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Talking to yourself: Listening Comp. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| LinguaMan Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5067 days ago 20 posts - 34 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 1 of 17 02 January 2011 at 11:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm curious to hear the thoughts of others on talking to yourself to build listening comprehension skills. I feel I learned to understand a lot of Spanish with this method. My ear seems to pick up words faster because I've used them. Has anyone else used this method to build listening comprehension in their target language? It seems to go against the conventional thought, listening precedes speaking, but it seems production helps immensely in understanding a language, provided the speaker has a decent accent after listening to the language for several months. So what are your thoughts or experiences? Edited by LinguaMan on 02 January 2011 at 11:59pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| delta910 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5867 days ago 267 posts - 313 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Dutch, German | Message 2 of 17 03 January 2011 at 12:06am | IP Logged | ||
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I have not used it to help me build listening comprehension. The only way, for me, to build listening comprehension
is by listening to loads of material. I do however talk to myself to help build my conversational skills and "activate" words that I know. This is helping me in my Spanish considerably and I have only begun to do this in my German studies. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5290 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 3 of 17 03 January 2011 at 12:23am | IP Logged | ||
I don't think it is an unconventional thought. When listening you can only comprehend what you have a firm grasp of, the time is too short for long thinking; and as using a language increases your awareness it leads to a better comprehension. I think it is correct, the better you know the language the easier you understand it. It is true that people rarely put emphasis on this, because it does not match the simple "listen, listen, listen", but there is no doubt that the better you know your language (grammar, vocabulary, active production) the faster listening comprehension can be achieved. In the end this is the base for the experience that is often described as "epiphany" what sounds like a religious thing, but is only the result of a good knowledge about your language in general. Edited by lingoleng on 03 January 2011 at 12:31am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| davidhowell Newbie United States Joined 5081 days ago 13 posts - 28 votes Speaks: German | Message 4 of 17 04 January 2011 at 12:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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As you said, I believe it may help slightly in listening comprehension provided you have a decent accent in
said language. I do, however, think that it's more helpful (for me) to listen to movies, music, radio, etc. I the target language when learning listening comprehension as it allows me to hear a wide variety of voices and different speeds of talking. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5373 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 5 of 17 04 January 2011 at 4:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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I do agree, instinctively, that better production yields better understanding, but it's perhaps circular reasoning: only good exposure allows good production, and whether good listening skills come from the original exposure or the production is hard to discern. But they probably work symbiotically.
While I hesitate to say that it's a general rule, for me personally, working on accurate production helps me parse and understand speech. Gradually, as I am exposed to things that I don't understand well, I continue to try to copy and match them, and I gain somewhat of an insider's look at how speech is constructed. Eventually, I understand better, produce better and I develop an instinctive knowledge of how sentences are put together, often guessing the end of sentences before it is uttered. After all, a lot of what we understand from language is not actually computed from what is heard, but rather from what the brain has come to expect and how it fills the gaps. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sandman Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5400 days ago 168 posts - 389 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Japanese | Message 6 of 17 06 January 2011 at 9:37am | IP Logged | ||
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I think there may really be something to your observation, although I'm not exactly sure why it works.
When listening to old Assimil lessons for comprehension I have found that in some of those really messy sections where the words seem to blur together and it is hard to really distinguish the distinct syllables in a difficult stretch of the audio that it helps quite a bit if I just stop the audio totally and try to reproduce the troublesome phrase myself until the phrase "makes sense" to me and I can reproduce it without too much difficulty. After doing that a few times and then going back to the audio again things are usually cleared up quite a bit on any subsequent listens. I'll essentially try to speak my way through difficult listening challenges. I think speaking may help one "own" some of the messier details of difficult words or phrases as you are forcing yourself to perfect each syllable and grammar element, and with this increase in comfort and successful "micromanagement" of the word/phrase it then makes subsequently hearing similar things much easier. I don't think it necessarily helps in that you are in someway "listening to yourself" and getting practice that way, or that your accent has to even be good necessarily. I think it's more in the sense of just getting your brain used to knowing what to listen for in terms of making sense of the incoming word/grammar structures. But then again, just replaying the difficult section over and over again until you "get it" can work as well. I notice I tend to space out after about 6 or 7 listens though and there seems to be some major diminishing returns to doing it that way. Edited by Sandman on 06 January 2011 at 9:51am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| pfn123 Senior Member Australia Joined 5075 days ago 171 posts - 291 votes Speaks: English* | Message 7 of 17 07 January 2011 at 8:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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Btw, when I want to hear myself talk, to improve my accent and listening comprehension and so on, I cup my ears.
If you cup your ears, palms facing forward, you can hear yourself more loudly and more clearly. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tmp011007 Diglot Senior Member Congo Joined 6061 days ago 199 posts - 346 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: French, Portuguese | Message 8 of 17 11 January 2011 at 3:18am | IP Logged | ||
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAdyAa4oHDA&feature=related 1 person has voted this message useful |
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