Concurrent reading and listening

[Finny]

On the larger issues of this discussion, I am philosophically in the camp that most language acquisition research is well over a hundred years behind the sciences in terms of being good science. So, while I can be interested in the questions that are being considered, I don't find the studies of those questions very convincing. I tend to prefer the thick descriptions people give of their approaches, successes and failures here and on the old forum, especially when they are written up as clearly subjective.

And, while the brain is a fascinating thing, I believe that it's still very early days in knowing how it actually works - especially in relation to such complex tasks as learning a language that take place over years and not in labs. I probably won't be convinced that anything substantial can be known about the brain and language acquisition until people can wear MRI machines 24/7 and the data be tracked and stored and better models of language have been devised - but that seems a way off to me.

My wife often says that science is the new religion, and I agree with her. It's so easy to think we know so much more than we do because of the human tendency to apply quantitative reasoning to a qualitative world.

[Cainntear]

On the larger issues of this discussion, I am philosophically in the camp that most language acquisition research is well over a hundred years behind the sciences in terms of being good science. So, while I can be interested in the questions that are being considered, I don't find the studies of those questions very convincing. I tend to prefer the thick descriptions people give of their approaches, successes and failures here and on the old forum, especially when they are written up as clearly subjective.

And, while the brain is a fascinating thing, I believe that it's still very early days in knowing how it actually works - especially in relation to such complex tasks as learning a language that take place over years and not in labs. I probably won't be convinced that anything substantial can be known about the brain and language acquisition until people can wear MRI machines 24/7 and the data be tracked and stored and better models of language have been devised - but that seems a way off to me.

My wife often says that science is the new religion, and I agree with her. It's so easy to think we know so much more than we do because of the human tendency to apply quantitative reasoning to a qualitative world.

Actually, I think that the pendulum has swung too far the other way, and that the so-socalled social sciences tend to rely on qualitative studies over quantitative, which means that the vast majority of papers I read about teaching last year were little more than opinion, conjecture and selective quoting from surveys and interviews rather than anything verifiiable or repeatable.

The paper I referred to included "some hard evidence" as the second part of its title, basically because most discussion of extensive listening is qualitative.

There is a place for both, obviously. Qualitative studies attempt to find reasons for certain phenomena, but unless you do a quantitative study that proves the phenomenon exists in the first place, your work is of very limited value. And then your qualitative observation needs to be formalised and you have to quantitatively assess the validity and usefulness of it.

[Voytek]

What do you think about curbing almost all your input to reading only and listening only 10-15 min. a day? Of course, after mastering the ortographic and phonetic systems. There`re plenty of languages which have logical systems (one letter = one sound). Besides, when you have mastered the language sufficiently you can use concurrent reading and listening to make connection between the writing and the sounds stronger.

[reineke]

What do you think about curbing almost all your input to reading only and listening only 10-15 min. a day? Of course, after mastering the ortographic and phonetic systems. There`re plenty of languages which have logical systems (one letter = one sound). Besides, when you have mastered the language sufficiently you can use concurrent reading and listening to make connection between the writing and the sounds stronger.

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.

And here I thought, what a great title! Let's find some balanced strategies!

When can you say that you've mastered the pronunciation? I "tink" that 1 letter 1 sound is great but did you really master the sound? Is that letter going to interfere with your representation of the native sound? What about prosody and spoken discourse? Would you perform well in unplanned speech? Ironically, an "easy" orthographic system is also easy to ignore and an easy phonological system makes learning by ear easier.

[Xmmm]

What do you think about curbing almost all your input to reading only and listening only 10-15 min. a day? Of course, after mastering the ortographic and phonetic systems. There`re plenty of languages which have logical systems (one letter = one sound). Besides, when you have mastered the language sufficiently you can use concurrent reading and listening to make connection between the writing and the sounds stronger.

I tackled Russian this way, with a huge skew toward reading over listening. It made sense to me.

Over the last year and a half I've listening to no more than 15 minutes a day on average of Russian, but read maybe six times as much. As a result, I can read silently pretty well. But, my listening comprehension is not great, and I would be afraid to read out loud as I would likely mispronounce many things.

For 2017, I've made a rule that I can't read in Russian without accompanying audio (via LingQ). I'm also trying to set aside 50% of my time for TV (Ленинград 46, currently).

[Random Review]

If I can put in my two cents on something that came up in the interesting little debate between Serpent and Cainntear, one variable that hasn't been mentioned is what exactly it is you want. This is hard to explain, so let me give a concrete example: reading ahead while doing LR.

Like most people on here, I read a lot in English, which for most of us means we can read soooooo much faster than any audio. This never proved a problem with German (in fact thank God, because the word order can be very different!) because what my brain wanted was actually German* and so getting most of my attention (even if that is just by "time slicing" @Cainntear) was effortless. Doing that kind of thing did indeed take a lot of effort with Spanish, IMO because what my brain wanted was the fruits of speaking and understanding Spanish, not Spanish per se.

* Because I'm in love with the language.

Perhaps that's why LR works best of all with great literature originally in the TL and translated into a language you know well (this is something the OP on HTLAL really insisted was important too IIRC), as opposed to solid-but-not-outstanding fiction written in English and translated into the TL (though it can still work that way too, as I know from reading the Harry Potter books): paying attention to the exact expression in the TL has real intrinsic value to your brain, as even the best translations inevitably lose some of the more subtle layers of meaning.

On a personal note. I've been trying a bit of limited (due to constraints in time and material- I only have the jw.org stuff at the moment, which I personally find unpleasant reading*) LR with Mandarin and am actually glad of the ability to rapidly read back and forth around the audio for making sense of what is being said in a language I don't understand very well. If I ever reach the stage where reading ahead becomes more of a problem than a help, I will switch to reading in Spanish (where my reading speed is roughly the same as the speed of an audiobook).

* I shouldn't be so ungrateful for an incredible resource, but (to take one of the worst examples) it is a bit off-putting to see them narrate that one Bible character raped another Bible character and then explain to the children reading that this was wrong because they weren't married.

[IronMike]

For 2017, I've made a rule that I can't read in Russian without accompanying audio (via LingQ). I'm also trying to set aside 50% of my time for TV (Ленинград 46, currently).

How are you watching Leningrad 46? What source?

[Xmmm]

For 2017, I've made a rule that I can't read in Russian without accompanying audio (via LingQ). I'm also trying to set aside 50% of my time for TV (Ленинград 46, currently).

How are you watching Leningrad 46? What source?

It's on youtube at the moment. Complete episodes. I don't know why. I binge-watched fifteen of them last weekend and I'm shooting for maybe another five to seven this weekend.

[Voytek]

What do you think about curbing almost all your input to reading only and listening only 10-15 min. a day? Of course, after mastering the ortographic and phonetic systems. There`re plenty of languages which have logical systems (one letter = one sound). Besides, when you have mastered the language sufficiently you can use concurrent reading and listening to make connection between the writing and the sounds stronger.

I tackled Russian this way, with a huge skew toward reading over listening. It made sense to me.

Over the last year and a half I've listening to no more than 15 minutes a day on average of Russian, but read maybe six times as much. As a result, I can read silently pretty well. But, my listening comprehension is not great, and I would be afraid to read out loud as I would likely mispronounce many things.

For 2017, I've made a rule that I can't read in Russian without accompanying audio (via LingQ). I'm also trying to set aside 50% of my time for TV (Ленинград 46, currently).

To solve this problem you could give a try and use the method I use to improve my English pronunciation. It`s a classical one. Just read and listen simultaneously. You can find free resources here:
https://librivox.org/search?primary_key=54&search_category=language&search_page=1&search_form=get_results

And if you want to learn the Russian prosody you can try the method I`m using to imrove the Swedish one:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/51074116/Kjellin-Practise-Pronunciation-w-Audacity.pdf

I`ve been using it for 7 hours now so I can`t tell you if it works for sure but I guess the author wouldn`t bother if it didn`t.


But if you find these Russian materials too obsolete or too hard, you can listent to the Harry Potter`s series in this language:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=harry+potter+audiobook+russian+

You can find the e-books for this series on the Internet and if you have a problem with it, just PM and I`ll help you to find it.

[Monox D. I-Fly]

About concurrent reading and listening, I do it with Anime Lyrics. I read the Kanji lyrics while listening to their respective songs and skipping any Kanji I haven't mastered yet. If by some chance I can read all Kanji in a song, the next step is to compare the original lyrics with the English translations. If the English translations haven't been provided yet, I guess-estimate what would be the meaning, and when it comes to a dead-end, I request the English translation in the forum.