 wrote:
Meaning: In order not to get some words "swallowed" I would really better concentrate and focus on what they say, not like my native language, in which i can even "sleep" and understand what they say. |
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Ironically, when I am asleep at work, my listening comprehension of foreign songs get better.
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