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Listening comprehension - obstacles | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| McKulek Tetraglot Newbie Poland Joined 4008 days ago 10 posts - 15 votes Speaks: Polish*, Esperanto, English, Russian Studies: French | Message 17 of 22 24 June 2013 at 6:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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The adviced given by all of you are intresting and inspiring. It's quite large set to try out! Something must work :)
So another question: What do you think the listening comprehension depends on? I observed many times that at English class many people did better listening exercises even though they known fewer words than I did. Is this the matter of better distinguishing words or better ability to understand a common sense? Or - maybe - the clue is to distinguish particular sounds and then it should be connected with pronunciation? What's your opinion, guys? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4637 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 18 of 22 25 June 2013 at 12:44am | IP Logged | ||
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Can't give you an "answer", but my gut feeling is that the more vocabulary you have at
your disposal, the better your listening comprehension will be. It helps to know how the words will sound, and even google translate audio can help there, to some extent. It's not so good with single words (IME), but quite good with whole expressions. I've been told one can select American, British or Australian, but I don't know how. The tests I've done have all been in perfectly good British English. (I used translate.google.co.uk - maybe that helped). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jazzy1979 Newbie France Joined 3989 days ago 13 posts - 13 votes Studies: English | Message 19 of 22 25 June 2013 at 10:50pm | IP Logged | ||
Ok . As i am a newbie here , i didn't know somebody wrote already on this topic . I have EXACTELY the same problem in comprehension . I can uuderstand effortlessly every motivational speakers at once - although they speak fast - but once i switch to TV series , nothing works anymore . It's very frustrating . Glad that i am not the only one in this position , i am reassured . 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4637 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 20 of 22 25 June 2013 at 11:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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To the OP: back on the "stuff to try" theme, and thinking again of classic English authors, there is a series of
dramatisations of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations on BBC Radio 4 Extra this week, every day at 10:00 (of course you can listen to it when you like once it has been broadcast). In 6 episodes. This is the first: Great Expectation Episode 1 Slightly different: Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot: Three Act Tragedy Episode 1 of 5 Different again: Sherlock Holmes: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes episode 1 of 12 Schedule Edited by montmorency on 25 June 2013 at 11:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6512 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 21 of 22 26 June 2013 at 10:36am | IP Logged | ||
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When you ask for advice about listening you will mostly get answers about good sources, but I personally think that the main problem is your expectations.
But let's start with the sources. Of course you should first of all try to find easy, clearly spoken sources, but in the beginning it is also important that you can listen several times - so streaming media are out unless you can record them. The next consideration is the amount of speech you can deal with in one session. We all agree that lots of inpout is essential, but if you just start listening to some radiostation or whatever in a language you don't understand then it is like trying to jumping into a train thundering ahead at full velocity through the landscape. It can't be done, you have to wait until it stops somewhere and then you can enter. Later on you can then enjoy the ride from the inside of the train. I mentioned the expectation problem. Normally you listen for the meaning straight away. And yes, if you are standing in a market place in some exotic place and have to negotatiate a price for your tomatoes then you need to concentrate on the meaning. But now you are sitting at home studying, and you try to get a foothold in an unending stream of speech sounds, and then your first concern should be to check that you can hear syllables and words and phrases at all. I call this 'listening like a bloodhound' becaue it reminds me of a dog following a trail with its snout close to the earth and totally oblivious to everything around it. So forget about the meaning and try to hear the speech as something like a stream of words. Parse it. If you know some of the words then their meanings will pop up into your mind quite automatically, and this leads naturally to the next stage: listening for isolated words and expressions. If you hear something you don't understand then trying frantically to remember or guess the meaning will derail you for several seconds, and then you can't listen. So accept the situation and listen for those words and expressions you DO know - even if they don't add up to a complete meaningful statement. Maybe they will do so after a few repeats, but in the beginning you can't expect that unless you have found something extremely simple to listen to. Or something you already know well. And that leads to the third advice: if you can find something with a transcript to listen to, then maybe you can study the transcript and look up unknown words and expressions, and you can also check your understanding of the grammatical structure. And then it is time to listen. A parallel technique is getting a translation. Subtitles on TV barely suffice because they are shortened translations and mostly quite far from the original, but they are better than nothing - with one caveat: it is better to have read them before you listen. If you are reading the text for the first time while trying to listen to the speech then the two activities will compete, and then you can't listen efficiently. Which is one good reason for using recorded content with subtitles or full transcripts instead of streaming media. I can't advice you on how to deal with listening to living humans who stand in front of you and who don't have that essential stop and repeat button. We all have our weaknesses, and there are people who are much better than me to learn from free conversations or courses. I just know which techniques I have profited most from when faced with a new language or dialect which I can't understand in its spoken version. Edited by Iversen on 27 June 2013 at 2:56pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4637 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 22 of 22 27 June 2013 at 2:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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On the point about streaming audio, with luck, one should be able to record this using the free Audacity package.
I have used this successfully for this purpose on Windows XP. I've seen references to this being more difficult in Windows 7, but I haven't tried it on W7 (or W8). using Audacity to record streaming output This may also possibly be helpful: recording computer audio mixer toolbar issues 1 person has voted this message useful |
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