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I’ve found my listening problem | ||
Tags: Listening | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Tyrion101 Senior Member United States Joined 3912 days ago 153 posts - 174 votes  Speaks: French | Message 1 of 19 01 September 2014 at 8:08am | IP Logged | ||
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I've noticed that the times I've understood what I'm listening to it's been thanks to audio quality, and oddly
enough my volume not high enough. Volume I can fix, but what about higher quality audio? I'm only a beginner to listening to foreign languages. In English audio quality doesn't matter because I'm native, and am good at it. So I guess what I'm asking is where's the best quality audio? Specifically at present I need Russian and french. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4098 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 2 of 19 01 September 2014 at 8:35am | IP Logged | ||
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Yes, understanding at a low volume or with lots of interference is a higher level skill. However, I thought you said you listened to the radio as your primary reinforcement and since you live the US that would presumably be downloaded or streamed audio... in which case you should have pretty darned good audio quality.
If you're not listening with headphones, get yourself some headphones. That will get rid of some interference and help you focus. If by some long-shot you have actually only found dreadful radio audio, start downloading audio straight from the radio channels themselves. The quality should be excellent. Otherwise you can find excellent audio by buying audio books. Of course, you can also find excellent audio for free in podcasts and copyfree e-books, but you'll have to sample each individual one to know which are decent. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4706 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 3 of 19 01 September 2014 at 9:03am | IP Logged | ||
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If you're studying Russian, Echo Moskvy has good quality broadcasts that also include
transcriptions. I recommend them. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4443 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 4 of 19 01 September 2014 at 12:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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At least if I'm watching foreign programs on YouTube, I can usually adjust the video speed to 0.25 or 0.5
to slow the video down. When it comes to audio quality, high quality DVDs tend to be best. When I'm watching a French or Chinese program online, I mostly watch those with subtitles because the audio tend to be converted in MP3. Fortunately, most Chinese programs do have subtitles... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 5 of 19 01 September 2014 at 12:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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As usual, I can only recommend audiobooks and tv series for start. Dubbed ones are easier and I think one of the reasons is that the new dubbing is added separately and therefore the voices aren't that much mixed with the background. Podcasts are of various quality and it is good to try them out before paying for any audio including service and the same applies to courses with CDs (either the publisher gives a sample on their website or you can often download from pirate sources and decide). Frenchpod101 is one of those with very good sound quality. Radio should be left for advanced stages, in my opinion, just as many movies or some news channels. Documentaries are great for beginners/lower intermediate listeners.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4046 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 6 of 19 01 September 2014 at 1:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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Like @eyðimörk said, listening low-quality audio is an advanced skill.
When you use the beginner material, the speech is slow-medium slow, all the words are very well articulated and the audio is clean. However, in real world, you have background noise like cars and people, the natives often speak fast and they are sluggish so they articulate badly resulting in much less clear sounds. In this situation, if you're an advanced learner you can manage to understand, if you are a beginner, much less. Our brain has amazing capabilities to reconstruct partial and messed up signals, but it needs to be trained. So don't spend time in this phase with low quality audio, and don't worry because it is perfectly normal. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4098 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 7 of 19 01 September 2014 at 3:01pm | IP Logged | ||
Why so? I understand that it's your opinion, but why do you feel that way? I ask, because I was admittedly speaking intermediate French by the time I started using radio broadcasts, but with Breton I started almost immediately and it has been nothing but great (except sometimes when I'm listening in the car). The sound quality is good and the articulate speakers who enunciate (certain guests excepted). As for the news, it was probably the first thing my husband could follow in French because, again, speakers who enunciate and a variety of images that fit with the topic. I wouldn't recommend news broadcasts that are simply an anchor reading quickly from a paper, but maybe that's more along the line of what you were thinking. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 8 of 19 01 September 2014 at 4:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's not only my opinion. It is the experience of many learners around me. Over the years, I heard the story so many times, usually told by beginners/intermediates: "My teacher recommended me to listen to BBC for practice but it is so hard! I am just useless at languages, I've considered giving up."
Radio is full of changes, wide range of speakers and topics, sometimes the sound quality isn't perfect (especially when actully using a radio and not an internet browser to listen). Unlike podcasts, like those on frenchpod101, it is not sorted into any levels so the learning curve for a beginner/lower intermediate is really steep. And unlike tv series or movies, radio doesn't give you any visual clues. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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