FuroraCeltica Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6856 days ago 1187 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French
| Message 1 of 8 16 April 2007 at 4:06pm | IP Logged |
Hi everyone.
My Spanish study is now around the 250/300 hour mark, and I can now comfortably read articles from serious newspapers and understand 80-90% of them. However, my listening is extremely weak, probably at best 50%. Someone has suggested that I buy an audiobook, like Harry Potter in Spanish, as I already have the written book, so it would be useful to compare them.
Can anyone tell me if this is a good way to improve my listening skills? if so, how do I get the most out of it?
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jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6900 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map
| Message 2 of 8 16 April 2007 at 4:56pm | IP Logged |
I see several possibilities: just listening to see how much you understand, listening whilst reading the English original (or the Spanish translation), reading aloud, shadowing/trying to keep up with what's said...
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patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7006 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map
| Message 3 of 8 16 April 2007 at 5:07pm | IP Logged |
FuroraCeltica wrote:
Can anyone tell me if this is a good way to improve my listening skills? |
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It's always worked for me.
I prefer to listen while following the text in the same language, although this can become quite draining after a while. I can't cope too well with listening to one language while reading another, but that's just me.
Edited by patuco on 16 April 2007 at 5:10pm
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Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6430 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese
| Message 4 of 8 16 April 2007 at 5:17pm | IP Logged |
patuco wrote:
I prefer to listen while following the text in the same language, although this can become quite draining after a while. I can't cope too well with listening to one language while reading another, but that's just me. |
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I find listening to audio while following a transcript to be quite helpful for aural comprehension; I haven't done it with audio books (ie, literary ones), but it's a fairly big part of how I use Assimil.
Another thing I find helpful is to listen to songs, ideally while looking at their lyrics.
This is getting offtopic, but like Patuco, I've found it's possible to read one language while listening to another. I've been developing my ability to do this - my reading speed drops extremely dramatically, and my comprehension of both what I'm reading and listening to drops quite a bit (albeit not that much more than when I'm reading and listening to unrelated things, both as actively as I can, in the same language).
The best I can do currently is to understand songs in Italian (I find songs significantly more difficult than normal speech to comprehend) that I've never heard before, while reading light technical articles in English (understanding spoken English while reading in Italian is much easier).
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LilleOSC Senior Member United States lille.theoffside.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6682 days ago 545 posts - 546 votes 4 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: French, Arabic (Written)
| Message 5 of 8 16 April 2007 at 5:51pm | IP Logged |
FuroraCeltica wrote:
Hi everyone.
My Spanish study is now around the 250/300 hour mark, and I can now comfortably read articles from serious newspapers and understand 80-90% of them. However, my listening is extremely weak, probably at best 50%. Someone has suggested that I buy an audiobook, like Harry Potter in Spanish, as I already have the written book, so it would be useful to compare them.
Can anyone tell me if this is a good way to improve my listening skills? if so, how do I get the most out of it? |
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Wow, you are at a pretty high level for only being around the 250/300 hour mark.Congrats.
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FuroraCeltica Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6856 days ago 1187 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French
| Message 6 of 8 17 April 2007 at 3:57am | IP Logged |
Thanks for the replies guys, I shall try it :)
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Linguamor Decaglot Senior Member United States Joined 6609 days ago 469 posts - 599 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch
| Message 7 of 8 17 April 2007 at 1:16pm | IP Logged |
You can listen to reportajes, or read and listen to them at the same time, on this site:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/Spanish/
Edited by Linguamor on 17 April 2007 at 1:28pm
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FuroraCeltica Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6856 days ago 1187 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French
| Message 8 of 8 19 April 2007 at 6:28am | IP Logged |
Linguamor wrote:
You can listen to reportajes, or read and listen to them at the same time, on this site:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/Spanish/
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Many thanks, I have found this to be a useful resource, as I like news and current affairs anyway :)
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