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Three rules for improving listening | ||
Tags: Listening | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6603 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 41 of 105 28 March 2013 at 1:48am | IP Logged | ||
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You can listen from the very beginning. I've had good results with the Romance and Slavic languages and I suspect I would have had better results with Swedish or Norwegian instead of Danish.
It all depends on where you want to get and how soon. For me, speaking is a low priority until I can visit the country of the language, and I suspect the best technique would actually be to do the same thing as in listening, and the same thing that Prof Arguelles did to learn Portuguese and one of the Scandinavian languages (?). Talk a lot, even if in the beginning it will be too much of the familiar language and too little of the new one. Unfortunately I felt bad about doing this thing with Polish - had I been ready to do this, I would've had tons more practice. Basically, while for the active skills you do need at least to read (or to do an audio-based course), for the passive ones you can just learn from exposure. Enough exposure will move the words to your active vocabulary. My personal preference is not to learn to say anything unless I can actually understand the reply. Maybe it's just that I feel uncomfortable if I don't understand enough. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6588 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 42 of 105 28 March 2013 at 6:56am | IP Logged | ||
I still hold to my Rule #1. If you have C1 Swedish you'd be able to read a Norwegian text without too much difficulty, so you could listen away to native stuff pretty much from day 1. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4671 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 43 of 105 28 March 2013 at 7:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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I listened to native materials from very early on, but I found it really frustrating at first because I was kind of randomly tuning into the radio; a better way would have been to focus on watching YouTube videos at the start, since they're short, self-contained, have plenty of visual cues, and can still be entertaining even if you don't get everything. I also kept (still keep, actually) a list of videos so that I can periodically go back to ones that I didn't understand so well on the first pass.
Of course, it's also easier to maintain focus on something that's really short. Edited by tastyonions on 28 March 2013 at 7:36pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5136 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 44 of 105 29 March 2013 at 9:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've been thinking about the discussion some more, in particular about the statement "I have not learned a single word solely from listening and guessing from context" by schoenewaelder as well as Ari's statement "Listening will strengthen words I already know, but for teaching me new ones, it's super slow and inefficient, for me". This may be true for those two, but I'd like to add some evidence for my conviction that it's entirely possible to learn languages through listening and interaction.
1) In many developing countries with multi-ethnic societies, multilingualism is the norm, and the vast majority of those people are not literate in those of their languages which are not promoted by central governments. As an example, I have friends in Thailand who speak Khmer at home, Lao in the market and when interacting with people from the region, and Thai in school and when interacting with people from other parts of the country. They have never seen a single word written in Lao but are nevertheless proficient in that language. 2) More generally: For the vast majority of multilingual people in human history, reading hasn't been an option at all. 3) Swiss-German is a spoken language with almost no literature or other written texts. There are some textbooks but they don't get you very far. There are many proficient speakers of Swiss-German who have immigrated to the country as adults, and they all have learned most, if not all, of the language through listening and interacting with native speakers. 4) Linguist doing field work with undocumented languages often seem to learn the languages they are researching. I don't want to question schoenwaelder's and Ari's experience, but based on the examples given I would conclude that for the majority of people listening is as valid in the learning process as is reading. While it is possible that reading is a more efficient use of your time (evidence, anyone?), for most people it can't be true that listening is "super slow and inefficient" and should only serve to consolidate knowledge acquired through reading. I'm not arguing against reading, not at all. By all means: read, and read a lot! But for a large part of us (if not the vast majority), extensive listening and interacting with people can be a valuable and enjoyable source of new vocabulary. 10 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5772 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 45 of 105 29 March 2013 at 11:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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There's a big difference between listening to informative content, and listening to people while you're interacting with them. Or: I do not zone out when another person is going out of their way to make their language comprehensible to me.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jhaberstro Senior Member United States Joined 4399 days ago 112 posts - 154 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Portuguese | Message 46 of 105 30 March 2013 at 3:35am | IP Logged | ||
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| BobbyE Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5253 days ago 226 posts - 331 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin | Message 47 of 105 06 December 2013 at 2:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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These 3 rules sum up what in my experience has been the only way to see gains in
listening. Very cool to see explained clearly. I've also never once learned a new word by listening, without a text, and guessing the meaning. In Mandarin, it has taken me a long time to even learn to hear syllables, let alone guess meanings. Old post, but OP is great advice and I just want to give props. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6603 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 48 of 105 06 December 2013 at 3:05pm | IP Logged | ||
The OP is actually controversial to some extent, but the whole thread is a great discussion.
Formal materials focus on the intensive activities too much, which can be okay with reading but are definitely not enough for listening. If you learn to read slowly, you can then learn to read faster. If you listen to short segments and with a lot of pausing, proper native materials require a much longer leap. If you put off native audio until you can understand "enough", it will never happen. And if you don't listen to natural speech, you'll have a crappy pronunciation. Edited by Serpent on 06 December 2013 at 3:07pm 7 persons have voted this message useful |
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