Active Listening

Ask specific questions about your target languages. Beginner questions welcome!
eebeejay
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Active Listening

Postby eebeejay » Sat Feb 04, 2017 2:02 am

How do you get the most out of your listening time? Are there any techniques you use to increase the benefit of listening to your TL?
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Re: Active Listening

Postby AK47 » Sun Feb 05, 2017 3:50 am

I get the most out of my listening time by only listening to things that would interest me in any language. I'm pretty sure at least my subconscious absorbs words and phrases way better when I have an emotional connection to the content. There's some scientific research on this connection, between memory and emotion.

Also, I find it helps to relax, focus and really zone in, no double-tasking, etc.
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Re: Active Listening

Postby rdearman » Sun Feb 05, 2017 10:40 am

One piece of advice I got a long time ago was to talk a clip from a film dialogue and transcribe it. It is a lot harder than it sounds to correctly transcribe from a film. You really have to listen.
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Re: Active Listening

Postby Theodisce » Sun Feb 05, 2017 11:43 am

Do as much listening as you can. On your way to your workplace, while shopping etc. Do your best to concentrate on what you hear, but do not allow yourself to become discouraged if you fail. Listen to variety of content dealing with similar stuff (detective stories, history lectures etc.). Those are actually strategies, not techniques, but they work.

I find it extremely enjoyable to play a video game that does not require much thinking from me while I listen to an audiobook. It's not necessarily double tasking as long as you can concentrate on the listening part. I've been playing few games since decade or so and the result is I can concentrate on listening having acquired the mastery of the game mechanics. I would not be able just to sit down and listen. Moreover, playing a game makes the listening part more enjoyable which in turn facilitates learning.
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Re: Active Listening

Postby reineke » Sun Feb 05, 2017 3:56 pm

Do a forum search. Also search through HTLAL archives.

Take a look at Paul Nation's free book entitled "What you need to know to learn a foreign language"

http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/about/staff/paul-nation
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Re: Active Listening

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Sun Feb 05, 2017 7:00 pm

reineke wrote:Do a forum search. Also search through HTLAL archives.

Take a look at Paul Nation's free book entitled "What you need to know to learn a foreign language"

http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/about/staff/paul-nation
A quick read of this just now turned up a number of interesting ideas/techniques that seem very useful: keyword technique, delayed copying, 4/3/2 speaking activity, repeated reading, and Issue log. Several of Nation's ideas can be used by learners studying on their own.
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Re: Active Listening

Postby Chai » Tue Feb 07, 2017 2:17 am

rdearman wrote:One piece of advice I got a long time ago was to talk a clip from a film dialogue and transcribe it. It is a lot harder than it sounds to correctly transcribe from a film. You really have to listen.

This is what I have been doing, and while it seems to be helpful (although I haven't been doing it long enough to note any improvement yet), I must say it is incredibly time consuming. It can easily take me 30+ minutes to transcribe only a few minutes of video because I have to re-listen to the same sections over and over again, sometimes at half speed, to try to understand and copy what is said.

I'm wondering if simply watching videos in your target language (without attempting to transcribe them) is considered active listening? I'd pay attention and try to understand, but wouldn't slow it down to pick out words and learn new vocabulary like I would with the transcription. I see some of you have said that's what you do, but have you noticed any real improvement in comprehension doing that or is it more just for enjoyment?
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Re: Active Listening

Postby emk » Tue Feb 07, 2017 12:25 pm

rdearman wrote:One piece of advice I got a long time ago was to talk a clip from a film dialogue and transcribe it. It is a lot harder than it sounds to correctly transcribe from a film. You really have to listen.

Transcribing a clip is the second-best way I know to improve my understanding of audio content, and it's highly effective. I tried an experiment with MC Solaar's rap songs, which I handled in one of three different ways:

  1. Group 1: I listened to these songs about a zillion times, but I didn't explicitly study them. Result: Modest gains in comprehension over the course of several years, which my overall French level improved from A2 to C1ish (so I would have expected gains with no study at all). Example.
  2. Group 2: I played small sections of these songs over and over again, and tried to transcribe them. I finally looked up the answers. Result: I have long-term 75% comprehension of these songs. I end up forgetting or mishearing the other 25%. Example (political).
  3. Group 3: I made Anki audio cards from these songs, and reviewed them normally. (This was sort of like substudy/Subs2SRS, except 100% manual.) Result: Years later, I have near-perfect comprehension of 95+% of these songs, and only lose comprehension where the grammar is truly weird or MC Solaar is listing the names of African night-clubs in France. Example.
I highly recommend doing either 2 or 3 as an occasional intensive exercise. I also think that extensive listening to enjoyable, more-or-less comprehensible content should be done as often as possible in large quantities as soon as you can get anything at all out of it. For this, I recommend buying DVD box sets of all the seasons of maybe 5 interesting TV series, and binge-watching them (while also doing extensive reading).

With (3), I get an interesting extra bonus: I can actually "sing along" with even the fastest songs, which is an excellent vocal warmup for when I need my spoken French to be as good as possible.
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Re: Active Listening

Postby smallwhite » Tue Feb 07, 2017 1:11 pm

When I was maybe B1 in French, I sang along Céline Dion's songs while reading the lyrics just like I do with other songs I listen to, for a few times, then played them in the background and sang along a bit more, and then put them away to later re-listen and re-sing along to randomly, again just like I do with other songs. 100% same as what I do with songs by Adele, Metallica or Cantonese singers. I forget some lyrics here and there, same as when I sing my national anthem. I forget the meaning of some of the words, but I can generally "hear" them and remember how they're spelt and still sing along.

I think that's good enough.

(I only learned with songs back ~8 years ago. It didn't feel worthwhile and I didn't continue).
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Re: Active Listening

Postby Teango » Tue Feb 07, 2017 1:25 pm

@emk
Learning off some of MC Solaar's lyrics are definitely on my some-day-in-the-future to-do list, "ah..j'étais cool, assis sur un banc, c'était au printemps..." :)
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