Reading or listening? Which is more efficient?

[AlexTG]

A question: It is weird. While I prefer my input separate, I absolutely cannot stand audio only courses, like Pimsleur. I've tried a few times and failed miserably every single time. I was having problem with focus, perhaps similarily to Arthaey (who has just reminded me of this issue), my retention was low, my comprehension of what exactly they were saying wasn't stellar either. Any ideas what to do about that? Do I need to continue ignoring Pimsleur (no matter the fact I believe it is a good start in a language) or is there any kind of solution? Are there transcripts?

I've found I can use audio only courses without my mind wandering if I have something active to focus my eyes on. I did a bunch of lessons of Hindi Pimsleur in December while watching the cricket and it worked well and during the recent Ashes series I listened to JapanesePod101 and "Deutsch Warum Nicht". Actually, my mind did wander, but from the cricket, a wicket would be taken and I'd suddenly realise I had no idea who was bowling .

While I prefer my input separate

I also prefer my input to be separate. A few years ago I always felt guilty because course instructions and forum posts constantly made me feel like I should be reading and listening at the same time. "Assimil is useless without audio" one person would say, "You'll develop bad pronunciation if you only read" another would chime in, "Shadow it!", "L/R!", "Take full advantage of the course!". But I get to the end of reading an Assimil lesson and say "Phew, that was nice, I feel so relaxed... hey let's do some more learning!". I get to the end of a session of simultaneous listening/reading and I am completely drained of energy, couldn't possibly do anything more.

These days I look at a course book and think "Hey let's spend a few minutes reading a lesson, that'll be fun", I used to look at them and think "Oh god, I should really be studying, erg but it'll be so much effort, ahhh, maybe later when I've got a bit more energy to deal with it".

[AlexTG]

And about cricket, this is probably the only activity that I do in English regularly. I usually either watch or if radio, TMS on BBC. I find the audio only by the radio more difficult than just reading on ESPN, but after the pasting of the 5th Test the audio was all I needed to imagine how badly we got beaten.

This is one of the big reasons I want to learn Hindi, it feels like such a waste of time listening to English commentary when I could be practising a language. I have the same problem with Aussie Rules and Netball, but there's no language that'll save me there .

[Cavesa]

For Assimil, I found it ok to both listen and read once or twice together, the lessons are short enough and it is new material anyways, my reading hasn't had time to surpass my listening yet. And I enjoy listening alone afterwards, having read the dialogue. That works. Just reading works too, once I've got the pronunciation done other ways and I can therefore separate the audio and book part, whenever it is practical.

But with Pimsleur, I am just lost. I tried various activities while "pimsleuring" and everything (including cleaning the cupboards) was easily destroying my focus. I felt unsafe all the time. "Did they say this or that?" Like when you are trying to sing along with a song and don't know the lyrics. (Btw, have you already seen the misheard lyrics of O Fortuna on youtube? It's hilarious and it illustrates my Pimsleur problem) And my retention was extremely low. Not only active recall. It was like this: http://memegenerator.net/instance/26542231

I don't think the problem is the visualisation during speaking. I just need to know what I am supposed to say right from the beginning. Not to guess. I wonder whether there is any way around it for me.

[chobbs]

I feel like any of the learning type/preference stuff just gets tossed out the window for me with language learning. Normally I have very high auditory learning capability, but languages seem to be the exception. Pretty much nothing sticks when I am just listening to material. I find it very strange and a bit uncomfortable as I have relied so heavily on it thus far in my life.

With French, I tried both Pimsleur and Michel Thomas programs and found that neither gave me any proficiency at all. I could do the lessons with great recall, but if I ever skipped to a section out of order I would draw a blank during prompts. My memory is quite good, yet for this endeavour it kept biting me in the ass as I would just end up memorizing rather than truly internalizing.

With just pure listening, for example podcasts, I found that not only was comprehension much lower, but that it wasn't helping me recognize any words I didn't already know - let alone learn any new ones (with the exception of certain English cognates I suppose).

It may be that, once I get a language to a high intermediate level, things will change for me. However, at least at the lower levels, I need to have text to make headway.

[Serpent]

Sounds perfectly normal to me Have you tried Assimil or Teach Yourself? Unfortunately there's less variety in audio courses They're often more chaotic.
Consider using video as well, like maybe cartoons or series. French in Action sounds like a great resource btw.

[chobbs]

Sounds perfectly normal to me Have you tried Assimil or Teach Yourself? Unfortunately there's less variety in audio courses They're often more chaotic.
Consider using video as well, like maybe cartoons or series. French in Action sounds like a great resource btw.

Glad it sounds normal, as a beginner it totally surprised me as I expected learning style carry-over.

I did try Assimil, and I made much more progress with that than the others. Didn't complete a full active wave, but as my goal had always revolved around passive media consumption I was inclined to put more time into new content anyway especially since the meaning of the dialogs was memorized and I can never tell if it is just my memory helping me out or if I actually understand.

[smallwhite]

Of course that's not my real answer.

French philosopher Joseph Joubert said: “It is better to debate a question without settling it, than to settle a question without debating it.”

Depends on who you debate with. The debates I get here are overly unscientific. Oftentimes they could be more scientific (eg. stating rough figures) but I rarely see people bother (or manage). People can't compare apples to apples properly. Or hold other things constant. Or other scientific stuff like that. Can't even stay on topic; when you talk about apples, they just have to talk about oranges. And they don't know what efficiency means. Yet they just have to debate with you.

My posts are destructive anyway, and need disclaimers on my part or qualifications on Serpent's part. It's hard to write with such self-censorship and fear of censorship in mind.

So, why bother?

[chobbs]

So, why bother?

Because seeing multiple perspectives helps those of us without so many languages successfully navigated, and to a lesser extent, I am sure it helps even experienced learners from time to time.

[Cavesa]

Of course that's not my real answer.

French philosopher Joseph Joubert said: “It is better to debate a question without settling it, than to settle a question without debating it.”

Depends on who you debate with. The debates I get here are overly unscientific. Oftentimes they could be more scientific (eg. stating rough figures) but I rarely see people bother (or manage). People can't compare apples to apples properly. Or hold other things constant. Or other scientific stuff like that. Can't even stay on topic; when you talk about apples, they just have to talk about oranges. And they don't know what efficiency means. Yet they just have to debate with you.

My posts are destructive anyway, and need disclaimers on my part or qualifications on Serpent's part. It's hard to write with such self-censorship and fear of censorship in mind.

So, why bother?

I can understand your dislike towards the fact most people here have different goals on the forums that yours, such as scientific debate, even though I do not share it. The truth is that if I wanted to read a "scientific" paper on language learning, I would do so. They are quite easily available and I've read a few. But I found them far too useless for application to my own learning. Vast majority of language related research is being done under conditions and on sample totally irrelevant to me. And members of this forum are usually not linguists, we are comparing personal experience. Our sample tends to be one person, ourselves. Our progress and the experiments are not driven by need for relevant data and rough figures, the goal is our own progress. And it works.

How would you measure efficiency of listening or reading or both after all? There is no way to measure it. The approach that allows us to progress the best and the fastest towards our goals is usually considered the most efficient around here, is that a wrong definition? It's just that our goals and many other variables are not the same, therefore we cannot establish a common scale. It is as well impossible to quantify the progress, this is not vocab srsing

I agree it is sometimes hard to stay on topic and it would be sometimes useful to try harder (sometimes, the discussion drifts naturally away and I've been guilty of participating in this process many times, when something caught my attention. In other instances, there are members who tend to react to an OP like "your question is wrong, you should have asked this instead and I think that about the matter. That is unfortunately not rare), the rest of our style of discussions suits my needs and curiosity perfectly.

Really, why should we try scientific approaches here? Actually the failure of our school systems to teach langauges well is a result of "teaching science" application.

But why do you need so much need for self-censorship? I've found your posts to be extremely interesting and inspirative in past and I thank you for those. You are a very valuable part of this community, and a great example of variety of approaches here. Please, don't feel so discouraged by us, fruit mixers, who cannot stay content with apples

[galaxyrocker]

Really, why should we try scientific approaches here? Actually the failure of our school systems to teach langauges well is a result of "teaching science" application.

At the risk of getting off topic, I disagree with this. It's commonly accepted here in America that most language classes, especially high school ones, aren't using the most commonly accepted methods according to linguists.