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Three rules for improving listening | ||
Tags: Listening | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 25 of 105 26 March 2013 at 10:57am | IP Logged | |||||
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I find listening starts to help when I've had a whole truckload of vocab and grammar
practice behind my belt. I've only recently started watching documentaries, listening to Russian series and so on because it's only NOW that I can draw enjoyment from them without having to bother finding out every word. At the beginning it was pointless. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 26 of 105 26 March 2013 at 1:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
also, especially if you have no immediate need to use the language, there's nothing wrong with learning some specific vocabulary to be fluent in a particular field. heck, even the EU-produced Polish and Ukrainian courses for Euro-2012 teach you A2 stuff for tourists+football vocabulary that a typical A2 learner doesn't need. the Brazilian Portuguese GLOSS lessons about football (soccer, obv) are oriented at Americans who have no clue. if you know who Pelé is and some other easy facts, those lessons shouldn't be too hard. btw did you know that all reading lessons have audio? click Source to see the whole text and listen to it. Edited by Serpent on 26 March 2013 at 1:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5131 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 27 of 105 26 March 2013 at 1:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm not sure if your question is serious, but I try to answer it nevertheless. Extensive reading and extensive listening are basically the same, just one is based on written and the other on spoken language. If I understand most of what's written/said, then I can figure out the meaning of new words from context, without having to look anything up. When the word comes again (and again and again), it gets more and more familiar until I know it. The same is true for words I encounter in interactions with other people, of course. When I read or listen extensively, I rarely stop and think about a new word, and I never look it up. Usually, I just make a quick guess, let it go and move on (as we practice in meditation). It will come again. It will grow at its own pace until I know it. That's the magic of extensive reading/listening. If you tell me that you can't listen and learn new things, then I believe you and also feel a bit sorry for you. It means that you always have to sit down and see language in written form. Sounds quite limiting to me. You certainly were able to listen and learn earlier in your life - when you learned the basics of your mother tongue -, but somehow you must have lost this skill. Any ideas as to why? As to what is more efficient, I don't now. A fair comparison would be between extensive listening and extensive reading, I'd say. I've read that reading speed often exceeds the speed of spoken language, that would give extensive reading an advantage. I don't really care, though, I enjoy both activities. 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4848 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 28 of 105 26 March 2013 at 2:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
I've, uh, glossed over GLOSS, but I haven't fully incorporated it into my routine yet. (I really should!) I forgot about GLOSS; that is also a nice source of free listening material with transcripts that you can adapt to your level. Anyway, I think I'm siding with Ari on this one (as well as Serpent and tarvos). They have a ton of languages under the "Speaks" column, and I just have my native English so far. Edited by kujichagulia on 26 March 2013 at 2:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Tahl Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4289 days ago 26 posts - 44 votes Speaks: English*, Welsh Studies: Spanish, Finnish | Message 29 of 105 26 March 2013 at 2:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
What worked for me with Welsh was finding a number of singer-songwriters whose music I enjoyed even when I didn't understand it. I bought the CDs rather than MP3s, in order to get whatever lyrics inserts I could. In listening to the CDs over and over in the car, and occasionally referring to the lyrics inserts and to the small dictionary I keep in the car's door pocket, I got used to hearing the equivalents of 'wanna' and 'gonna' and 'no big deal' and etc. The more pieces you understand, the more the bits that you don't understand pop into sharp focus so that you can then track down the aberrant word or idiom. I'm still finding lyrics suddenly unscrambling themselves as I've learned more and more over the last several years. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5561 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 30 of 105 26 March 2013 at 2:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I know it's anathema to the hippest language learnin theories, but I think I can truthfully say, I have not learned a single word solely from listening and guessing from context, despite the fact that listening s my main language activity. Zip. (I don't consider myself as having much natural talent for language learning, so it's nice to hear that someone like Ari has the same experience) What works for me though, is once you get to a standard where you can watch TV and understand 90%, then you can look up unknown words you hear, whilst still following what's going on with one ear/eye. It doesn't seem to be so easy with audiobooks or podcasts, where I always feel obliged to pause the audio, or not bother looking things up at all)
5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gala Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4551 days ago 229 posts - 421 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 31 of 105 26 March 2013 at 7:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think Ari's contention would probably be true, for me at least, if it was confined to
strictly audio material without transcripts and translations. But when it comes to audio-visual material, absolutely not, especially if you're talking about shows like soap operas or cartoons that have fairly predictable story-lines, a great deal of repetition of themes, exaggerated body language and facial expressions, and where the characters' words are often directly related to their present physical activity. I started watching telenovelas without subtitles of any kind as soon as I began learning Spanish. I don't think it took hardly any time before I had figured out that "¡Lárgate!" meant "Get the h*ll out of here!" even though I hadn't learnt the imperative mood, pronominal verbs, or the verb largar. Similarly, I knew that "¡Suéltame!" meant "Let go of me!" long before I'd learned imperatives, direct object pronouns, the verb soltar, or the concept of stem-changing verbs. Since "lárgate" was always accompanied by the speaker gesturing towards the door or in the process of forcibly ejecting someone from somewhere, and "suéltame" by someone struggling to extricate themselves from another's grasp, it wasn't a bit difficult to figure out. Those are isolated and somewhat extreme examples, but I can attest that I quickly and effectively learned a very substantial amount of vocabulary from telenovelas before I had encountered it elsewhere or had learned the grammatical framework behind its usage, and what's more, I had fun in the process. I certainly also "studied" and I was taking formal classes, but much of what I learned by that route simply explained and consolidated things I had already assimilated from telenovelas. EDIT: I did NOT, however, find watching news programs or documentaries (often recommended around here) to be helpful (or tolerable) until I was at the intermediate level. A fair amount of their content is pretty lacking in visual cues; a talking head with, perhaps, a picture or scene behind them in some way related to what they're talking about is not enough. Edited by Gala on 26 March 2013 at 7:55pm 9 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 32 of 105 26 March 2013 at 11:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think that listening does allow you to acquire new vocab once you've "decoded the
language" and are able to follow sentences normally, so that one word you do not know will not lead to a blurring of the sentence meaning and you can ask "what is that word" without feeling that you are missing out. At this point, it becomes useful. But that requires you to be able to follow 95% of a conversation without trouble. I learned several words this way during French class, mostly because I understand everything the teacher says except an odd word. In this sense, you will also have the capability to infer spelling (if it's a language that's reasonably easy to spell from audio). But until that point the best way is audio with transcript, visual aid (to give context) and foreign language subtitles (or same language subtitles). I actually prefer same language, matching subtitles so I can infer each new word exactly. And that doesn't happen until you're a lot further along. I can only do this in languages I'd have in my "speaks" column. (It is imperative you listen and follow along though. Else you will not get any practice for how to pronounce a language. Just reading for vocab is not enough. Practice saying them out loud). Edited by tarvos on 26 March 2013 at 11:25pm 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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