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Intensive study of podcasts/news shows | ||
Tags: Podcast | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5189 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 1 of 7 11 October 2013 at 7:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks to my new iPhone I've been listening to a lot of native podcasts, particularly
Radio France (one that I like in particular being Le téléphone sonne which is a call-in show based on a different topic each day since you get all sorts of perspectives, regional accents, and less "polished" speech from the "common" people). While in France I also watched a lot of the news discussion programs from the more casual talk show ones to more elevated Meet the Press style shows. While simply sitting back and listening to these shows is beneficial as exposure, it seems in order to "level up" and to be able to succeed in the DALF exam I ought to incorporate more active exercises from time to time. Any ideas for what I should be doing? A simple low-level activity, of course, could be just noting down any new vocabulary I happen to notice. What about taking notes and then summarizing different view points and arguments the speakers made? Attempt to write a résumé or a sythèse of several shows on the same topic? Prepare my own little presentations or arguments to use in debate? It'd be nice to have a range of intensity for exercises as it's easier to commit to low and medium intensity exercises than more intensive ones (which, honestly, may just not get done despite my best intentions). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4242 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 2 of 7 22 October 2013 at 7:46am | IP Logged | ||
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Watching programs on TV with subtitles I can be making note of new vocabularies and look up in a dictionary or
phrase book. Besides DVD with subtitles, TV can be setup with close caption for the hearing impaired. CC is a feature similar to subtitles except the terminology refers to the dialog on TV and the text is in the same language. Otherwise you are watching a program in 1 language and reading the text in another such as a French movie like "Indochine" or "Le Cage aux Folles" where the dialog is in French and the subtitle is in English. With videos if something was said too quickly at least you can backup the recording. With a radio discussion if it is prerecorded you can backup as well. But without the aid of the text, you normally rely on keywords in the sentence to get the correct context and fill in some of the words you are not too familiar in between. A radio phone-in or discussion is especially helpful for learning language since there is dialog between 2 or more people and a lot of the words & phrases are the ones people use everyday. Edited by shk00design on 22 October 2013 at 7:48am 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 3 of 7 22 October 2013 at 12:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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You could simply attempt to shadow. Without text and especially for the spontaneous
speech, it's likely to be harder, but, e.g. if you are prepared to listen to the same podcast more than once, you'd get to know it and that would help. It probably won't help you to understand, any more than simply listening would do, but it would force you to keep focused and not lose concentration. Probably tiring at first, so try in small bursts until you can build up your "stamina". 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5060 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 4 of 7 22 October 2013 at 2:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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The ideal situation is to find a podcast, televison show or any piece of audio and work with a native-speaker who has listened to it as well. I write notes and talk about what I've seen/heard by giving a review. That's what I do with my Portuguese tutor to refine my Portuguese. Obviously, I know that most people can't afford that option.
As a free option, on my own time when I was working intensively with listening, I would find audio with a transcript. I'd listen first and take notes. If I found a difficult stretch I'd note the time and listen until I could figure it out. I'd then go over the transcript to check out my comprehension. If I needed to, I'd go back over the audio again and again until I got it right. At the same time I'd be reading native material, dialog heavy contemporary books, graphic novels, newspapers, blogs and sooner or later, most often sooner, there would be that word or phrase again. I don't have any French specific links to give you, others will do that, and there's always searching on HTLAL. Audio podcasts with transcripts are available. For a podcast without a transcript it's more difficult but still doable. For example, I used to work with Spanish telenovelas and then read the short recaps as a way to gauge my comprehension. DLI's GLOSS French is a good source of online exercises for listening, and reading as well. Edited by iguanamon on 23 October 2013 at 7:27pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ramblurr Newbie United States binaryelysium.com Joined 4138 days ago 30 posts - 34 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Egyptian), German | Message 5 of 7 23 October 2013 at 10:15am | IP Logged | ||
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I often use Audacity to cut out sentences/phrases from podcasts and add them as cards
to Anki (audio on front, nothing on back). Though, if you're looking to engage on a level beyond mere comprehension, this might not be so useful. An spin on this that I do when I want to practice writing is to transcribe a portion of the audio, then get it corrected by a helper, then enter the audio and text in Anki as a card. It can be tedious if the subject matter isn't interesting. I like the idea of writing a summary of various viewpoints or episodes in your own words. That sort of synthesis seems like it would be useful. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| twopossums Newbie United States Joined 4155 days ago 34 posts - 53 votes Speaks: English* | Message 6 of 7 27 October 2013 at 1:28am | IP Logged | ||
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There is a podcast called French Bienvenue. It is conversation interviews with regular people and a
transcript is provided. You could start with that maybe. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Retinend Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4106 days ago 283 posts - 557 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), French | Message 7 of 7 27 October 2013 at 9:30am | IP Logged | ||
It wouldn't help you understand better than regular listening. However shadowing helps to internalize content that you already understand. If you don't know what all the phrases mean, you ought to have a translation to hand. If not, then you should have a good 90% comprehension. Puzzling out what the meaning is is only the first part - then you must repeat the shadowing, write it out and re-read until it's "pushed inside your memory" as Arguelles says. For example, for a 20min podcast you might shadow it 20 times through, then you write it out once in neat handwriting and you re-read that piece of writing maybe another 5 or 10 times. But you could do half the work or twice the work outlined here. It just depends how long you can stay interested in the one audio/text. Put another way, shadowing is a program of study of a single text. So it's appropriate for people like the OP who say "I want to study this one chunk of the language, but I don't know the best way to go about it systemically." When you include the writing part of the shadowing technique, the task becomes as deep as you want it to be; for example I personally add extra detail about case, gender, and verbs using highlighterpens as a part of my shadowing regime. This highlighting task adds about 15mins of valuable language practice per page. It forces me to think about that one aspect I'm highlighting, but it's all in the context of a text I'm learning globally (i.e. the overall flow of the sentence structures). Shadowing is all about looting the text for as much information as possible. You may think you've finished, but have are you sure you know all the plural endings? or all of the verb-preposition collocations? or all of the noun genders? But you can also move on more quickly and trust that you'll learn all these things in the fullness of time. It's a versatile technique (not that I need to convince you of its effectiveness, montmorency, I'm writing for the sake of anyone not already convinced). Podcasts would be better than the audiobooks which I'm using now for German because I'm using literary material and I know that a whole tonne of colloquial language is missing from my "Wörterschatz." Does anyone know any German podcast resources which have colloquial language WITH a transcript available? Would be most greatly appreciated. edited for clarity Edited by Retinend on 27 October 2013 at 9:43am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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