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Two approaches to Listening Comprehension | ||
Tags: Listening | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| drp9341 Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 4917 days ago 115 posts - 217 votes  Speaks: Italian, English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French Studies: Japanese | Message 1 of 3 26 February 2013 at 8:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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Recently been working a lot on French listening comprehension, and I've come to realize that the way I'm training French Listening comprehension is very different from the way I approached training listening comprehension in Spanish.
The main differences: Spanish: I started watching TV when I understood VERY little. I would watch Telemundo's novelas, news, and gameshows for about 1.5-2 hours a day with the Spanish subtitles. I did this for about 3-4 months, and towards the end I had my listening skills somewhere around what I would tentatively guess B1-B2. It improved DRASTICALLY (very much to my surprise, considering I was a total amateur at language learning and only 17.) This approach to me was less about comprehensible input, and more about just obsessively hacking away at Native Material until that "epiphany moment." Other factors to take into account: I was much more immersed when I was learning Spanish. I lived in NY so would just do my best to avoid English and stay in "Spanish-mode". I would speak about 15-20 minutes a day with natives almost everyday. I also switched almost all my media (radio, newspapers, TV etc.) to Spanish for about 6 months or so. In addition, I also spoke Italian very well, and would speak Italian on a daily basis when I lived back home. French: I started using assimil at around A1-A2 (It's hard for me to accurately gauge my level in French. Speaking 2 other romance languages often gave me, and continues to give me a somewhat biased assessment of my level in French.) I would do about 3-4 lessons a week, focusing a lot on the sounds and rhythm/intonation of French. I would review the lessons frequently on my iPod. I would often transcribe assimil audio into the IPA, paying close attention to the liasion and the way in which vowels would "disappear" or become "schwas." This, in addition to lots of TEDx talks in French with French subtitles, children's TV shows and attempting News have left me with a still unsatisfactory level of Listening Comprehension. Now I am using the LR method with L'étranger. I finished reading it without audio last night, and am now (according to kindle) 12% done LR-ing it. The main difference between these two methods is that with French I have only been using comprehensible input. It is rare when I study that I use audio where, despite putting forth my best efforts and not being lazy, I cannot eventually understand everything that is being said. This is not because I can understand “anything” in French, ( quite the contrary really,) but more of a reflection on the types of audio I’ve been using. Now, In comparing these two methods I’ve made two observations. 1. Comprehensible input is more effective for training listening comprehension if you look at it in terms of “progress-per-hour-spent-studying.” I should clarify that I mean breaking it down gramatically, replaying the audio, using a dictionary, and genuinely “studying” audio. I find that I can train my brain to distinguish sounds, follow the rhythm, and comprehend better doing the above. There is a catch though, (aside from the obvious fact that it can be verytedious to do this for very long periods of time!) that I observed that I will bring up next. 2. You aren’t used to your TL in the real world! I don’t mean this in some metaphorical sense, I really mean that since I only used material I deemed appropriate for my level, when I do hear something difficult to understand, I often freeze up and am not used to it. I’m not used to having to guess my way through what someone’s saying, picking out random words etc. etc. With Spanish, I was very used to only understanding a word or 2 in a sentence, yet trying to respond; thus linguistically challenging situations were more familiar, and in effect, less challenging. The way I look at it is parallel to boxing; one can choose to spend more time focusing on technique and less time sparring, or less time on technique and more time sparring. It’s just about getting the ratio right so you can be most effective when you actually “fight.” If anyone has anything to add to this, or if there’s anything someone doesn’t agree with, let me know. I continue to find Listening Comprehension to be one of the most, (if not the most) fascinating aspect of language learning. Having a language go from a string of unrecognizable sounds, to something totally comprehensible and normal is undoubtedly fascinating! 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6708 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 3 27 February 2013 at 5:00pm | IP Logged | ||
I don't freeze, I just stop listening. My antidote to this is to train on written materials until I really ought to be able to understand what people say. And at that point I still don't, but with enough background I can then do two things to advance: 1) finding some repeatable and clearly spoken sources, preferably with a transcript and/or translation to make things easier ("comprehensible"), 2) listening for the structure without caring about the meaning ("listening like a bloodhound"). The idea behind no. 2 is that the meaning will pop up by itself if I know a sufficiently large proportion of the words and expressions used, and forcefully trying to understand a difficult passage would just delay me so much that I also lost the following passage. Leave that for your studies of written materials. Edited by Iversen on 27 February 2013 at 5:01pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6602 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 3 of 3 28 February 2013 at 12:22am | IP Logged | ||
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Isn't the difference basically your reading skills at the point when you started working on your listening?
Ideally, I prefer native, semi-comprehensible input. like football matches. or audiobooks that I turn into comprehensible input by using translations (LR). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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