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Listening from the beginning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5792 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes  Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 49 of 70 30 May 2011 at 10:16am | IP Logged | ||||||||
BUT... Many learners who learn Italian by all-audio methods fail to learn consonant gemination (long consonant sounds written as double consonants). By changing the input channel from written to spoken, we do not actively address the question of phonemic awareness, which I believe is the root of the problem. The example of H convinces a lot of people because it's a very clear and obvious fault, and it is considered "basic" whereas many teachers consider gemination "advanced", but they both arise from the same problem: phonemic awareness. Moving to spoken to eliminate /h/ is treating a symptom, but it doesn't cure the underlying disease. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5162 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 50 of 70 30 May 2011 at 1:31pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
...which is that the average learner -- or even teacher, to a degree -- knows next to nothing about phonology or phonetics. He has no idea what a geminate consonant is, and even if he hears something odd, he can't quite tell what it is, let alone define that as a geminate or even as a difference that matters. If it doesn't matter in English, he assumes it mustn't matter in Italian either. He also has no idea whether there are geminates in English because he's never spent a moment thinking about his own pronunciation. In that context, it's virtually impossible for the learner to determine what the phonological differences are between his language and the one he is learning, or to discern which differences matters from which don't. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| zuneybunny Diglot Newbie United States turkishtrip.wordpres Joined 4718 days ago 32 posts - 52 votes Speaks: English, Mandarin* Studies: Spanish, Turkish | Message 51 of 70 31 May 2011 at 5:07pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Thanks, but you mentioned in your tip that...
I don't see how I can both fulfill this AND select materials that are at native level. I've only been learning Turkish for 2 weeks, and I can't understand anything in an audio played at normal native speed. The FSI courses I can understand just fine. Could you please clarify how exactly you are doing this? 10 minutes of audio at native speed (in which case I can't understand anything, therefore I'm not getting any comprehension from it AT ALL), or at less than native speed and have comprehension? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6331 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 52 of 70 01 June 2011 at 3:29am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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It's really hard at first. If you want to listen to a lot of beginner podcasts, that will probably be less frustrating to you for the time
being. But I recommend you to start listening to intermediate stuff, movies with subtitles, etc as soon as possible. Just 10 min at first, if it's frustrating, or if your time is limited. You may think you're getting nothing out of it, but it would be unusual if you didn't recognize a few words. Work at it; it's a skill that you can develop. It will take a while, but if you keep this up you'll definitely learn new vocab and reinforce things just by doing those 10 min a day. When I started Russian, I used Pimsleur. I supplemented it with russianpod101 beginner podcasts. Shortly after I added movies with subtitles, and intermediate podcasts, and wished I had started them earlier. The audio component in FSI alone is not sufficient. By that I mean it doesn't optimize your listening, as I explained in the first post. They give you a taste of audio, and leave the rest up to you. The rest is what I'm talking about. If you prefer to go all the way through the program without supplementing your listening, then you have completely missed the point of this thread. If you were to listen to the audio component of another beginner program for 10 min, provided it matches my criteria, that would be ok. For example, assimil usually has some nice comprehensible audio. But relying on a tiny bit of audio in FSI, spoken at slow speeds, isn't enough. Listening ahead isn't a good idea either, because it will make it boring for you when you have to use it again. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| kmart Senior Member Australia Joined 5905 days ago 194 posts - 400 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian | Message 53 of 70 01 June 2011 at 12:22pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
But that is what Michel Thomas is for - "dovremmmmmmo" ! ;-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4690 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 54 of 70 25 June 2011 at 7:57pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I'm surprised no one has mentioned it, but music you like in your target language is a great way to get listening practice without being bored, although I guess it "counts" as passive listening since you probably focus more on the music than the words at first. But as you continue listening you begin to hear the words more and more. Music has become an essential part of my language learning toolkit.
Someone on this forum or another mentioned a great internet tool for developing listening comprehension with music, which I will repeat here: http://lyricstraining.com You watch a video in karaoke mode or game mode. Karaoke mode means the lyrics just appear below the video. Game mode means the lyrics appear with blanks, and you have to type the missing word or the music pauses. They sort the songs in three levels, and have songs in English, French, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and German. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5792 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 55 of 70 25 June 2011 at 9:01pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Yup, that's one of his strengths, and also my point: even when you learn by an audio method, there's things that you will never notice unless you are specifically taught them 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Minya Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4683 days ago 22 posts - 38 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 56 of 70 26 June 2011 at 4:17am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I agree with OP. (Original Poster)
I've flirted with a few languages, and I always listen to them a lot. For instance, I listen to a lot of Japanese music and learn a lot of lyrics so I can sing it. It helps me with my pronunciation and I have a lot of fun while I'm listening/singing. I'm trying to do the same with Korean. So far, I've been watching some Kdramas (of course lol) and some music. I know Korean is harder then Japanese when it comes to sounds though. Listening to things you are interested in helps a lot and keeps it in your memory. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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