Background radio - Helpful or Fantasy? (Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies) Language Learning Forum

Background radio - Helpful or Fantasy?
Tags: Passive \| Radio \| Music \| Comprehension/understanding
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Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies

36 messages over 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5

Romanist
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 5078 days ago
261 posts - 366 votes

Studies: Italian

Message 33 of 36

24 July 2010 at 12:41pm | IP Logged

irishpolyglot wrote:

I've met people who swear so much by its effectiveness, that other approaches (like study and practise) get pushed aside. That's what worries me.

Putting aside the hard-to-prove speculation that it would make you filter out the target language, I'd say it can be "harmful" simply psychologically. People will do their 4 hours of language "work" per day and feel they don't need to do anything else. People are lazy. It's unfortunate but it's true. Anything that gets someone out of work will always be welcome.

I guess like most people on the 'languages scene', I know all about your private war with Steve Kaufmann...!

In general I agree with quite a lot of Steve's views, but I think he probably does put rather too much emphasis on passive listening alone.

As I said in my first post on this thread, things are not simple and clear cut. There are different types of passive listening allowing for different degrees of concentration and focus. Also, people vary; some are probably better able than others to listen to what is going on in the background.

IMO we should all (including both you and Steve Kaufmann) be very wary of becoming too dogmatic about these things.

Edited by Romanist on 24 July 2010 at 3:05pm
2 persons have voted this message useful

liddytime
Pentaglot
Senior Member
United States
mainlymagyar.wordpre
Joined 6025 days ago
693 posts - 1328 votes

Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician
Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written)

Message 34 of 36

24 July 2010 at 12:42pm | IP Logged

aarontp wrote:

liddytime wrote:

When I was learning Portuguese I listened to a TON of Brazilian music CD's.
Some had liner notes, most didn't.

I hate to go off topic, but could you recommend any? I'm always looking for foreign
music, and I always waste too much time with futile searches on youtube.

Check out the "Brazil Classics" Series put together by David Byrne. Sadly there are only three that I know of
1 Brazil Classics 1: Beleza Tropical
2 Brazil Classics 2: O Samba
3 Brazil Classics 3: Forro

But they are all excellent! And they do have bilingual liner notes ( if you get the CD's) He also has

"Afropea 3 - Telling Stories To The Sea"

where he compiles music from all the ex-Portuguese Colonies of Africa.

Also great listening!

TerryW wrote:

liddytime wrote:

When I was learning Portuguese I listened to a TON of Brazilian music
CD's. ..Eventually I was singing along ... with the CD's.!

If you were singing along, you were (mostly) actively listening to the songs, no?

I doubt you'd be able to sing "Kaja goo goo, Oh blah di, Oh blah da..." without actually listening to the song, vs.
having it on as background "elevator music."

Ha ha ha!!

Yeah, that is true. But many times I'd be listening in the car and ( hopefully) I was paying more attention to
driving than the Brazilian Oh blah di Oh blah da! I think in Portuguese it was "O blam dim - O blam dão" :-)

Edited by liddytime on 25 July 2010 at 2:20am
1 person has voted this message useful

Javi
Senior Member
Spain
Joined 5777 days ago
419 posts - 548 votes

Speaks: Spanish*

Message 35 of 36

25 July 2010 at 12:45am | IP Logged

dagojr wrote:

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?

I can't see the point in listening to a totally incomprehensible stream of words. It's
not because I think it's ineffective or harmful. It's just that for all intents and
purposes, I know of a better alternative: comprehensible input. It has all the
advantages:

- It also contains the music of the language and so it helps you getting used to
the sounds, phonemes, intonation, rhythm, etc.

- You can listen to it with variable levels of attention, different moods and states of
consciousness.

- It reinforces what you know and teaches you new things.

So I think that the sensible thing to do is to never let the understandable part fall
under a given threshold, that for many people I guess it'll be the one of boredom. As a
beginner you can aim for 100% comprehension, as that's what most languages programs
offer. If you are concern with your listening skill, you might consider methods like
Assimil, LinQ, L-R, and others that encourage doing repetitive listening over the same
comprehensible input. At some point you will start using real content that you can
understand, at least in part.

There's a gap in the middle of these two phases, and it's the only moment when I
find justifiable to keep listening even with 0% comprehension. The first time you turn
on the radio you may find that you can't understand anything. The same when you listen
to a bunch of natives talking without having a clue of what are they going to say next,
but that's just temporary. You'll quickly learn to break the stream of sounds into
words and sentences, and to extract the meaning on the fly. In practice, and depending
on the difficulty of the content, the understanding level can rise from 0 to 30-40 in a
matter of hours.

Edited by Javi on 25 July 2010 at 12:49am
1 person has voted this message useful

slucido
Bilingual Diglot
Senior Member
Spain
https://goo.gl/126Yv
Joined 6471 days ago
1296 posts - 1781 votes

4 sounds
Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan*
Studies: English

Message 36 of 36

25 July 2010 at 9:00am | IP Logged

Javi wrote:

I agree with you and the issue isn't about comprehensible or incomprehensible input, the issue is about making the most of our time when we cannot actively use the language.

We can use comprehensible input as a background music and not paying attention to it. It doesn't matter.

This is a complementary activity. You use it when you cannot listen actively your target language because you need to work on something else.

This recommendation is not something new. It's an old recommendation and now we can find scientific evidence about the underlying process.

1 person has voted this message useful

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