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Listening practice | ||
Tags: Comprehension/understanding | Listening | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5685 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes  Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 9 of 23 25 October 2010 at 12:47am | IP Logged | |||||
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Following up on slucido's extremely useful and detailed post, I would like to add that I used a version of this method early in my study in German, and it helped me immensely.
The way I did it was by listening to clearly-sung pop songs in German and trying to write down the lyrics as I listened. If I missed something, I would just type a dash and then jump ahead to writing down the next part I could understand. Then at the end I would go back and listen to the song again, reading along in the parts I'd written, and filling in the parts I'd missed. I repeated this until I had typed up the entire lyric to the song, and then went online to find the official lyrics and compare them to what I had written. This version of the method is particularly effective, I find, because: a) songs are slower than spoken language, so it's easier to hear the words; and b) it's usually not too difficult to find lyrics online to check yourself afterward. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5170 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi | Message 10 of 23 25 October 2010 at 6:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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thanks for commnents!
well, actually it would be hard to get subtitles, I watch most things online. Maybe only Chinese subs... but thansk for help! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5290 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 11 of 23 26 October 2010 at 11:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
May I ask why you feel like this? I know that you have a lot of experience, and I don't want to annoy anybody, but this is just a little bit against my own experience, so I would like to know some more about this. For making it work I have to decipher a passage of a certain length, maybe only a page, if I am at the very beginning, or maybe an entire chapter of Harry Potter, if I have a first knowledge of grammar and a basic vocabulary of, I don't know, 1000 words at least, probably. When I understand what is written there I feel that repeated listening helps me even and just with my weakest languages, but really only after I have worked on the text. It can take some time and working out the details before cashing in can be a little bit annoying. Your mileage may vary, of course, and other things can work much better for you, don't get me wrong, I am only interested. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6431 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 12 of 23 03 November 2010 at 4:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
If you decipher a page of text and then listen to the corresponding audio repeatedly, you'll usually get something out of it - but not always. I got incredibly little out of Assimil Persian, for whatever reason. Perhaps I should have said it differently: listening repeatedly is consistently a help for languages I know fairly well (or which are closely related to ones I know fairly well). For weaker languages, there are ways that seem to usually make it productive, but there are also a lot of approaches where I truly seem to get nothing out of it. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| blueray1957 Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5164 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Studies: English | Message 13 of 23 22 December 2010 at 11:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
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First I want to thank everybody for their posts as it has been very encouraging,
I am in Brasil and learning to speak Portuguese, its coming along okay after nearly four months, I can travel in the city alone, buy things, even teach music when necessary, although I know my grammar is still terrible. WHAT HELPED ME 1. If you can get movies/DVDs in the target language with your first language subtitles and the target language subtitles this is ideal 2. go to subdownloader.net and try out there subtitle downloader. I bought it after trying it out for one month. A great investment. 15 pound. 3. I download the target movies subtitles. for ie Portuguese. Currently, I have been doing the Matrix series. 4. I listen along in English, and translate 5. I go back a second time and switch the language to Portuguese 6. I immediately understand most of the easy stuff and start to pick up verb conjugations and new vocabulary. 7. The one drawback is that often what is said is different from what is written in the target language. Many written ways of say something in a target language are not spoken that way. But I really enjoy it. Havent been able to get scripts yet. If anybody nows, email me at realatiba@yahoo.com Lastly, I really like the LR method, I have copies of the Alchemist in English and in Portuguese. I will finish it in less than a month. I plan to get most of Paulo Coelho's work cause i love his writing. I have Eat, Pray and Love but I don't enjoy the writing quite as much although it is a fabulous book. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| blueray1957 Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5164 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Studies: English | Message 14 of 23 22 December 2010 at 11:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Wow, I have been planning to use this. There are literally thousands of Portuguese songs to listen and transcribe. I think this is a great way to improve listening accuracy and of course vocabulary.
I had been playing around with Karaoke in my target language. and I have picked up a fair amount of vocabulary. But as Im just now getting by the beginner level, I find that getting over the speed hurdle is a major confidence builder. I am already hearing faster speakers better. But I have been only living in Brasil for almost 4 months so some speakers I hear very clearly and others sometimes sound like mush. My vocabulary is probably still somewhere between 300-500 words though. thanks for your post. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5122 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 15 of 23 24 December 2010 at 3:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I believe that most of the more sophisticated methods suggested here are doomed to failure for a simple reason: you won´t keep doing it. Getting transcripts, finding subs, switching between text and audio, translating back and forth, shadowing, cutting out audio snippets, slowing down the volume etc. is way too cumbersome, slow, work-like and boring.
The perceived need to apply these techniques is, in many cases, I guess, driven by the desire to nail down meaning, pronunciation, individual words or structures immediately, the desire to understand 100% right now, to be in control. In my experience, this is not necessary. With 80%-90% comprehensible input, it is perfectly fine to let go of words you don´t catch or don´t understand. It is perfectly fine to make rough guesses and move on. It is perfectly fine to focus on general comprehension without necessarily understanding every single word. Simply getting exposure to 80%-90% comprehensible input, staying attentive and focussing on general meaning/communication (including visual and other clues, if available) is enough for our brain to figure out the missing pieces on its own. It usually needs some time (sleep) and repetition (ideally in changing contexts), but the brain will work massively in parallel. It is very efficient at it. So my suggestion is very simple: find interesting 80%-90% comprehensible input and expose yourself to it, guess at the meaning, stay in the present moment and enjoy the content. That´s it. Learning will happen on its own. 5 persons have 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 16 of 23 24 December 2010 at 4:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
When I think of my shortcomings in understanding spoken Japanese, and I consider what I should do to improve over time, I think of 3 things: seek more exposure (continue to watch dramas), speak more (continue to take advantage of all opportunities to talk in Japanese) and improve vocabulary (I usually understand what I know; vocabulary, not comprehension, is an issue). I agree that it's better to watch without subtitles, and the difference is very noticeable, but if you are disciplined, you can either ignore them, or use them to your advantage by watching once with, and once again without paying attention to them. However, captions in the original language are extremely helpful, but very hard to find. Edited by Arekkusu on 24 December 2010 at 4:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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