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How important is listening practice? | ||
Tags: Listening | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Verikukko Diglot Newbie Finland Joined 3919 days ago 8 posts - 12 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English Studies: Korean | Message 1 of 12 25 January 2014 at 9:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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For the last 3-4 months I've been studying my language (Korean) on average about 5
hours every day, I have never ending amounts of time and dedication. Most of the time I've been spending studying grammar, some of it I've used writing and translating text and the rest I've been working with vocab. However, some other Korean students I've been talking to insisted on me that I also need to spend time listening to the language, but I pretty much hate all Korean music, TV shows and movies and I don't have any native friends to talk to. So I took their advice and for the last week now I've been spending 2 hours every day on watching TV shows in the target language. I guess it's been "sort of" helpful, I understand some things that they say and also learn some new words and phrases, but is it really better than actual studying? Is it really necessary to include listening practice to your studying and if so, how much should you do it? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4968 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 2 of 12 25 January 2014 at 9:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
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If you pretty much hate all Korean music, TV shows and movies, and have no native friends to talk to, what is it that is inspiring you you to spend five hours a day studying it?
3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Verikukko Diglot Newbie Finland Joined 3919 days ago 8 posts - 12 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English Studies: Korean | Message 3 of 12 25 January 2014 at 9:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
I have many reasons, but this is kind of off-topic. Edit: ps. I don't want to sound rude, sorry if it sounded like that. Edited by Verikukko on 25 January 2014 at 9:50pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5478 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 12 25 January 2014 at 10:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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dbag's question actually raises a very important point. To develop good listening comprehension, you're going to have to listen to hundreds of hours of something, and you've just ruled out all TV shows, movies and music. And you have no access to native speakers.
So the question then becomes: Why are you learning Korean? If it's for business, for example, maybe you can find some business news channels or possibly a podcast. If you're learning Korean for some other reason, that may point you in the right direction. Or maybe you just want to read Korean, in which case you could skip listening comprehension entirely. Also, maybe you might want to look some more? I mean, I can't stand stereotypical French art films. I can maybe watch two per year, and I'm done. And I don't care for several of the most successful French TV shows, either. But that still leaves me thousands of things to watch and listen to: documentaries, cartoons, dubbed series, French action movies, stupid French comedies, business TV, parliamentary debates and so on. I mean, in order to hate all of that, I'd pretty much have to irrationally hate every single thing about French culture. In which case, again, what would be the point of learning French? Anyway, at the beginner level, it's hard to get much out of native materials without cheating. There are lots of ways to cheat: subs2srs, repeated listening of short passages, reading transcripts, etc. Just watching TV, by itself, can be enormously useful a bit later on, especially once you can understand maybe 40% of it. But in the beginning, you may want to split things into intensive activities and extensive activities. Intensive activities are ones that involve repetition, dictionaries and looking stuff up. Extensive actives involve getting lots of volume without worrying about the details. At least for now, you may want to save extensive activities for after you've completely fried your brain with regular studying. :-) Edited by emk on 25 January 2014 at 10:24pm 10 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4968 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 5 of 12 25 January 2014 at 10:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
Don't worry, you didn't sound rude at all. As EMK pointed out, to develop good listening comprehension, you will have to listen to 100s of hours of something. And it will be nigh on impossible to invest the necessary effort if you hate TV, movies and music. To answer your original question: Listening comprehension is an incredibly important skill to develop, and a very hard one at that. It is no good, for example going to Korea, having excellent speaking skills but not being able to understand a thing people say. Also, I am sure I read somewhere on the forum that listening comprehension is even more important and harder to develop in Korean than most other languages (Something about there being hundreds and hundreds of words that sound almost exactly the same or something). I will try and dig out the forum post where I read that. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4968 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 12 25 January 2014 at 10:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Here you go, read the first message in the I hate Korean thread.
I hope this doesn't put you off! 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| culebrilla Senior Member United States Joined 3943 days ago 246 posts - 436 votes Speaks: Spanish | Message 7 of 12 25 January 2014 at 10:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I would say thousands of hours of listening. :)
Starting to think that listening may be slightly more important than speaking. To me, it's very easy making yourself understood at a basic level at almost any language. Of course, it sounds a lot better if you've lived abroad 10 years and you are much more subtle when speaking but I find listening more frustrating than speaking. Just keep on trucking along man. It gets tougher and tougher as you get closer to "real" native-speed material. They up the anty and being able to understand a group of natives speaking at normal speed when you *first* meet them is hard. It's another thing if you're used to their accent. One day... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Verikukko Diglot Newbie Finland Joined 3919 days ago 8 posts - 12 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English Studies: Korean | Message 8 of 12 25 January 2014 at 10:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thank you very much for your replies Emk, Dbag and everyone. The main reason why I am learning Korean is to be able to read North Korean literature and news in their own language. Your advice of skipping listening comprehension is very assuring. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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