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Background radio - Helpful or Fantasy? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| dagojr Groupie United States Joined 5385 days ago 56 posts - 131 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 36 14 June 2010 at 9:38pm | IP Logged |
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When people are speaking in my target language, I can pick out words here and there and VERY occasionally figure out what is being discussed. But for the most part, I really cannot follow what is being said the majority of the time. When two people are talking, or if I'm listening to the radio, I'm pretty much like "Ooo! I know that word. Ohh! I know that word too. But I have no idea what they're talking about."
Certainly actively listening and trying to figure out what is being said helps, but I'm wondering if doing something else while listening helps too (for example, cleaning, studying, and so on), even if I am not actively trying to follow what is being said. On the one hand, I'm exposing myself in the language, and I am able to pick out words here and there. On the other hand, I am not really focusing on what is being said in this situation, and this method feels a little like a pseudo-scientific learning technique along the lines of sleeping with a book placed under a pillow and hoping to absorb the knowledge. So does this technique help, or is it not all that helpful? Edited by dagojr on 14 June 2010 at 9:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6745 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 2 of 36 15 June 2010 at 1:37am | IP Logged |
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Well, it certainly won't hurt your target language, in any case :)
What you're doing is called passive input, and it's extremely helpful, I think. In fact, some (including many on this forum) believe in flooding yourself with as much of it as possible, for 24 hours a day if you can, for quite a while before even attempting to speak. The idea is that eventually the pronunciation and intonation will become second-nature to you, even if you have no idea yet what is being said. Khatzumoto, the author of the site linked above, compares this to sowing seeds: you don't see the results right away, and might even wonder if your efforts will produce any fruit at all, but if you keep at it the rewards will reveal themselves further down the road. You will start to learn new syntactic 'chunks' and turns of phrase, and they will somehow feel familiar to you, rather than something completely foreign. Don't feel guilty about having it play in the background without actively listening to it - in fact, it can be argued that this is key, because the effortlessness allows you to have it playing during every waking hour. If you decide to limit yourself to only listening to your target language when you can do it actively, depending on your level of motivation you might do it for ten minutes one day, then a whole 30 minutes another day, then another day something came up so you couldn't get around to it... compare this to passively listening for, say, 16 waking hours each day (although of course, there is no rule saying you have to choose only passive or active listening; the ideal would be to be always listening passively, and also put aside some time for active listening each day. The great news is that having your target language playing in the background all the time will only make your active listening more frequent and effortless, because it won't be a big affair in the way of 'ok, now it's time to study Russian, I'd better drop what I'm doing and go turn on the computer', but will just be a matter of simply directing your attention to something that's already playing). The key to language immersion is quantity, not quality, so be sure not to limit yourself by being picky about your materials and methods. Any input (so long as it was created by and for native speakers) is good input. Just try to have your target language in your ears all the time, and by doing so, you will be creating a language immersion environment for yourself. You know how babies are constantly immersed in the language, hearing people speak to each other, hearing it passively all around them for at least a year before they can utter meaningful phrases? With constant immersion, you can create this advantage, this 'incubation period' for yourself - the 'Russian childhood' you never had, if you will. And because you are cleverer and more efficient than a baby, you can combine this with other methods and use other tools at your disposal, and use your adult wisdom and common sense to your advantage, and it will be much less than a year before you can start reaping the benefits of your immersion. Best of luck! Edited by Lucky Charms on 15 June 2010 at 1:53am 13 persons have voted this message useful | |
| RedBeard Senior Member United States atariage.com Joined 5898 days ago 126 posts - 182 votes Speaks: Ancient Greek* Studies: French, German | Message 3 of 36 16 June 2010 at 4:29am | IP Logged |
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*crosses fingers*
Helpful! Helpful! Come on, helpful! 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5226 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 4 of 36 17 June 2010 at 2:20pm | IP Logged |
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As Lucky Charms has pointed out, listening passively to the target language is not a bad thing. It contributes to the immersion effect and will probably help to develop a feel for the intonation of the language. That said, in terms of grammar and vocabulary I do question the effectiveness of listening to incomprehensible input.
Certainly one of the biggest problems we face when listening to natural speech is how to break up the stream of sound into the various components. Often we don't know what to search for in a dictionary or in a grammar book! What I would suggest to supplement passive listening is the use of recordings that have been decoded so that you actually understand what is being said. A lot of the materials from language courses and methods can be rather boring for this purpose. Many DVD's however come with foreign language tracks, and there is a ton of material on Youtube. Whatever the source, I would recommend the repetitive listening to understandable material so that you develop a sense of meaning in association with the stream of sound. Just to quibble a bit with Lucky Charms, I do believe that in the immersion experience quality is as important as quantity. Of course it's good to be surrounded by the language as much as possible, but this experience can be structured in such a way to produce the quickest and best results. But that is a debate for another day. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| brian91 Senior Member Ireland Joined 5240 days ago 335 posts - 437 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 5 of 36 19 June 2010 at 9:02am | IP Logged |
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I leave Bayern 5 Aktuell (German news station) on in the background in my room often; I'm bound to pick up
something every so often (and often get the urge to look up words in my dictionary). I find it helpful. :D 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5782 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 6 of 36 19 June 2010 at 10:19am | IP Logged |
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Ya, I think this is mostly about increasing opportunities. If you're at work, or doing something else that requires your active attention, then you can still give yourself opportunities for accidental language learning. Clearly some part of your mind is still listening to all of the things around you even when you're not paying active attention, because you can hear your name said across the room. Your mind will decide somehow what's important and bring it up if necessary, but some part of you is listening to everything.
When I'm doing this sort of "background" listening all day at work, I will hear certain phrases every once in a while that are somehow interesting. They'll stick with me for a bit, even if I don't know what they mean. This is especially true for phrases that are repeated often, which you hear a lot of in news broadcasts for example (like the part at the start where they say stuff like "we have all the best news items all the time, and awesome traffic reports! listen to us because we're great!", which you'll hear over and over before each news segment). It may or may not help to have the hours and hours of stuff that you don't hear consciously, but I think it's still worth it for the little bits that you DO pick up. If you hear a few new words in 8 hours of background noise, then that's still a few more words that you wouldn't have received if it had been quiet all day. However, my intuition tells me that you also gain much more than those few conscious realizations. I think that you get much more used to the pronunciation and rhythm of the language too. You should of course do active listening and reading whenever you can, but filling your "down" time with the language is helpful too :) 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5465 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 7 of 36 19 June 2010 at 12:01pm | IP Logged |
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Unless you are at a pretty advanced stage with a language, listening is an active rather than passive activity. Background radio, then, can be helpful if you purposefully draw your mind's attention to it from time to time.
It is all about training your brain to treat certain sounds in a certain way. If your brain has learned to treat background sounds it doesn't understand as "noise", then having the radio on in the background risks merely improving your brain's ability to filter it out. It is a bit like the vuvuzelas at the world cup: the first time I heard them it was annoying, now my brain simply filters them out. My advice is to do as much active listening as possible, and if you are doing passive listening (e.g. radio in the background) keep asking yourself if you are paying any attention to it at all, or merely filtering it out. Being a "reflective listener" in this way can help draw your attention to the sounds you hear and, I believe, make you a better listener in general. Edited by Splog on 19 June 2010 at 12:03pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5807 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 8 of 36 19 June 2010 at 1:01pm | IP Logged |
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I feel you have to be listening to it at some level to process anything.
If I'm trying to do anything that requires concentration, listening to what seems like incomprehensible ramblings will put me off. I can understand the idea that you can pick up some of the "music" of a language this way, but as it does take some of your attention, I'm not sure whether it's a brilliant use of time... 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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