NoManches wrote:I say yes!!!
For me this makes perfect sense. I'm learning Spanish, a language that sounds the way it is spelled. When I am reading I can take my time to comprehend things, make sense of verb tenses, look at pronouns and their relation to other words. With listening, once you hear something you can't go back and listen again (during conversation). This makes reading a lot easier for me...and once again...if I can't read something in Spanish then I probably won't be able to understand it if the same text is spoken to me.
I know this came up in the past and some people disagreed with me...these are my observations that I have experienced. I'm currently making an effort to increase the amount of reading I do by a lot, in hopes that it will result in better listening comprehension.
As I understand it, you have been practicing, rather diligently, all the four skills. Whatever you do you'll be fine. If you keep rotating your practice you may end up crediting your last activity for any breakthroughs.
The graphemes reflect the phonemes and not the other way around. The spoken and written conventions are different and language is primarily a spoken phenomenon. Italian, Spanish, and Croatian all have a high degree of grapheme and phoneme correspondence. They can also be described as having a simple phoneme inventory yet plenty of learners regularly make pronunciation mistakes in these languages. While the vocabulary demands of TV programs are relatively modest, people who are competent readers complain of listening comprehension issues.
All this is a long way of saying that the logic of the spoken language flowing from its rich, elevated written counterpart is not entirely sound. That said, I see nothing heartbreaking in reading great literature and time spent reading is time well spent.
Some learners study subtitles and transcripts prior to listening exercises as a way of boosting their vocabulary and listening comprehension skills.