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Helemano’s log (TAC ’13 Team 桜) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Helemano Newbie Japan Joined 4338 days ago 31 posts - 39 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 17 of 22 11 January 2013 at 5:14am | IP Logged | ||
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@iguanamon - This is all very useful stuff, as always. Thank you very much!
I need a new proverb for my wall: "When in doubt, shut up and search." I'm sure I could find the answers to a lot of my questions if I just learn how to search well. But I do appreciate all the help you and others have given to me. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Helemano Newbie Japan Joined 4338 days ago 31 posts - 39 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 18 of 22 13 January 2013 at 2:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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A few posts ago, I said that my listening in Japanese has not improved since my re-commitment last summer. In response, g-bod suggested something so simple yet, as it turned out, much needed: work on listening! Then iguanamon provided a link to Ari's Chinesepod method post. I poured through Ari's process, and the last two days I've been experimenting with ways to use the audio I have for detailed listening practice. I have come up with a routine that I'm satisfied with and that I think can help me improve my listening immensely.
Now, I know that a lot of this will be stuff that most of you do anyway; I'm always late to arrive at the party, if you can understand what I mean. :) Also, a lot of this is influenced by Ari's Chinesepod method, tweaked to fit my learning style, but I'm sure there is nothing original here. So I need to give credit where it's due: thank you, Ari! * * * * * HELEMANO'S LISTENING PRACTICE ROUTINE - Version 1.0 1) Get some new audio. For Japanese, I use the audio from my lessons in An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese (each lesson has three dialogs, plus audio for a listening exercise and audio for a reading exercise), and I have re-subscribed to the free feed for JapanesePod101.com. For Portuguese, I use the dialogs from my DLI Portuguese Basic Course lessons, and I have subscribed to two podcasts: PortuguesePod101.com (the free feed) and BrazilianPodClass (all podcasts are free). All of the above sources come with transcripts, and all are free except for IAIJ. 2) Listen to the audio intensively. I listen to it once or twice at first. Then I look at the transcript and look up any new words or grammar structures, writing them down for input into Anki later. I make sure I understand the entire dialog. Then I listen to it about three more times. If there is anything I do not catch at first, I'll rewind a few seconds and listen to that sentence again. If I still can't parse that sentence, I'll rewind it again. I'll keep doing it until I can parse the sentence successfully. I find this to be powerful for training my ear to parse the sounds of the language. If I have time, I'll keep working with the audio until I can listen to it one time through and understand it with no problems and without having to stop and rewind part of it. 3) Put the audio into a review playlist on my mp3 player. When I am standing on the train or walking, I set this playlist to play randomly. I listen to and review the audio. If I come across something I have trouble with, I rewind a bit and listen to it over and over until I get it. In that case, when I reach the end, I'll play that audio again until I can go through it without having to stop and rewind a portion of it. Then I go to the next random track. If I forgot some vocabulary or grammar, I'll try to make a note of it for research later, or I check the transcript if I have it in my bag. * * * * * I've done this over the weekend with some of my Japanese audio from previous lessons, with great results. The dialogs from IAIJ are spoken at normal speed, and I always found them challenging. But before now I had always listened to them once or twice. Now with repeated exposure, combined with concentrated and repetitive focus in some difficult spots, I'm able to listen to those dialogs, parse them, and understand them with no problems. That is a TREMENDOUS confidence booster. Not only that, but I think it actually helps my listening in real-life situations. This weekend at the gym, more people spoke to me than usual. (I'm not that religious, but it was as if the Divine was tapping people on the shoulder and telling them, "Hey, that guy is doing some Japanese listening practice. Go talk to him a bit for me, okay?") While I still couldn't understand everything said to me, I did notice a very slight improvement in my ability to parse spoken Japanese and pick out words. This was after doing roughly an hour of listening practice both yesterday and today. If two days of this routine has already given me a small boost in listening, then I am salivating at what it could do for me after several months. I'll post regularly about it and keep you updated. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5980 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 19 of 22 13 January 2013 at 4:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm sure you'll find a few weeks of intensive listening work to be very helpful, particularly in getting you to recognise things that you already know when they are spoken. The most important thing I got from Ari's method was making a playlist of the dialogues to review - it really felt like the missing link in bringing things together.
I'm glad you're feeling motivated - it is a really helpful boost to me too as my own motivation has flagged since the new year! A quick tip on JapanesePod101 - I think it is really worth spending a little bit of money to get a premium subscription. You have to take care on the website because when you click to subscribe it defaults to a lump payment for 24 months. You don't need this, so make sure you select the option for just a one month subscription. With this you can set up any number of feeds to go into iTunes, which basically means you can get iTunes to download all the audio tracks, pdfs etc in one go. I think you can do this for the main audio and pdfs with just a basic subscription, however with the premium subscription you can also download the dialogue only tracks. This was an absolute time saver for me in creating a review playlist of dialogues I'd already studied. Once you have downloaded everything, it is yours to keep for good, so you can cancel your subscription unless you want to keep getting the stuff for whatever new seasons they are doing this year. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Helemano Newbie Japan Joined 4338 days ago 31 posts - 39 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 20 of 22 14 January 2013 at 12:30am | IP Logged | ||
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@g-bod - Thank you for the tip. Yeah, it would be nice to have the dialog-only tracks. That would save me time from editing them myself. Plus with the free feed, I'm limited to just the newly released mp3s.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Helemano Newbie Japan Joined 4338 days ago 31 posts - 39 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 21 of 22 14 January 2013 at 1:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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HELEMANO'S WEEK IN REVIEW: 7 January - 13 January 2013
日本語 - JAPANESE JP - 僕は IAIJの第６課がゆっくりやっています。 １２月始めたのに、仕事が忙しいし、 一週間旅行したし、 ちびちびしています。 今まで会話のほうがよく聴いて、 新しい単語を調べて Ankiに記入しておきました。 今週、 新しい漢字を習って、 読み物や聞き取り練 習をするつもりです。 前にしゃべっていた日本語の聞くの決まりき った仕事について わくわくです！ 僕の日本語聞くの力はちゃんとしていないか ら、 これがうまくいけば、 とてもいいと思います。 EN - I'm working my way slowly through Chapter 6 of IAIJ. I started back in December, but I have yet to finish it due to work and a week of travel. Plus I haven't had many chances to sit down on the train and do some Chapter 6 work. (I could have done a lot of it this past weekend, but I was working on a listening practice routine.) So far, I listened to the three dialogs in Chapter 6, and I also went through and put all new words into Anki. This week, I plan to learn the new kanji and do the grammar, reading and listening exercises. I'm quite excited about the new listening routine that I talked about earlier! As I said earlier, I already noticed some miniscule benefits from doing it, even after two days. If this goes well, this will be amazing for my listening skills. PORTUGUÊS - PORTUGUESE I'm just about finished with Lesson 7 of DLI Basic. All I need to do is the Free Conversation part. At the end of every lesson, there is a Free Conversation section with about 25 questions based on that lesson. I haven't found an effective use for that yet; obviously I have no one to do Free Conversation with. If I'm alone, I try to answer the questions out loud. Otherwise, I do it in my mind, or if I am extremely tired I'll just write the answers out. I think that, after posting this, I'll answer the questions out loud, then Lesson 7 will be done. After that, three more lessons, then Volume 1 will be done, and I can go on to Volume 2! I'm glad that, after swapping between DLI Basic and FSI Programmatic, I finally settled down on DLI. Programmatic did help me with my pronunciation somewhat, but DLI has much more vocabulary and grammar. Other than DLI, I plan to apply my new listening routine to Portuguese this week, using the audio from DLI, PortuguesePod101 and BrazilianPodClass. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4663 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 22 of 22 14 January 2013 at 1:38pm | IP Logged | ||
I went for a 12-month subscription (but only because my company paid). The total feed (as of September or so of last year) was something like 29GiB and it took two days or so to download. (It's taking quite a bit longer to organise too ...). Once you cancel the premium subscription, I believe you can continue to download lessons for free, but it's only the most recent ten or so lessons, and I presume that you only get the main audio and the associated PDFs. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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