Improving my listening skills

General discussion about learning languages
EU23
White Belt
Posts: 22
Joined: Sun May 29, 2016 5:30 pm
x 44

Improving my listening skills

Postby EU23 » Fri May 26, 2017 11:01 am

Can anyone please give me some helpful advice/tips in regard to improving my listening skills?
The words I hear don't match the ones which are written down.
0 x

User avatar
Ezy Ryder
Orange Belt
Posts: 146
Joined: Tue Aug 25, 2015 8:22 am
Languages: PL (rusting Native)
EN (Advanced)
中文 (Lower Intermediate)
日本語 (Beginner, not studying)
台語 (Dabbling)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=1164
x 214
Contact:

Re: Improving my listening skills

Postby Ezy Ryder » Fri May 26, 2017 11:17 am

I could see at least three possible causes (in your case, it might be none, or might even be more than one, I have no idea. Perhaps you could consider providing some more context, like what languages you speak and are learning, your levels, and perhaps some actual example cases of your problem):
1. You're having problems distinguishing all the phonemes and/or allophones. Just practise transcribing recordings (of words or sentences).
2. (The best contender, I would guess) you haven't learnt yet how to apply the phonological model of the language/dialect onto its phonetic representation. What I found to be of tremendous help (I think I read about it in a thread here, I'll look it up later), is to get a difficult recording into something like Audacity, and listen to individual utterances on a loop until you're comfortably hearing what you see in the transcript/captions. It's very laborious, at the beginning, getting through 30 seconds of 240 WPM audio this way would take me like 90 minutes IIRC, so don't think you'll get through an entire podcast on your first day. And if you can, consider looking for something more challenging.
3. You haven't established the connections between the aural symbol (i.e., the string of phonemes) and the referrent (i.e., the "meaning") well enough. If you focus predominantly on the written language, you may not develop equal recall ability in the spoken language. I guess our memory is just contextual this way.
4 x
阿波
: 1250 / 1000010k SRS Challenge :
: 3750 / 48084,808 漢字 (handwriting) :

User avatar
iguanamon
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2354
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 11:14 am
Location: Virgin Islands
Languages: Speaks: English (Native); Spanish (C2); Portuguese (C2); Haitian Creole (C1); Ladino/Djudeo-espanyol (C1); Lesser Antilles French Creole (B2)
Studies: Catalan
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=797
x 14196

Re: Improving my listening skills

Postby iguanamon » Fri May 26, 2017 11:19 am

The problem many learners have with listening is that they don't do enough of it. Reading is easier to do relative to listening and so, listening tends to get short shrift as a result. Also,expectations play into this. Because a learner can read relatively easily, they often think that listening should be easy as well and are often shocked to find that it isn't. Frustration sets in which leads to less listening because it's "hard". The expectation is often that it shouldn't take much time to get good at listening. It can take a long time, perhaps months. Once a decision is made to train listening and expectations are dialed down, it tends to go well.

Regular, consistent, daily listening is the key. From what you've said about the words you hear not matching what you read, you need to listen more and listen with a transcript. Devote at least 15 minutes a day to it with an aim toward weaning yourself off of the transcript. I've outlined the process here in more detail.
11 x

User avatar
tastyonions
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1579
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 5:39 pm
Location: Dallas, TX
Languages: EN (N), FR, ES, DE, IT, PT, NL, EL
x 3882

Re: Improving my listening skills

Postby tastyonions » Fri May 26, 2017 12:06 pm

There's also another possibility to consider: the transcript or subtitles don't match exactly what is being said.

I find that subtitles are especially "guilty" of this.
6 x

User avatar
Voytek
Green Belt
Posts: 407
Joined: Fri May 13, 2016 3:36 pm
Location: Chiang Rai (Thailand)
Languages: polski (N)
English(C2)
español(C2)
svenska (C1)
日本語 (A1)
ภาษาไทย (dabbling)
x 346

Re: Improving my listening skills

Postby Voytek » Fri May 26, 2017 7:17 pm

You can repeatedly listen to a five minutes audio track from the Harry Potter series (for exemple) in your TL simultaneously reading the excerpt in your NL and from time to time using the text in your TL instead of the text in your NL to check out your comperhenison level and when you've reached at least 95% of understanding move to another track and excerpt and repeat the whole process. And so on. I called this method the repeated reading and listening. ;)

Of course the proviso is that you must differenciate separate words in your TL and if you don't, first you should use the text in your TL and repeat the process till you can do it and then move to the method I recommend.
0 x
Exposure to Swedish-RL-building stage: 30 / 300
Exposure to Spanish-RL-final stage: 300 / 1500

User avatar
reineke
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3570
Joined: Wed Jan 06, 2016 7:34 pm
Languages: Fox (C4)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=6979
x 6554

Re: Improving my listening skills

Postby reineke » Fri May 26, 2017 8:42 pm

Voytek wrote:You can repeatedly listenen...


We have many threads about listening. More importantly, Voytek, your new avatar is a serious downgrade.
3 x

User avatar
Voytek
Green Belt
Posts: 407
Joined: Fri May 13, 2016 3:36 pm
Location: Chiang Rai (Thailand)
Languages: polski (N)
English(C2)
español(C2)
svenska (C1)
日本語 (A1)
ภาษาไทย (dabbling)
x 346

Re: Improving my listening skills

Postby Voytek » Fri May 26, 2017 9:06 pm

reineke wrote:
Voytek wrote:You can repeatedly listenen...


We have many threads about listening. More importantly, Voytek, your new avatar is a serious downgrade.


So my method isn't orginal and my avatar is one big misunderstanding? If so, I'm doomed and there's no hope for me. :)

Any way, could you provide some links to the stuff you consider as useful for that matter? I mean listening skills, no my miserable avatar. :D

Ok, I'll take another shot and put some fancy avatar here so better be well prepared. :P
0 x
Exposure to Swedish-RL-building stage: 30 / 300
Exposure to Spanish-RL-final stage: 300 / 1500


Return to “General Language Discussion”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests