Helid Diglot Newbie Poland Joined 4318 days ago 24 posts - 35 votes Speaks: Polish*, English
| Message 1 of 20 13 July 2013 at 2:56pm | IP Logged |
Almost 2 weeks ago I had a lot of troubles with listening comprehension so I started
watching movies with subtitles and without. What I exactly was doing? I was just watching
fragment of movie (about 30 seconds) again and again until a moment when I was able to
understand it without subtitles. It was similar to assimil method. What's the point? I
needed only 8 episodes of "The Soprano" to start watching everything in English without
any problems ;). It is a really great way to improve listening comprehension.
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Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian
| Message 2 of 20 13 July 2013 at 6:10pm | IP Logged |
I prefer to watch 20-50 episodes but without watching every small piece again and again. Works too. And I don't feel like throwing my computer out of the window :-)
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lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4273 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish
| Message 3 of 20 13 July 2013 at 6:41pm | IP Logged |
It is an interesting, often advocated method. However, I believe that it relies on the
hypothesis that you already know lots of words passively. If you can understand 90% of
the transcript of a podcast, or of the subtitles of a movie, but you don't understand the
same text when it is spoken, which is a stage all language learners are bound to
experience, then the time is right to try that method in order to activate aurally what
you already know in writing. If on the other hand, your understanding of the transcript
is low, you will spend more time studying words than activating your listening
comprehension. So, I'd say that this method is most useful at a certain stage in your
learning.
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Helid Diglot Newbie Poland Joined 4318 days ago 24 posts - 35 votes Speaks: Polish*, English
| Message 4 of 20 14 July 2013 at 3:01pm | IP Logged |
@Cavesa For me watching whole movie just doesn't work. Before this I saw about 200
English movies. There was a little progression but still insufficient.
@lorinth You are right. Vocabulary is the base.
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montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4827 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh
| Message 5 of 20 14 July 2013 at 7:43pm | IP Logged |
Just to be clear: you are referring to "The Sopranos", the long-running series about a
Mafia family based in New Jersey, led by Tony Soprano?
You are aware I guess that most of the characters speak in a fairly specialised Italian-
American-New Jersey way of speaking. I'm wondering if it would have exposed you to a
sufficient breadth of American English.
Still, as has been pointed out, and to which you also alluded, if it is working by
activating your already-learned passive vocabulary, then perhaps there is no problem.
It still might be worth your testing this out on a wider range of material.
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Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian
| Message 6 of 20 15 July 2013 at 7:54am | IP Logged |
Well, I agree with Lorinth. When your reading comprehension is much better than the listening one, than extensive listening is just the cure. But when you have too wide gaps in both, than the intensive listening is probably better.
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DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6150 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian
| Message 7 of 20 15 July 2013 at 10:12am | IP Logged |
Repeated listening to segments is better for listening comprehension, then watching a long movie. The reason is quite simple. When you watch a movie you're following the plot, the interactions, and the dialogue. This leaves very little capacity for paying attention to the language used. If you repeat the sections, you're no longer distracted by the content, and can focus on the language. You could do this with a long movie, if you've seen it repeatedly.
Edited by DaraghM on 15 July 2013 at 10:14am
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Michel1020 Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 5016 days ago 365 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Dutch
| Message 8 of 20 15 July 2013 at 10:51am | IP Logged |
I prefer to start by listening because I hate to learn writing and reading before I know how to pronounce and also because audio understanding is my first goal. Of course it is more effective with language like Spanish close to my native french or languages I already learned a bit. For other languages I start with podcast courses.
One technique I use with tv series or movies is liten to the sound track without watching the pictures.
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