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Three rules for improving listening | ||
Tags: Listening | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4640 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 9 of 105 24 March 2013 at 9:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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What would you recommend for the harder stuff where there may not be transcripts? For example, I'm watching sitcoms and I'm noticing that it's not necessarily the vocab itself I have problems with, but rather how a native speaker cuts the words short/rate of speech. Like how English speakers say "wanna" and "gonna". Is this something only a native speaker can understand? Do you think that by watching TV/movies one can really understand all of the intimacies of a language?
And how would I go about listening for new words if I've never seen it before? Is this something one can learn solely through context? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6601 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 10 of 105 24 March 2013 at 10:32pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Once again, it depends. In a related language you can probably learn more by extensive reading, and it also becomes much more useful if you read something where you know the content (HP, LOTR, The Little Prince etc) In a language like Spanish, Finnish or German looking up a word you've heard is fairly trivial, and that's a good skill to have. (My gut feeling is that Swedish is like that too, btw, at least compared to Danish or French)
I'm also saying that for the "unknown knowns" (as opposed to Prof Arguelles' "known unknowns" :D) listening is better than reading, and that you can learn them efficiently without looking up. Hence, neither listening nor extensive reading are necessarily crap for the vocabulary. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6601 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 11 of 105 24 March 2013 at 10:57pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I think pausing may be a good strategy in this case. The problem is not just that you didn't understand a word - the problem is that you need to concentrate on the next one and soon the next sentence. Pause and without necessarily translating or repeating try to understand what the person just said. Take a breath. Continue listening. You may also want to experiment with deliberately suboptimal or accelerated audio, using slightly easier recordings and possibly even transcripts. For your specific languages, there are also materials for learning (about) the slang/highly informal language and the dialects. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4913 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 12 of 105 25 March 2013 at 12:15am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I agree with most of what you've written Ari, but you do tend to exaggerate for rhetorical effect, when describing something as "crap" just because it might be less efficient than something else. We could argue for ages which is more efficient: taking the time to look everything up, and thus reading less but knowing the words more, or not looking up all the words, and learning words through the context, while reading more. Personally, trying to understand every word used to slow me down so much that I couldn't finish a page of anything. Recently, I've discovered the value of just pushing through without looking up much, and I find both my comprehension and vocabulary increasing, whereas before I used to quit in frustration. Of course, this comes down to learning preferences... not scientifically established, just a matter of experience. My current pattern is to use books with CD's at a little above my comprehension level. I listen to the CD several times first. Initially, I probably understand about 50% of what I hear; I may know more of the words, but they get lost in the flow of speech. But I get the gist of the story, and then with repeated listening I understand more and more of the story. Then I take the book and begin to read. I avoid looking things up on the first reading, but I check google translate on my phone from time to time when I just can't make sense of a sentence. By the 2nd or 3rd reading I find I understand most of the book (meaning there's only 1 or 2 words on a page I don't get). I guess my point is that, "learning styles" aside, people have different ways that are effective for their learning. As far as I am concerned, it mostly amounts to what we are able to keep up with. Trying to look up every word only stopped me from reading, so it was not effective for me. Accepting a level of uncertainty might stop others from continuing, so it would be more efficient for them to look up every word. My point is not about the science (or lack thereof) of learning styles, it is about keeping going. Basically, if you keep up with input which interests you enough to persevere with it, you will learn more effectively than if you follow a method which just doesn't appeal to you. To get back to the original post: I quite agree with Ari about listening to something that you would understand in written form. But on my first listen, since it is going a lot faster than I would when reading it, I still miss most of what I'm hearing. What is important is that it is audio that I will be capable of understanding, it just takes a couple of listens to get it all to sink in. Finally, learning styles might be easily blown off with a pithy quote and a link to an article. But if I enjoy learning more in a visual way, then I will persevere more in that method. And I hope we can all agree finding a way of learning that keeps us learning is more useful than finding a more "efficient" method which we won't keep up. 13 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5770 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 13 of 105 25 March 2013 at 12:15am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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As for rule #3, it may just be my ADD brain but I find that finding interesting content on just the right level automatically keeps me focused. When I don't have that kind of content, walking around while listening usually does the trick, and so does doing mindless chores.
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| French_please Newbie Joined 4271 days ago 6 posts - 7 votes Studies: French | Message 14 of 105 25 March 2013 at 12:26pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Audio books + text = ?
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| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6601 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 15 of 105 25 March 2013 at 1:21pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Sometimes great, sometimes an illusion.
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| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6155 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 16 of 105 25 March 2013 at 4:41pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I don't agree with this. I prefer to hear unknown words before I read them. If I read them first, I won't be sure how they're pronounced exactly . Also, if I listen to material I already know, this won't help me when faced with real world scenarios. Personally, I feel a lot of language learners don't spend enough time listening extensively, and especially to unknown material. 12 persons have voted this message useful |
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