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Same audio 1000 times? | ||
Tags: Listening | Pronunciation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5668 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes  Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 33 of 83 20 March 2012 at 10:54am | IP Logged | |||||
That is very flattering. I always thought connectors would benefit from something like a Michel Thomas course, where you teach each connector as a text fragment and are immediately asked to produce something containing it. Over several hours, more and more connectors would be added. This spaced repetition and instant production seems like a good route to automaticity with connectors. Maybe, though, just hours of repeated listening to a four minute clip would help them sink in too. I would fully support any such project, and would be very keen to follow any results obtained. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5429 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 34 of 83 20 March 2012 at 12:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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(I like that idea of a 4-minute illustrative audio clip. I'll give it some thought over the next few days. Actually I was thinking of something similar for what other people call conversation markers, which I think are pretty much the same thing.)
Just to add (and not rehash) to the discussion about repetition, I think it's important to insist on the quality or nature of the listening process. I'm referring specifically to the fact that it has to be a true learning tool. There are three important things here. First of all, you have to be able to decipher or segment all the components of the audio sequence. Second, you have to have some sense of the meaning. This can be complicated especially with idiomatic expressions. The third component is a bit more vague. It's what I call style. It's how the whole thing is put together. What all this means is that at some point you have to do deliberate analytic listening. Some people call this deep learning where you concentrate on understanding what is going on in the language and then try to reproduce the same thing. What this all means is that to progress you have to alternate between what musicians call technical exercises where you concentrate repeatedly on certain subjects or passages and just listening to (or reading) and talking about things that you like. For me one of the most frustrating things in listening to my target language is not so much not understanding as not being able to figure out what was said. I'm sure this has happened to most people here. Just this week I was listening to a recording in Spanish and I couldn't make out a word. Using some software I isolated the passage in question and listened at least 50 times (not all at once), to no avail. Usually in these cases I ask a native speaker for help and in seconds I get the right answer. Actually what happened here is that I listened to the entire recording and the right words just sort of popped into my head because of the overall context. I then realized that I had been hearing incorrectly. What I thought was one word was actually two different words. I was thrown off, or I threw myself off, by the pronunciation. The flip side of all this is that when we then listen to the language being spoken, there is the incredible excitement of realizing that you suddenly can understand. Now what is even more exciting is to be able to speak correctly. That's another story. Edited by s_allard on 20 March 2012 at 4:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6438 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 35 of 83 20 March 2012 at 3:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
I mentioned on page 2 that I have, though for words and minimal pairs, not whole sentences or longer clips. Given how negative the results have been for phonemes, I have no interest in repeating it for longer clips. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5765 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 36 of 83 20 March 2012 at 4:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
I manage to echo clear speech well, but once the sound is deleted from my auditory loop, it degenerates quickly. I observed similar patterns in many of my classmates. So, my problem is not the conscious production of certain sounds and sound combinations, but the automatisation of this process. Listening to the same audio over and over again probably wouldn't help me with that as I'm not forced to recreate the actual sound from memory. (And recognition only takes a couple of repetitions at most.) Listening to the same clip over and over again would simply drive me mad (if I endured the boredom); what does help is to vary repeated listening (until I understand what I can, or until I stop paying attention), echoing until it sounds nice and memorizing passages I really like, plus as much conversation practice with proficient or native speakers as possible. Edited by Bao on 20 March 2012 at 4:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5380 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 37 of 83 20 March 2012 at 4:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
To mimic after an auditory lead is not an indication of control or actual understanding of the articulation process. Not being able to repeat the sound in the absence of the lead still indicates a lack of insight or control over production. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5865 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 38 of 83 20 March 2012 at 4:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
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OK. Here is a 4-minute English connectors story. It won't win any Nobel Prize for Literature, but I managed to use quite a few of Splog's connectors, and a few more. The story doesn't have much of a plot, but I tried to make it flow. It is amazing how much you can pack into four minutes.
I also uploaded it to my "Dutch Islands" web site. I'll add the audio later. It would be wonderful if some native speaker could translate it to Dutch. It should be quite a challenge! I'm convinced that if I could, fluently and without hesitation, understand and recite these four minutes in Dutch, it would improve my conversational skills considerably. __________________ Four-Minute English Connectors. Once upon a time, long ago, people developed languages. Understandably, in the beginning, speech was simple but nonetheless essential. Without question, that is an exaggeration because, in no case is it one hundred percent true. It is exactly right only up to a certain point. Most certainly, there are those who have their own opinions. If I am not mistaken, (and I'm no expert), cavemen, frankly speaking, and all joking aside, couldn't speak very well. I presume it was fit for purpose, but in my opinion, I would like to think that it sounded good to them. Don't be upset if you believe that Neanderthals actually, now and then, had conversations with each other, albeit, from time to time, a bit laborious. It seems to me that hunting, certainly to some extent, was a bit dangerous. More and more, they had to communicate for the purpose of, in the first place, staying alive, and in the second place, finding food. As you may know, they had spears, and, if that is true, I'd like to emphasise that, even though the spears were sharp, nevertheless, they were not very effective. Even so, I am told, their strong arms, or to be more precise, their strong muscles, saved the day. In those days, history has pointed out, in a manner of speaking, that all was not lost. I recently heard, by the way, that animals, as far as I know, were bigger but much slower. That is not to say that they were friendly. Far from it. I have the impression that they were fierce, and I would like to think, had a mind of their own, if you could call it a mind. To tell the truth, I don't believe a word of it. I hope that you understand me when I say that I am not certain whether I know what I am talking about. You never know, do you? But I have the impression that, and I would like to emphasise that, truth is stranger than fiction. Without doubt, I agree. Prehistoric life, in other words, not life as we know it, was not fertile ground for languages. Yes, the need was there, or to say it another way, there were no books; that I can assure you. But, between you and me in any case, I think we can agree on the possibility, as far as I am concerned, that we can forget about the past. Frankly speaking, it is the future that counts. Anyway, I must say that this is such a difficult question. But it is a good question. For the life of me, I can't figure out what lies ahead. The way I see it, as you already know, it is a matter of opinion. Right or wrong, time will tell. In principle, it is true. However, it is not necessarily so. What I am talking about is where we are going from here. While I am talking about it, lets not relive the past. And what's more, living in caves left much to be desired. My better half said recently that, on one hand, I live like a caveman, but on the other hand, I speak like an alien. Oh, I nearly forgot. She is into science fiction. Not that that is all bad. And besides, it remains to be seen if it proves to be a good glimpse at the future. Time will tell. In fact, it is just a question of time. But my time is up. What do you think? Now that it occurs to me, do you think that all hell will break loose? I certainly hope not. Not yet anyway. But that's a story for another time. It sounds like I am finished. So much the better. Thank you for your patience. ________________________ Edit: provides => proves Edited by tommus on 21 March 2012 at 3:41am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4706 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 39 of 83 20 March 2012 at 4:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Tommus, I think I can translate that to Dutch for you. Do you require a hyperliteral translation or something slightly freer?
2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5865 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 40 of 83 20 March 2012 at 5:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thank you very much! It should be in everyday Dutch. It is meant to be something that helps normal conversation. Not too colloquial and not too formal. Just normal. If that means not being literal at all, so be it. If it becomes significantly different than the English version, that is not really a problem. However, then it would be nice to have a more literal "translation" into English for the purpose of making sure the Dutch learner knows just what he is learning. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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