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Products for improving listening skills? | ||
Tags: Listening | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6374 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 9 of 21 23 August 2011 at 10:05pm | IP Logged | ||
It's optional, but it's very helpful. I find it important for most languages, though how important varies on how difficult I find the phonology. It's not about the nifty symbols, for me - it's about things like being comfortable making the voiceless lateral l found in Welsh, and learning to hear the difference in German vowels that my native variety of English does not contrast. Native English speakers often have a very hard time with producing pure vowels (I certainly have); studying phonetics isn't the only way to improve this, but it is one. Every language he's interested in uses pure vowels. Just because a language doesn't have spelling as crazy as English, so that you need to note how to pronounce words for learners, doesn't make phonetic knowledge anywhere near irrelevant for it. Even in Italian, it's incredibly useful for things like knowing that some consonants, like 't', are dental, and understanding geminate consonants; other languages tend to have even more sticking points for native English speakers. Given his approach to music, it seems like the kind of knowledge he might well want. Other people play by ear with no training, and play well - both in languages and in music. Different strokes for different folks. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6638 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 10 of 21 24 August 2011 at 1:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Stop listening for the content for a while, just listen to follow the string of syllables and words and phrases and try to catch the division points. I have called this 'listening like a bloodhound' because I thought of a bloodhound following a trail with its nose down close to the earth and totally oblivious to anything that happens around it.
If you try too hard to understand the meaning then anything unknown will block you for several seconds and you are going to lose anything that is said during those seconds and the whole thing becomes a mess. When you listen like that dog (it's also called 'intensive listening') then the meaning of known words will automatically pop up into your mind, and when the 'pops' become numerous enough you can grasp the meaning. In other words: be content with those fragments which come by themselves and listen for the structure instead. You don't have time to think when you listen to something in a language where you are a beginner, that's a luxury for those who have automated their basic listening. Edited by Iversen on 24 August 2011 at 1:20pm 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kmart Senior Member Australia Joined 6059 days ago 194 posts - 400 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian | Message 11 of 21 24 August 2011 at 3:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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For Italian, Alma Edizioni has a 3-disc series "Ci Vuole Orecchio" for improving listening comprehension, and also "Cinema Italiano" which is similar, but adds movies to the experience. Accompanying books give transcripts (but not translations) and exercises to help focus listening skills and improve comprehension.
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| starrye Senior Member United States Joined 5029 days ago 172 posts - 280 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 12 of 21 24 August 2011 at 3:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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Iversen, I remember reading a post of yours, maybe a year ago, where you were talking about your method of listening "like a bloodhound" following a trail. Well, I followed that advice and it has been very effective for my listening comprehension. Sometimes I listen for content and meaning, and other times I just listen for structures-- things like where people pause, where they stop to take a breath, their accent and speaking habits, the flow and cadence of their speech, etc. In the beginning it's still hard to "walk and chew gum at the same time" so taking the time to focus on these different aspects separately (instead of all at once) has helped me a lot.
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| misslanguages Diglot Senior Member France fluent-language.blog Joined 4781 days ago 190 posts - 217 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: German | Message 13 of 21 24 August 2011 at 6:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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That's why AJATT's method is so good. I usually listen to English just for the hell of it, not because I'm particularly interested in the content.
I couldn't have raked in over 5,000 hours of listening if I had paid attention to the meaning of every single word. For me, listening to English is like listening to a lullaby. If I'm a baby in the language, why would I care about what grown-ups are blabbering about anyway? Edited by misslanguages on 24 August 2011 at 10:13pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6638 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 14 of 21 24 August 2011 at 9:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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I would not compare the attentive listening to a text for its structure to listening to a lullaby - it is actually hard work, and when you do it you can't do anything else. After all the point is to follow the stream of sound without letting yourself be distracted by anything, not even the meaning of the text.
The AJATT is something different, namely transforming your surroundings into a 'language bubble' where nothing diverts you from your target language - but precisely because everything in that bubble representents your chosen language (and its culture) you don't have to concentrate all the time. Edited by Iversen on 25 August 2011 at 2:06am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Neil_UK Tetraglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5197 days ago 50 posts - 64 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto, Welsh Studies: Polish, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, Scottish Gaelic, French | Message 15 of 21 25 August 2011 at 1:47am | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you very much to everyone for your replies here. I will take all your advice onboard
and I'll also check out the products you've mentioned too. I've decided I'm going to start listening to podcasts with transcripts and work my listening skills up that way, then move on to tv and radio once I get a good grasp of podcasts. Thanks. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Gallash Tetraglot Newbie United States Joined 4767 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC1, Spanish, French | Message 16 of 21 03 September 2011 at 12:46am | IP Logged | ||
Perfectly said! Being a linguist by trade with 22 years as translator under the belt I can fully agree. The vital part of language learning is undervalued and left without proper tools to muster. What is close more or less - is Puerta del Sol. It has a CD for listenning and transcripts for understanding unclear parts. A major drawback is that it is not dialogues, but just kind of magazine articles. What we need - dialogues in real street language with transcripts. Maybe they exist, but I did not find so far. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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