|
 |
How to learn by listening to the radio | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Jaynie Senior Member Denmark Joined 5902 days ago 51 posts - 62 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Danish, Latin | Message 18 of 25 08 February 2011 at 3:59pm | IP Logged |
|
I am in my car often, and I put the Spanish radio channel on. At the moment, I can usually figure out the topic and I catch isolated words.
Yesterday, by chance caught the word carretera in the traffic report. The announcer probably uses that word every day but I had never noticed it. Yesterday I noticed it because I had just that morning studied a poem ( Como tú... by León Felipe) that had taught me the word la carretera. I learned the word in the poem, then I noticed it on the radio, and now I've used it in this post. It is likely now planted quite well in my memory! That being said, if I had the ability to listen to my Mp3 player through my car, I probably would do that at least as often as I listed to the radio. But I don't have that capability so I make the best of what I've got. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| cpnlsn Triglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 6165 days ago 22 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English*, French, German | Message 20 of 25 10 February 2011 at 10:24pm | IP Logged |
|
Radio is a great technique. I remember I used to listen to
German radio - East German radio as it later turned out. By chance one night I listened as the Berlin wall fell. That was a while ago! Nowadays radio is much more accessible, via internet radio and podcasts. Passive or even background listening help attune to the language - intonation, pronunciation and so on. More than that I'd recommend the following 1. Absolute beginners won't get much from such listening but still should do so for the reasons above 2. Try to use the radio for more active listening such as reading transcripts. I'd you watch news flashes you can listen several times over, reading both in your 1st and target language media. A final point is that you do understand much more if you listen several times over you get a vast improvement in understanding which is much more profitable than merely passive listening and a boost to morale as well. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| amber5499 Newbie United States Joined 5404 days ago 14 posts - 19 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 21 of 25 11 February 2011 at 5:58pm | IP Logged |
|
Jon,
In the past I have found the Radio to be very beneficial. Years ago when I was studying advanced Spanish grammar in college I always listened to the radio to and from school. I was able to improve my listening skills, vocabulary and grammar. Here is what I did: On the way to school I would listen to the news, weather, traffic reports and all the other regular adds, songs, and surveys that were found on the station. I spent time sitting at red lights looking up unknown words in my pocket dictionary, which was usually sufficient for radio vocabulary. I put a red mark next to each word anytime I looked it up as since I was driving I didn't want to try to write too. Eventually I came back to words often enough that I developed a marking system : First I would mark a dot, the next time I would write over the dot to make it a slash, the slash to an x, then a circle to document how much I had looked up the word. I Found this necessary since I often didn't remember all the words or have time to write them down before classes to record these unknown words, so the marks encouraged me to consciously listen for these words or try to make sentences from them in my remaining commute time. They had the added benefit of showing me that these were key words I needed to know. In this way my brain was warmed up and ready to begin my day of Spanish classes. Occasionally specialized words from fields like construction would come up that wouldn't be in the dictionary, but this was rare. After one year of this my dictionary was falling apart! Occasionally some things that I heard needed to be clarified and I was able to ask not only my instructors but also my classmates - Even though the program (Community Spanish Interpreter) was created for native English speakers, I was the only native English speaker, all my classmates were native Spanish speakers, they were and continue to be wonderful sources of information, and great friends. As I said earlier one of my classes that semester was advanced grammar, it was early in the morning, so on the way home I would listen for the specific grammar constructions in announcements, surveys, interviews, songs, etc.. Late in the evening or night I would finally get to the homework for this class. In this way I was consciously exposed to these grammar constructions at least three times, on the day it was presented in class. This greatly helped me to recognize and internalize many constructions, as well as to clarify them, and notice them as they were being used. A few years later, after having moved away and back I finally finished up the program by the skin of my teeth as my schedule had left me little time over the two year hiatus to maintain my Spanish. But in my final semester with practical interpretation classes, I would also shadow the radio announcements. This is very exhausting! But this also helped me get back up to speed much quicker than if I had not done this. But I found if I shadowed a podcast that matched the subject in class I did better in relationship to vocabulary, and constructions. Just listening to the same Spanish radio station, many times not having access to the station during their talk show hours as I would have liked, I was able to comfortably catch weather reports year round, traffic reports, surveys, songs( some better than others), radio contests, advertisements, numbers and much more. Most of the announcers had a Mexican accent, but occasionally callers would have Panamanian, Columbian, Salvadorian or other accents, so the wide array of accents both male and female was also helpful. During presidential election years there are also political adds that beneficial to listen to for various linguistic reasons even I you don't agree with the topic/speaker. I don't feel that the lack of a script hampered me as it was like a game, not knowing what would come next, plus I feel a transcript isn't realistic in real life. It can be helpful in some cases but should not be a crutch. I also found that through all my reading and listening I was eventually able to tell a translation from native documents, as the text would have an English feel to it as opposed to Spanish. One other thing that I did was If I thought a word was "spanglish" I would look it up, or look up English words to learn what should have been the most appropriate Spanish word. I apologize that the last half of my post is not as organized as I had hoped. I kept thinking of more and more benefits! I hope this helps. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Sandman Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5400 days ago 168 posts - 389 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Japanese | Message 22 of 25 12 February 2011 at 10:08am | IP Logged |
|
I believe it's okay if you have nothing else to do, or have time to waste while driving, etc (although I definitely pick less difficult things to listen to).
If it's a choice at the early stages between listening a lot to radio and putting off vocab/grammar learning or instead learning vocab/grammar and putting off listening, then there's no comparison. Listening before you are at least prepared to theoretically understand what it is you are listening to (not saying you will, just that you "should" be able to understand most of it) is one of the least efficient things one could do on a per-minute, per-hour, time-wise basis. If you are listening to lessons from your textbook, or Assimil dialogues, then absolutely go for it and do it a million times over. But free-form listening from the radio or TV as a beginner? If you're burnt out on other stuff (which you WILL be at times), then okay, otherwise quit wasting your time and go study. You can listen to the real stuff if you feel the need, just don't think they count as study hours until you're far, far along. The things people talk about such as learning the "flow" of the language, or to hear "breaks" in the words, you can still do. Just do it mainly with materials you have a snowballs chance of actually understanding. Edited by Sandman on 12 February 2011 at 10:41am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| cpnlsn Triglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 6165 days ago 22 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English*, French, German | Message 23 of 25 13 February 2011 at 6:22pm | IP Logged |
|
I think things like radio and tv are invaluable. The danger is to try to escape the modern
fantasy of 'learning by 'absorption/immersion''. I think this has grown up over recent decades as we learned how babies 'pick up' language at the same time as technology has advanced to allow for a degree of immersion or at least considerable exposure to the language. There is little to be gained if you understand nothing of what you're listening to, apart from the sound, intonation and so on which has some value. Another problem is that content tends away from what a learner might say plus occasionally you can pick up errors from non native speakers - I find it painful to listen to German or French with an English accent even though I no doubt sound the same! The key drawback for radio is its speed and lack of 'trace'. I don't believe mere exposure has magical properties. In the earlier days one should listen to short clips - news flashes are ideal and get repeated and you can get written media to go along with the clip. I think the key is you should get some of the gist by the third time you listen to something. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| nataliedanger Diglot Newbie United States hazelandagnes.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5025 days ago 6 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 24 of 25 22 February 2011 at 6:02am | IP Logged |
|
I have exactly the same problem when it comes Spanish¡ News in Slow Spanish is by far one of my favorite resources, but I still really struggle with listening to things at "full speed". There are, however, two things that have helped me improve quite a bit in the recent past:
1. I listen to BBC Mundo news podcasts nearly every day. They're about 15 minutes long and suuuper fast. BUT! If I'm familiar with the day's current events, I'll already have the gist of what they're talking about and it helps a lot. 2. I stop trying to "translate" it, or "follow" it. I find that if I concentrate too hard, I'll catch a word that I recognize, and spend five seconds or so trying to remember what that word means, what the infinitive is, what the conjugation is saying... and by the time I figure it out, I've missed five seconds of speech and I'm lost. SO, I try to force myself to just relax and... I don't know. Passively listen? It's hard to describe, but I stop trying. I know that I know most of the words. Think about how you listen to something in English: you don't "try" to understand it, you just... do. When I do this I find that I'm able to figure out much more of what's being said. LIke I said, it's hard to explain but in some way it really helps me, haha! Good luck! 2 persons have voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
