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Background radio - Helpful or Fantasy? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Kubelek Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland chomikuj.pl/Kuba_wal Joined 6857 days ago 415 posts - 528 votes  Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC2, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 9 of 36 19 June 2010 at 4:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I did an experiment earlier this year when I listened to a podcast for a couple of weeks. Since I had to study intensively during that period I couldn't do a lot of active listening.
- I burned all episodes of Viajero del Mundo on regular CDs so I could use them independently of the computer and without headphones. - I put them on in the background! - I had them on day and night. I don't believe in sleep learning, but I do believe in the power of laziness. If I had to turn off the audio because I had guests it would often take me hours to put it back on. If it was there reduced to a drone it made sure that I won't forget about it. - I chose a podcast over an audiobook because of its nonsequential nature. When I wasn't doing anything important, I would turn up the volume and listen to it actively. I could understand around 70% at first. When I had to study I would turn the volume down to the point where I could still understand it when I paid attention, but which turned it into an unobtrusive drone when I was focused on something else. This was the most important element for me - most of other audio resources are very distracting to me, but some podcasts are really chill. I realized that during my study sessions I take mini breaks without realizing it (sort of like in timeboxing). I could easily fill these breaks with the podcast that way. I know that I didn't pay a lot of attention to the audio because by the end of my experiment there were still many episodes that I haven't actively listened to and I didn't know what they were about. The ones that happened to be on during my down time I could understand 100% of. I learned plenty of words without looking them up, and my prosody improved a lot. I learned to imitate the hosts manner of speech quite well, and it raised my confidence while speaking. So I say, give it a try, you might be pleasantly surprised. I didn't think it would do much for me, but it ended up being quite effective since otherwise I wouldn't have done any language study during that period. I stopped it when I had to study for an exam, and I never put it on again! Hence the importance of having it on all the time!! ;) The thing is that normally if you feel like staring at the wall for a minute or get dressed you don't go and turn on a you tube video in your target language. The background audio is there, and this is the time when you notice that it's on. Oh and falling asleep has become much more pleasant when I wasn't annoyed by having to lie down in bed for an hour. Instead I listened to interesting content. Edited by Kubelek on 19 June 2010 at 5:45pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5771 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 10 of 36 19 June 2010 at 4:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It surely can help. I couldn't say that it will help or won't for early stages of the learning process (for that stage working through a recording intensively first probably is more effective) - but I some time ago I started to play a Dutch audio book just because I liked the sound of it, and after three hours I suddenly realized I was following the story. Now, Dutch and German aren't very far from each other but Dutch is not intelligible for your average German. Edited by Bao on 23 July 2010 at 3:19pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5561 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 11 of 36 23 July 2010 at 3:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Radio and most other forms of background listening can indeed be helpful, as long as you don't learn to filter it out completely as noise. I also agree that the usefulness of this activity increases along with your comprehension level.
The trick here is to ensure that whatever you listen to in the background is personally fun and interesting. This way, you'll be more likely to actively focus on elements from time to time, and perhaps even learn something new along the way. I usually listen to target language music because I'm very passionate about music and know I'll pay plenty of attention without really trying. I find this particularly motivating for starting the day or a study session and during workouts down the gym. The same can be said for interesting podcasts to start the day or during transit, such as Strel'nikov's controversial "BIG PODCAST", where the variation of sounds and the podcaster's crazy antics just make me laugh and keep me focused. Edited by Teango on 23 July 2010 at 3:46pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6234 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 12 of 36 23 July 2010 at 4:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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You should check out this post by Benny, you know, the guy who has become fluent in 7 or so languages in 3
months. He has some very strong opinions about "passive listening" which I tend to agree with. Unless you are at advanced fluency you will not gain anything from passive listening. "active listening" is a different story. If you put on foreign language radio/tv etc and really attempt to understand it (whatever you can pick out) that IS useful. utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+f luentin3months+%28Fluent+in+3+month s%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo">Passive listening by Benny 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7108 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 13 of 36 23 July 2010 at 7:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'd read Benny's blog entry and for my money Cainntear's comment below sums it up for me.
But... ...I have to say that may just be me. I'm surrounded all day at work by people with iPods or playlists going in WMP who are busy working while passively listening to music - I can see some of them typing away while nodding their heads in time to the music. For me I work or I listen - I can't do both. If I'm working, I haven't a clue what I've just "heard" even if it's in my native language. It's active listening or nothing for me. On the other hand, this also means I have the ability to absolutely concentrate on something to the exclusion of anything else so I'm not easily distracted once I've begun. Horses for courses, I guess. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6680 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 14 of 36 23 July 2010 at 8:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Passive listening is very useful. I mean hearing the sounds of the language without paying any attention to them. It's useful even when you are sleeping.
The goal isn't learning the language, but get used to it. If you hear your target language as a background music, you will learn faster when you consciously study this language. The underlying mechanisms are priming and facilitation processes. I gave several scientific references in this thread about subliminal learning: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=9510&PN=0&TPN=1 Here your have a scientific reference about sleep learning: http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=sou nd-during-sleep-fixes-learning-09-11-19 Reference: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19965421 Science. 2009 Nov 20;326(5956):1079. Strengthening individual memories by reactivating them during sleep. Rudoy JD, Voss JL, Westerberg CE, Paller KA. Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA. Edited by slucido on 23 July 2010 at 9:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7108 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 15 of 36 23 July 2010 at 9:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yes... I keep hearing this and for me it doesn't work. I've tried it - I tried it for weeks at a time listening to BBC Mundo when I was a Spanish beginner. Nada. I pay attention and hear the audio (whether I understand it or not) or I hear nothing. I repeat - this doesn't even work in languages I know now, not my native English, not Spanish nor French.
The difference with sublimal learning while asleep (which I confess I haven't tried) is that your passively listening while you're actively...errr...doing nothing... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| irishpolyglot Nonaglot Senior Member Ireland fluentin3months Joined 5638 days ago 285 posts - 892 votes Speaks: Irish, English*, French, Esperanto, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Sign Language Studies: Mandarin | Message 16 of 36 23 July 2010 at 10:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I wasn't even aware of this thread when I wrote my post :)
Thanks for the mention Liddy! Yes you're right - I have strong opinions about this. To me it seems like a fun pastime that actually amounts to nothing. You'll feel like you are making progress, but it only works when combined with something else, and that something else will do all the actual work. The only times you'll learn something is when you give it your attention. If you listen to it all day long then that is just more chances to tune in and focus. The rest is just background noise. Think about immigrants that spend years in a country and don't pick up the language - they've been exposed to tens and thousands of hours of "noise" passively, but not paying attention to it or analysing it means they are still at the stage of incomprehension. The only difference with listening to streamed radio / podcasts without focusing is that it comes from a headphone. I tore it to pieces on my blog because I've met the results of these pointless exercises. It just seems like promoting the idea of getting something for nothing and relying on our "mysterious brain" to do all the work for us. I'd echo Splog's opinion and warn those saying "why not, it can only help": what about the possibility that you are basically training your mind to IGNORE that "foreign language noise"? Lazy immigrants have been trained through years to simply turn off when something is said around them in the local language. It's sad but I've seen it happen. It has potential when you already have a good level of the language, but I see it as wasteful as a means to acquire the language. I have one thousand hours of German radio listened to (inattentively) in the last 4 months and a poor listening exam result (despite good results in the rest of my exam) to reinforce that for me. For research on subliminal learning I'd be inclined to say some placebos and double blind tests would be required for them to be convincing. It's usefulness is in getting a feeling for the language, but not for acquiring any actual content. The only argument I've heard so far with some potential is listening to the same audio repeated over and over again. This may work to drill certain phrases into your mind, but it would have to be a small number of sets to sink in with no attention given to it. Listening to the same minute over and over again would drive me absolutely bonkers. Edited by irishpolyglot on 23 July 2010 at 10:46pm 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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