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Improving listening | ||
Tags: Listening | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4707 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 9 of 15 08 September 2013 at 1:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with Iguanamon's suggestions, except that I always listen without the transcript first, just to see what I can catch. After all, listening is the skill you're trying to develop with these resources.
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| showtime17 Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Slovakia gainweightjournal.co Joined 5882 days ago 154 posts - 210 votes Speaks: Russian, English*, Czech*, Slovak*, French, Spanish Studies: Ukrainian, Polish, Dutch | Message 10 of 15 09 September 2013 at 10:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well what helps is to get some sort of a video, maybe of some series or a movie, and listen to it several times. The best is if it has subtitles. Listen to it first without subtitles, then with subtitles and a third time again without. The third time you are listening, you should already understand a lot more. Go again over the parts you don't understand. If you could get your hands on a transcript, then that would be really great!
For example for Spanish, you can start with Destinos. That is a program designed for people learning Spanish. Then move onto to some other series or movies. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| shapd Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5947 days ago 126 posts - 208 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Italian, Spanish, Latin, Modern Hebrew, French, Russian | Message 11 of 15 11 September 2013 at 5:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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Albalearning.com has many audio short stories with transcripts in both Spanish and English. The recording is very clear if a bit pedantic.
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| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4807 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 12 of 15 12 September 2013 at 10:53am | IP Logged | ||
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TV series.
I began Erase una Vez (Once Upon a Time) when my listening comprehension was around A2. In one season, I got to a level at which I can comfortably understand 97% or so of what is being said. Of course there is still a long way to go, for example Pillars of Earth in Spanish were noticeably harder and there is much more left to explore. At first, get even the English subtitles but try to change to the Spanish ones soon. ANd than make the leap and turn them off. Of course you will feel you don't understand much. But if you keep watching, immersion will do the magic. As you mentioned Breaking Bad, you are obviously on a good way. Pick things you enjoy and don't be afraid. Watch things repeatedly if you feel the need (and want to) but just the amount of time will be awesome for you. After all, any TV series has got limited amount of speakers, some main topics of conversation and so on. You'll get used to it and once you are comfortable with one tv series, you will have much easier time with anything else. If you need more success stories, check out emk's log. His Buffy the Vampire Slayer in French was an important jump in his abilities. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5005 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 13 of 15 12 September 2013 at 12:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree about the films or TV series with Spanish subtitles or transcripts, so you can read and hear at the same time. That's been the most helpful thing for me developing listening comprehension. A few years ago I watched a bunch of French Simpsons episodes and followed the transcripts, and it really helped my listening go from bad to decent. And yes, Emk did quite the same thing with Buffy, which I'd say is an even better choice for French as it uses more current language and more normal voices (I've no suggestions for Spanish, sorry!). For Italian, watching drama/comedy films with subtitles has helped me a lot, although knowing French had already given me a huge head-start.
Audio books can be similar, but I prefer films and TV as the language is more conversational rather than literary, although of course that depends on the book. If they're too hard, there must be some news podcasts with transcripts out there. I've found that, there's a "hierarchy" of listening difficulty, something like: learner material < news < audiobooks < interviews < real conversations in a quiet environment < dubbed TV/films < native TV/films < real conversations in a noisy environment. But that's a big generalisation of course, and there are definitely easy films and hard films. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4626 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 14 of 15 12 September 2013 at 1:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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@Garyb, I think you are probably right about audiobooks (though I still like them a
lot), and that's why a good addition can be podcasts, which can be as conversational as you like if you look for them. Films and TV (at least without subtitles) actually demand more of the learner, and at least for native TV/film, are actually more suited to the advanced learner / expert, IMHO. i.e. that's the prize awaiting you, once you've "arrived" at your destination after an arduous journey. And for the less advanced learner, IMHO, they offer less bang-for-buck in terms of vocabulary word-count than purely audio-based approaches. True they offer visual clues, but these can equally well be distractions. Plus the annoying habit of actors not speaking clearly, which is why I think they are better for very advanced, rather than beginner or intermediate learners. If you just want to switch on the subtitles, sit back and enjoy them, though, fine. Not sure if it will improve listening ability though. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Heliion Newbie United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4114 days ago 25 posts - 32 votes Studies: English*, Spanish | Message 15 of 15 24 September 2013 at 8:14pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm currently using these as my primary learning resource. It took me a couple of months for the beginners podcasts to make sense since I was a beginner, I remember listening to the first episode expecting to hear how to say hola adios etc, instead I got a barrage (or what seemed like a barrage for my inexperienced ears) of rapid fire Spanish and I immediate knew I wasn't ready for even that level. Anyway, I bought the transcripts and picked through each episode, as my vocab improved I was starting to understand more and more of each new episode until I could pretty much understand most of what was said upon first listen. I will say that it took MANY repeated listens of some of those earlier episodes to get to a point where I could understand most of what was being said. I've now jumped into the intermediate podcasts despite not being at that level yet, again, I have purchased the transcripts and I have to admit to being very discouraged the first time I tried to listen to episode one, I felt like a novice all over again (which I am). It was tempting to jack it all in since I'd exhausted the beginners podcasts, I wasn't sure where to go from there. However, I tried a few more and after a while, upon repeated listening some of them were making more and more sense to me, the free trial transcript for the Mafia episode really encouraged me to buy the rest as after picking through it for over an hour I listened to the audio again and it was sooooo easy to understand the entire thing from start to finish. I've since realised that this trial episode is actually spoken at a much slower rate than the rest seem to be with less new vocabulary to me, which I guess is their way of easing you in, allowing you to see that you can do it and encourage you to purchase the rest I guess. Anyway it worked and I got sucked in haha. Most of the other episodes are quite difficult for my level, although there was one in particular that I managed to get most of after listening about 20 times before I had the transcripts available to me. First of all I listen to each new episode then I work through the transcript picking out words and phrases that are new to me, once I've done that and I feel I can read through it (albeit painfully slowly) with a good degree of comprehension, I then start listening over and over so the speech patterns get into my head. I'm now on episode 7 and the biggest problem I find is that despite understanding previous episodes rather well after working through the transcript, as soon as I listen to a new episode for the first time it's like I don't understand much at all again, but it's amazing how much you DO know after you read what was said, it's like "oh right, how did I miss that when I listened to it?" Then once you know exactly what was said, you can fairly comfortably pick out the words as they're said. All that said, the native speaker (Marina) still speaks way too fast for me, even though she has slowed down for the level! The native English speaker pronounces every syllable of every word clearly (which is something foreigners tend to do) and it's easy to understand him, however trying to comprehend Marina is still something of a nightmare, especially when she gets a little bit excited... The words come at you like morse code haha. I'm hoping that it'll just get easier the more I listen as I improve. There are times when I still don't think I'll ever get what she's saying, but I think it's more a case of the words and patterns not being automatic in my brain yet and the accelerated speech isn't allowing me the time to translate. I think I had the same feeling with the beginner podcasts and I eventually understood those quite comfortably so it'll work out eventually I think. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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