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Passive Listening | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Halcyon Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6447 days ago 35 posts - 37 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese | Message 9 of 32 21 March 2008 at 6:44am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm pretty much with Hollow on this one.
Passive listening helps with getting the rhythm of a language. I think a lot of people studying languages, especially on their own or primarily in a class setting don't really "get" the flow that comes with speaking fluently, until much later... the constant exposure that provides you an outlet to the language without taxing your brain like listening it solely for comprehension or "trying" to listen to it for vocabulary helps in the long run. Of course, it's always good to listen to things for comprehension, but then that falls into studying, at least for me... I'm sure it isn't for anyone, but it certainly doesn't hurt to try, does it? I don't think it's something you can really benefit from if you only do it a once or twice, or even just a few times. You pick up little by little, sometimes none at all, but whatever you do pick up will be (nearly) effortless. Probably even unconciously. I do think this is why studying abroad helps people so much more - you learn mostly not what you are taught in school, but what surrounds you in your daily life. People who submerge themselves in their country of choice will be constantly surrounded by things in their target language - be it street noise, street signs, store music, passing conversations. While passive listening at home or wherever won't give you the full benefit as literally BEING in that language environment, it does offer a small bit of the benefits that comes with it. I listened to a lot of music in different languages growing up, lots of movies - but mainly French, Mandarin, Japanese, Vietnamese and Korean. Pronunciation and speaking was the first to come for me in Mandarin. Speaking and reading aloud for French.. I haven't studied Japanese or Korean to much length, so I can't say much for them. I did horrible with speaking German, Russian, Spanish... and I never listened or had much exposure to those languages. Maybe it's coincidence, maybe not, but I'd say the passive listening helped with at least a little bit of it. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Lapislazuli Tetraglot Senior Member Austria Joined 7028 days ago 146 posts - 170 votes  Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, ItalianB1 Studies: French, Hungarian, Esperanto, Czech | Message 10 of 32 21 March 2008 at 7:15am | IP Logged | ||
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For me passive listening works very well (in combination with studying grammar and such, which I also hate, but one won't be able to really able to avoid this)
It gives a feel for the language, pronounciation and intonation - as others here already stated. And for me it also helps me to stay motivated. I listen to lots of music in my target language and then I want to understand the lyrics. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6760 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 11 of 32 21 March 2008 at 7:54am | IP Logged | ||
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What the last few posters are describing sounds close to active listening to me. :)
Totally off-topic, "lapis lazuli" is just about my favourite word. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Halcyon Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6447 days ago 35 posts - 37 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese | Message 12 of 32 21 March 2008 at 8:00am | IP Logged | ||
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How is it not passive if you aren't trying to learn from what you're listening to?
If not listening for the sake of exposure sound rather than meaning, then perhaps my definition of passive listening is incorrect? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| chelovek Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6079 days ago 413 posts - 461 votes 5 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Russian | Message 13 of 32 27 March 2008 at 3:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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Passive listening would mean just having it in the background as you go about other business.
I don't think it could help at all unless you are paying attention to it (even without any comprehension). I mean, if I have a movie on in English but I'm focusing on my homework, then pretty much nothing in the movie will register with me. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| blindsheep Triglot Senior Member Spain Joined 6352 days ago 503 posts - 507 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 14 of 32 27 March 2008 at 4:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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For me, listen-reading has been working thus far, but I have found that it works much better if you can start with a young adults book and or something with a lot of dialogue (and thus proper nouns) in it since they help you keep your place.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Eve Triglot Groupie United States Joined 6667 days ago 67 posts - 67 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, Spanish | Message 15 of 32 31 March 2008 at 11:14am | IP Logged | ||
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I stopped actively studying Spanish more then 4 months ago( after a little bit more then a year of audio courses, books, exercises etc..), but kept watching my telenovela with Spanish subtitles almost every day. Couldn't do much without subtitles. I've got very involved with this telenovela ( "Pasión" - it's still on) and decided to watch it on Youtube ( no subtitles) to see all remaining portions - almost 30 ( around 45 min each). It took me a couple of days to complete and after a few days a realized that my comprehension improved dramatically. I started to understand news, song lyrics, reading magazines almost like in English. This was my biggest breakthrough in my Spanish. I l=know that I'm behind on a speaking part but now I feel much more confident and will be working on speaking part during my trip to Mexico ( in a few days)
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jody Senior Member United States Joined 6230 days ago 242 posts - 252 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Bulgarian | Message 16 of 32 31 March 2008 at 12:10pm | IP Logged | ||
I really want to try the listening-reading. It has such great reviews here, and I am hoping that it can keep me out of the grammar books a little bit. (I know I have to learn grammar, but I want to minimize my time doing so.) Anyway, I have a few (very few) dual-language texts, but it seems to be impossible for me to find audio. I have lots of links, but I'm not too computer savvy and I can't handle the strange .rar files. I really want to learn Bulgarian (my wife's native language). But there are so very few materials out there (especially in dual-language texts and audio), that I'm happy to learn Russian instead. In fact, I've gone back and forth between the two languages for some time. At this point, I think the balance would tip in favor of the one that I could get some audio for. In the meantime I am just playing around with both. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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