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Major listening problems | ||
Tags: Listening | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Lukedharris Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4569 days ago 2 posts - 3 votes | Message 1 of 7 06 April 2015 at 3:01pm | IP Logged |
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Hello
I've been living in Spain for 8 months. The problem I have is that I can't understand anything in spoken Spanish. I've been attending 6 hours of Spanish lessons a week most of the time I've been here. My grammar, writing and reading are good. I have an okay vocabulary. My fluency needs work, it sometimes takes me time to say something, but it's okay. The problem is that listening is terrible. I say something to someone and when they reply I understand nothing. Even when they slow down I still don't understand. It's not just with native Spanish speakers, it's even with people speaking Spanish as a second language. The only times I've understood something is when people leave a gap between each word. I've tried many things, I've listened to podcasts, watched TV, intercambios and dictations. But it's hard to progress when I'm not understanding anything and I often lose concentration because of my lack of comprehension. Even if I understand the text written, as soon as it's spoken it sounds like gibberish. This is not the first time this has happened, I lived in Italy for over a year and I had the same problem. Does anybody have any advice or has suffered the same problem? Thanks. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4085 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 2 of 7 06 April 2015 at 3:16pm | IP Logged |
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When you watch something, such as a television show, do you pick something to watch at random or do you choose something with enunciated speech and closed captions? Do the podcasts have transcripts?
The reason I ask is simple: if you have trouble understanding everything you hear, it's going to be an incredibly steep uphill battle if your input it difficult. In order to parse what you hear you have to learn how to listen, and have a large enough vocabulary that you're not constantly second-guessing yourself.* When it comes to teaching yourself how to listen, you'll probably have much less trouble if you slowly phase out transcripts, rather listening and listening and listening until something just starts making sense on its own. *At least this is the case with French. I don't know how difficult Spanish is. I've never had much trouble with Italian, but I did come to Italian only after I understood 99.9% of everything people say to me and what is said on TV. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| chaotic_thought Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 3528 days ago 129 posts - 274 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, French | Message 3 of 7 06 April 2015 at 3:19pm | IP Logged |
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Concentrate on materials that have transcripts available or translations. You said your understanding while reading is good. If you read the script while listening, then your listening will improve.
Here is a simple listening exercise you can do with a newscast or some kind of audio recording with a script. It takes about 30 min of effort: 1. Read the script while listening to the newscast (example) (10-15 min) 2. Wait one hour 3. Listen to the newscast again without reading the script (10-15 min) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4895 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 4 of 7 06 April 2015 at 3:22pm | IP Logged |
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Some of us have difficulty processing what we hear. I have a similar problem, and my son has it to the extent that when he was young his early speech sounded like someone who is hard of hearing. We had his hearing tested and it is perfect. Further diagnosis showed that he has autism with "recptvie and expressive language difficulty". In other words, he can hear perfectly well, but it takes his brain longer to work out what he hears. I'm not suggesting that you have autism, but most aspects of autism are quite common; it's only when they are somewhat disabling that they bring a diagnosis of autism. Similar to the difference between someone who is visually disabled and someone who just needs glasses. From the little I know from your post I'd suggest that you have difficulty processing what you hear.
I'm afraid the only solution to listening difficulties is a lot of practice. If you lose focus when listening to longer sections, try listening to short things. Even a sentence at a time. Listen while reading, listen alone and then read alone, and then listen while reading again. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| bryanpeabody Groupie United States Joined 4971 days ago 48 posts - 79 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 5 of 7 06 April 2015 at 4:32pm | IP Logged |
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I agree with what people here have already said. If you haven't already, the Assimil dialogs
with audio are great to work on listening skills. Another good option is Veinte Mundos. The articles are geared towards intermediate levels and have audio with them: http://www.veintemundos.com/en/library/ If you like watching short videos, try FluentU also. The videos are captioned in Spanish and have exercises to help learn the vocab. Edited by bryanpeabody on 06 April 2015 at 4:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4995 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 6 of 7 06 April 2015 at 5:05pm | IP Logged |
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A few questions:
Where in Spain do you live? In another thread, I asked about resources that would help me with the Andalusian Spanish as that one proved very difficult to me during my stay in Spain. In some regions, people tend to speak quite close to what you hear in the media while in others, it feels almost like another language. What podcasts have you been using, what kinds of tv programs? I used to have problems with understanding before I started to put lots of time into listening practice. And I still meet quite a lot of people who have troubles understanding the real language despite progressing in all the other areas. A few roots of the trouble that may or may not apply to you: 1.Wrong choice of listening practice. In short, many people (often following teachers' advice) jump right into native radio or another very difficult situation. Instead, you can make the learning curve much less steep by going from easier things to the harder ones. A possible sequence can look like this: -beginner podcasts and audio from your course, Destinos (a tv serie like course) -intermediate podcasts, easier news and so on, music -dubbed tv series you already know, audiobooks, documentaries (those are usually in standard language and slower than the usual pace) -a few more dubbed tv series that are not that hard (i recommend you to avoid shows like Futurama, those are quite demanding for an intermediate listener, I'd say such shows are more difficult than some of the native ones), tv news -native tv series and movies, ads, commented news etc There is a lot of options to choose from. The key is to choose something of appropriate difficulty AND something you are interested in, something you find fun. That facilitates the process a lot. 2.Many people just don't listen enough. They believe the few listening exercises in their class or just listening to their course once is enough. That doesn't sound like you. 3.Stress and panic. That is a very common thing. When you just "know" that you aren't gonna understand anyways, the brain refuses to work on the task properly. That is the panic that leads people to giving up on watching tv series without subtitles just because they don't understad everything after ten minutes. That is the panic that often drags people to taking refuge in English in the country. What I found to work: -Listen to something easier at times. While it is extremely important to leave your comfort zone in order to progress, it is very comforting to come back to something that used to be difficult and find out it is not anymore. You are perhaps making progress without noticing it. -Find calm opportunities to practice. One of the most common ways is to talk with people while drinking beer/tea/coffee/wine/whatever works for you. -Don't dwell too much on being judged. Sure, everyone can feel like a total moron when they are failing during a conversation with a native. But there is no huge reason to. YOu are still learning and people usually know what it is like. And you are in Spain, where the natives tend to be among the most supportive towards learners in whole Europe :-) A few sites you might like: rtve.es (and any other tv site, you won't get any region restrictions while you are in Spain) http://cvc.cervantes.es/ensenanza/actividades_ave/aveteca.ht m http://lyricstraining.com/ And I recommend reading some logs of successful Spanish learners, such as Stelle. Edited by Cavesa on 06 April 2015 at 5:08pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Lukedharris Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4569 days ago 2 posts - 3 votes | Message 7 of 7 06 April 2015 at 5:09pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks you all for the quick and helpful responses.
I do use transcripts with podcasts (when I can find them) and I use subtitles when I watch TV. The problem I have with this is that what I'm reading doesn't seem to have any connection to what is being said, and because my reading is stronger I eventually stop listening and only focus on the reading. On television I watch dubbed sitcoms, gameshows and the news. I don't know if they have enunciated speech or not. bryanpeabody I'll have a look at the websites you mention and see if they help. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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