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Listening comprehension | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6596 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 9 of 20 15 July 2013 at 3:35pm | IP Logged | ||
When I do enough listening (football matches are great when I can't understand an audiobook), I don't experience this. I really think most learners just don't listen enough. See also this post by leosmith. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 10 of 20 15 July 2013 at 4:36pm | IP Logged | ||
It iss better for SOME people at SOME points of their learning, not generally better. i have great experience with extensive listening to French at which I was around B2 when I started and with Spanish, where I was A1-A2 when I started. In both cases, it worked marvelously. I have not only turned my reading comprehension into listening one, I have as well learnt a lot of new things just from the context and it helped me immensely to think in the language. i consider doing some intensive listening to help my active skills but for the listening comprehension, it would be counterproductive for these reasons: 1.it is no longer realistic situation bringing you outside your comfort zone 2.it doesn't force you to immerse yourself, you translate instead 3.it is usually boring as hell another thing I disagree with is that being busy following the plot is harmful. Again, my experience is totally opposite. Following the plot, letting the content distract you and drag you through the time spent on it, that makes me immerse in the language without trying to translate. So, while it doesn't leave time to write down vocabulary and such things, it teaches a lot more of the real skill, of the real listening comprehension. And when the movie stops, I still keep thinking in the language for longer and longer amounts of time. So, intensive listening does have its uses. But saying it is in general better is just wrong, no offence meant. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4273 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 11 of 20 15 July 2013 at 9:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Serpent, you have a point. So I guess I should qualify my own statements. I'd make the
hypothesis that the value of *extensive* listening depends on the predictability of the input. When the input is predictable, you are at or slightly above your "comfort zone", or the "+1" level as defined by Krashen. Now, what makes input predictable? - Visual clues: To take your example, football matches are very predictable because, whatever the language, a small, identical subset of the vocabulary of that language is used and because the commentator is literally explaining what you are seeing. Some movies are probably almost as useful. - The proximity of the language compared to what you already know. In my case, I'm learning Mandarin while I know some European languages. As my level in Mandarin is not good enough, I could listen to a podcast or to a radio broadcast a hundred times and still not understand a thing if I don't have some prior knowledge of the vocabulary or the context. On the other hand, if I wanted to study Italian, it might be useful to do extensive listening right from the start, because I already know four romance languages that I could use as a stepping stone to build Italian vocab. - Prior knowledge of the vocab (which is just a special case of the former). That's what I was saying in my first post. If you have a passive knowledge of most of the vocabulary for a given audio input, then extensive listening is useful to activate your knowledge. Such is also the case when, for instance, you listen to an audio book after reading it in your target language or even in you L1. (Note that my hypothesis is not that "the value of extensive listening is proportional to the predictability of the input" because, if you understand 100% of the input, the value of that input (in terms of language learning) drops to 0.) Edited by lorinth on 15 July 2013 at 9:34pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6596 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 12 of 20 15 July 2013 at 10:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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It seems like we mostly agree then :)
What exactly do you mean by activating the vocabulary, though? I still think it's an undesirable situation to be able to understand the transcript much better than the recording. If you really mean activating, then I agree, and this is underrated. But if activating is learning to recognize the words orally when you know them in writing, then it's a sign that you've been doing the wrong things before (or just had different priorities). Interestingly, I also thought of the issue with languages like Mandarin. But it's probably also the most common case of NOT reading better than you listen. Many learners focus on the spoken sources and do quite well. Are you familiar with LR, btw? That's basically one more way to make listening "predictable". Double awesome when you do it with a related language <3 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 13 of 20 15 July 2013 at 11:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't think the need to transform reading comprehension into the listening one is such a bad sign about lorinth's way of learning. I think most of us have some naturally stronger skills and some weaker ones. So it is perfectly natural that some of us just learn the writen language faster, no matter that we don't forget to learn the pronunciation and listening from the beginning. And I have found that the level of my listening comprehension has much more to do with my active skills than the level of reading comprehension. In my opinion, it can work as the step in between those two.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6596 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 14 of 20 16 July 2013 at 12:37am | IP Logged | ||
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That was a general "you". And yeah, it's certainly possible, and it's okay if that's what your priorities are. But an average visual learner should just compensate by listening more and listening better, clear and simple audio at least. It's just so much better than having to "catch up" later, and it's certainly not an obligatory stage in language learning.
Very often the coursebooks can be blamed, typically the audio is not good enough in terms of length and/or variety. But for many languages it's not hard to find extra materials (most notably HP). As for active skills, I find that if you're good at listening, you need reading to get them. Both are important, and in most cases listening is more useful only for those who've not done it enough. 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 15 of 20 16 July 2013 at 1:12am | IP Logged | ||
I don't think there is a question of extensive (i.e. long movie) vs intensive ( short segment repeatedly) listening. It all depends on your goals. The main reason for doing intensive listening is to take the time to decode the audio in fine detail. Many people for example will put a segment in a program like Audacity to be able to listen repeatedly to small sections. And if a transcript is available, then this is even better. I like to listen to a 5-minute section a few times a day over a week. This means that I understand every little detail perfectly. What I have noticed it that sometimes I notice points of grammar only after having listened to certain things 10 - 15 times. By repetitive listening you internatlize the patterns that you can start shadowing, especially if you have a program like Audacity. On the other hand, extensive listening is good for acquiring more vocabulary and just plain enjoying the content in the language. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 16 of 20 16 July 2013 at 1:37am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, you can get to 99,9% comprehension by extensive listening.
The value I see in intensive one is dissecting the lovely content in pieces I want to drill into my brain for active use. And it doesn't matter whether by playing the sentence or two again and again and repeating or by putting the things into anki. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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