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Audio books? Any good?

  Tags: Audiobook | Book | Spanish
 Language Learning Forum : Books, Literature & Reading Post Reply
FuroraCeltica
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 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
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 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
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 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?

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
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 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.


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
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 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?
Wow, you are at a pretty high level for only being around the 250/300 hour mark.Congrats.
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FuroraCeltica
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 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
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 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
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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/



Many thanks, I have found this to be a useful resource, as I like news and current affairs anyway :)


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