Concurrent reading and listening

[Voytek]

Is this more effctive for you than just listening or reading?

Personally, I find it a bit distracting because many times I encouner sentences where I must stop to read it slower to fully comprehend it or at least understand it a bit better than without doing this.

[Tomás]

I have tried this. It's similar to having subtitles turned on while watching a movie or tv show. For me, I can always read much better than I can listen, and so reading takes over. I am committed now to separating R practice from L practice, because for me the L suffers when I do L-R.

[sillygoose1]

I find it's most effective when a) I need to learn how to pronounce diphthongs and other odd clusters, b) doing it extensively - that is, not focusing on understanding every sentence but rather just getting the rhythm in my head, c) when the language isn't really pronounced how it's written. With that said, the last point for me is especially important and it shows because I did a lot of French L/R, plan on doing it for Russian, but didn't do any for Italian or Spanish and only a little in German because I was low on listening materials.

At later stages, I do find it is kind of hindering however as I'd rather just read whatever I want without worrying about the accompanying audiobook or watch whatever I want. Once you know the pronunciation and feel comfortable reading, I would personally stop there. But L/R is great for up until that point.

[NoManches]

I don't like reading and listening at the same time. A year ago I watched about 70 episodes of a TV show in my L2 with subtitles. Before I began my listening was pretty bad, but towards the end I had definitely made some progreses. Being able to hear a word spoken and see it written on the screen in the form of subtitles really does allow you to make connections between the spoken and written word. Often times at a lower level you will come across a word that you understand on paper, but when you hear it you don't understand it. When you listen while reading subtitles you definitely begin to make sense of some of those hard to understand words.

But, I only think this helps up to a certain point. After a while you definitely reach a point where you rely too much on reading and you stop forcing yourself to listen. This probably happens from day 1 but if your comprehension is really bad you probably benefit from reading/listening even though it is not efficient. At my current level, I don't watch TV with subtitles....I force myself to listen. If I do some intensive work I will watch a show and only look at subtitles to see what things I missed, but I never rely on them to understand the show.

In the past I tried listening to an audio book while reading along. It wasn't for me. I feel like at the time when I did it, either my reading or listening was better than the other and reading along with the speaker was just very hard. As a matter of fact, I think I ran into the problem you described where I would have to reread a sentence to make sense of it.


Some people might disagree with me but a conclusion I have come to that at least applies to me is:

If you can't read something on paper, then you will not be able to understand it when the same sentence is spoken.

Keep in mind that this only applies to languages that are written the same way they sound (such as Spanish which I am currently learning), and obviously wouldn't apply to somebody who is illiterate (since many people speak a language fluently but don't know how to read). But for somebody who is learning a language, knows how to read and write and works on those skills, then I think my statement holds true. When we read we have plenty of time to analyze things, look at verb conjugations, reread the sentence, etc. So if you have trouble reading then the listening will probably be even harder.

[Voytek]

I`m using listening and reading now, at very low (but still natual) speed of listening and with a very simple text, to get to know better the mechanics of Swedish (the ortography, syntax and phonetix).

What`s your ratio, guys, for listening and reading input?

Mine is 70:30 (L:R - Spanish) now and I wonder if I should make it opposite.

[NoManches]

I`m using listening and reading now, at very low (but still natual) speed of listening and with a very simple text, to get to know better the mechanics of Swedish (the ortography, syntax and phonetix).

What`s your ratio, guys, for listening and reading input?

Mine is 70:30 (L:R - Spanish) now and I wonder if I should make it opposite.

I would say 70:30 is good. If I could go back in time I would make listening my number 1 priority. I recommend this post as well (it often gets referenced on this site because it is so valuable):

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/fo ... ?TID=26634

I really think listening and reading go hand in hand. Instead of reading and listening at the same time, have you thought about reading and THEN listening (or vice versa)? It seems to me that you have an audio book or some type of audio with a script. Doing both at the same time might be annoying, but doing one followed by the other might be a good way of improving your weaker skill.

Going back to your 70-30 ratio which I said is good: You have to remember that a lot of people think reading is the best way to pick up new vocabulary. For me, I have a really hard time learning new vocabulary through listening (it happens but it is harder for some reason). Depending on your level, maybe your ratio could be closer to 60-40 or even 50-50. I just think a lot of people skip listening and in the end they run into some problems and really suffer to improve it (I'm one of those people ). If you want to better understand and get used to the Swedish language, I would say doing tons and tons of extensive reading would do the trick.

Keep in mind though that I'm not an expert and I only have experience learning one language.

[Voytek]

Yes, it`s a good point to read a text and then listen to the audio because reading helps you to comprehend things better on your own pace and grab some words and than listening cements it.

Personally, I use only audio (without the transcription) which I can understand at least at 90% and if I don`t I pass to another stuff. I think that when you`re listening your TL this way you`ve got a great opportunity to consoilidate what you`ve already learnt, especially when you are able to listen to the radio at this level (90%<), and you do it very fast because in the radio they rather speak faster. I don`t watch movies at all beacuse I consider this as time wasting, there`s much less words per minute than in a radio program or a podcast. Some may say that there`s a visual context in movies which helps but I`ve encountered many times a context which were irrelevant to the sentences, sometimes even it was really confusing.

[Tomás]

I really think listening and reading go hand in hand. Instead of reading and listening at the same time, have you thought about reading and THEN listening (or vice versa)? It seems to me that you have an audio book or some type of audio with a script. Doing both at the same time might be annoying, but doing one followed by the other might be a good way of improving your weaker skill.

I have done this--read a TV show's transcript, and then watched it. You could also read a book, and then later listen to the audio book. I think it's a useful training wheel for developing listening. For me, it was better than simultaneous L-R.

[Cainntear]

Is this more effctive for you than just listening or reading?

Personally, I find it a bit distracting because many times I encouner sentences where I must stop to read it slower to fully comprehend it or at least understand it a bit better than without doing this.

Chang & Millett (2013) found that it had a strong positive effect on students' listening skill. However, their study meant doing more listening alongside reading in time that would usually be spent doing reading alone, and they didn't note whether this had had any effect on their reading competence.
(Chang, A.C and Millett, S. (2013) The effect of extensive listening on developing L2 listening fluency: some hard evidence. ELT Journal.)

I personally feel it's a useful technique, but one I don't have a habit of using. It draws my attention to things I might not otherwise have noticing in the spoken audio, helping my notice them next time.

[NoManches]

I really think listening and reading go hand in hand. Instead of reading and listening at the same time, have you thought about reading and THEN listening (or vice versa)? It seems to me that you have an audio book or some type of audio with a script. Doing both at the same time might be annoying, but doing one followed by the other might be a good way of improving your weaker skill.

I have done this--read a TV show's transcript, and then watched it. You could also read a book, and then later listen to the audio book. I think it's a useful training wheel for developing listening. For me, it was better than simultaneous L-R.

I've thought about doing this with movies (maybe not the whole script but skimming through it looking for a few dozen unknown words). Unfortunately I can't find subtitles for any of my favorite shows in Spanish.

I will start reading a book today that I have been running to (I have the audio version as well). It is a really easy book so it should count as extensive reading while making the audio a bit easier to understand

Thanks for the idea!