Intensity of listening

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Easily_confused
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Intensity of listening

Postby Easily_confused » Wed May 17, 2017 4:17 pm

As my studies have leaned too heavily towards reading, I realise I need to get a lot more listening in. So I've downloaded Slow German. Only I don't know quite how I should be listening to it if I want to listen extensively rather than intensively. I feel I've got 2 options but I don't know what's best. Either I let the words flow over where I'm not convinced much is going in or I listen harder and pick out words I recognise but I feel I've then got to struggle to get back 'in to' the broadcast straight after and lose momentum.

What do you do?
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aaleks
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Re: Intensity of listening

Postby aaleks » Wed May 17, 2017 5:39 pm

Easily_confused wrote: Slow German.

It is podcasts, isn't it? When some time ago I worked with English podcasts I just listened to the same podcast several times.
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Re: Intensity of listening

Postby zenmonkey » Wed May 17, 2017 5:40 pm

Easily_confused wrote:What do you do?


I loved Slow German and Schlafflos in Munchen!

Mostly at that level I did mostly extensive and not intensive listening - all my reading was just focused to understand, I did no transcribing, no note-taking. I guess the only intensive listening would be to listen to the same podcast two or three or four times when they where short (DW ones - Alltag Deutsch). But that was usually because I had a lot of available content and I was usually driving and could not take notes. Also I'm lazy. Transcribing seemed over-daunting and painful, so I didn't do it.

It's probably a good idea to do some intensive listening and take notes, write words down, etc... but don't let it kill the just listening part.

Heck, I should probably do more intensive listening now but I usually listen to stuff when I am doing something else - walking, cleaning, driving ... I should listen to my own advice.
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Re: Intensity of listening

Postby klvik » Wed May 17, 2017 9:27 pm

Easily_confused wrote:As my studies have leaned too heavily towards reading, I realise I need to get a lot more listening in. So I've downloaded Slow German. Only I don't know quite how I should be listening to it if I want to listen extensively rather than intensively. I feel I've got 2 options but I don't know what's best. Either I let the words flow over where I'm not convinced much is going in or I listen harder and pick out words I recognise but I feel I've then got to struggle to get back 'in to' the broadcast straight after and lose momentum.

What do you do?


I find that my listening skills improve most rapidly when I use a mixture of intensive and extensive listening. When I was at the ~A2 level, I probably did more intensive listening than extensive. Now at the B1/B2 level, I mainly do extensively listening, but I think that the little bit of intensive listening that I do has a disproportionate impact. One big qualifier - I enjoy my intensive activities (Subs2SRS Anki decks and sentence transcription). If I hated doing them they probably wouldn't be as effective.
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Re: Intensity of listening

Postby golyplot » Wed May 31, 2017 3:34 pm

I don't bother with note taking or transcription or anything. My preferred strategy is to just watch lots and lots of TV in the target language (via Netflix, Youtube, or whatever is available). It seems to have worked out pretty well for me so far. At first you won't understand much, but that changes quickly.
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Re: Intensity of listening

Postby Voytek » Wed May 31, 2017 4:01 pm

golyplot wrote:I don't bother with note taking or transcription or anything. My preferred strategy is to just watch lots and lots of TV in the target language (via Netflix, Youtube, or whatever is available). It seems to have worked out pretty well for me so far. At first you won't understand much, but that changes quickly.



That's how I learned the lion's share of my English. I watched movies I could understand on 70-80 percents and the rest came naturally.
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