Primary focus on listening comprehension

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AML
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Primary focus on listening comprehension

Postby AML » Thu May 27, 2021 6:10 pm

Have any of you ever focused primarily on listening comprehension in your L2? That is, your goal with this L2 was mainly just to understand movies, tv shows, podcasts, radio, etc.

If so, did you achieve advanced comprehension ("advanced" = understand everything except the occasional rare word), and what did you do to get there?
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Re: Primary focus on listening comprehension

Postby rdearman » Thu May 27, 2021 7:13 pm

AML wrote:Have any of you ever focused primarily on listening comprehension in your L2? That is, your goal with this L2 was mainly just to understand movies, tv shows, podcasts, radio, etc.

If so, did you achieve advanced comprehension ("advanced" = understand everything except the occasional rare word), and what did you do to get there?

Ahh... the holy grail.

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Re: Primary focus on listening comprehension

Postby AML » Thu May 27, 2021 7:56 pm

Why is a focus on listening comprehension the holy grail?
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Re: Primary focus on listening comprehension

Postby rdearman » Thu May 27, 2021 8:59 pm

AML wrote:Why is a focus on listening comprehension the holy grail?

I think because it is one of the hardest skills to develop. Certainly for me, and for many others I've spoken to. Your mileage might vary of course, but most people find this part of language learning the most difficult. Native speakers talk fast, they use slang, they slur words, they run words together when they speak, etc. TV and Radio are just as bad since they are typically at native speeds. So if you can get to the point you said "understand everything except the occasional rare word" is like finding El Dorado. :)

Don't let me put you off, it can be done, people do it all the time.
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Re: Primary focus on listening comprehension

Postby 白田龍 » Thu May 27, 2021 10:39 pm

I kept cramming vocabulary, reading a lot, waching lots of movies and series, I took me about one year to be able to understand tv shows dubbed in Persian.

To understand real native content took me a much longer time (2-3 years?). I started reading webnovels that were written in an informal style that uses with lots of slang that seldom appear in properly publised books, and thus I have learned a lot of vocabulary that they use in native tv series.

The first major barrier to listening comprehension is vocabulary. You are in great luck if you are able to find transcripts or subtitles for tv shows in your target language, so you can just read them hunting for unknowns. If you don't have it, you should try to find written sources of informal language, so you can learn the slang expressions that don't appear in serious writing.

One day your listening comprehension may be good enough that you can look up the unkown words from the audio, but this takes a long while, because unknowns break your parsing. Until then, the best way to improve your listening is reading.

I did a few experiments with Sub2srs, it seemed effective, but I could not be bothered to do it. I think it would certainly have sped things up had I used it, but now I'm way past the level it would make a significant difference.
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Re: Primary focus on listening comprehension

Postby sporedandroid » Fri May 28, 2021 12:48 am

白田龍 wrote:I did a few experiments with Sub2srs, it seemed effective, but I could not be bothered to do it. I think it would certainly have sped things up had I used it, but now I'm way past the level it would make a significant difference.

I notice my progress with subs2srs is super fast as a beginner. It seems like the quickest way to learn to parse sounds. If I use English subtitles as well I can also get used to new sentence structures. It gets harder to use efficiently as you advance because more and more cards become too easy. I don’t use it anymore now that I’m intermediate. If I had a quick and effortless way to make audio cards, maybe I’d make audio cards whenever I have trouble understanding something and subtitles are available.
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Re: Primary focus on listening comprehension

Postby Gordafarin2 » Fri May 28, 2021 10:28 am

Yes, there are two main hurdles in listening comprehension - parsing the speech, and understanding the words. The first one can seem huge, but it's actually the easier of the two. If you expose yourself to comprehensible speech at native speed often enough (from a variety of different speakers, with different accents, in different situations, at different levels of formality), you'll train your ear.

Subs2SRS has been instrumental in improving my listening comprehension (parsing ability). After a few years of Persian I hit a pretty common wall, where I could understand my teacher and my textbook's recordings, but not actually anyone talking at real native speed. After focusing my study on Subs2SRS cards, my listening skills and reading skills are just about balanced.

It does have diminishing returns, in that every new movie or episode you add will have some dozens of cards with sentences that are totally trivial - your "hello, how are you" "thank you" "what do you mean?!" and such. But every piece of media will also have lovely complex sentence structures and idioms that are well worth practicing, if you're willing to sort the wheat from the chaff. And Subs2SRS is like a set of training wheels for watching TV on its own - the cards are concentrated language (no musical breaks or action scenes) but isolated. You can take as much time as you need to parse one sentence before moving on to the next. The 'Language Learning with Netflix' extension also runs on this idea. I've found Anki more helpful personally since I have it on my phone and I can study for just a few minutes at a time on the bus, waiting for the kettle to boil, whenever. This way it's also less taxing than trying to understand a whole TV show at once.

I've gushed about Subs2SRS enough already, at length, in other posts and other places. Anyway, it's definitely a method that suits my learning style and it felt like magic going from "only catching a word here and there if I'm lucky" to "can understand full native sentences from a variety of speakers". Then you can take the training wheels off and start enjoying full films/tv episodes more easily.

But building those listening skills only takes you so far. Vocabulary is a big big obstacle. Assuming your language has a more-or-less phonetic script, if you couldn't understand a sentence's vocabulary when reading it, you won't be able to understand it while listening either, no matter how good your parsing skills are.
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Re: Primary focus on listening comprehension

Postby Lianne » Fri May 28, 2021 1:59 pm

Gordafarin2 wrote:Yes, there are two main hurdles in listening comprehension - parsing the speech, and understanding the words. The first one can seem huge, but it's actually the easier of the two. If you expose yourself to comprehensible speech at native speed often enough (from a variety of different speakers, with different accents, in different situations, at different levels of formality), you'll train your ear.

In the last couple of years, my reading comprehension has progressed beyond what I had imagined possible, but my listening comprehension, not so much. So I have not found the "parsing the speech" part to be the easier part!! Although I think there is also the factor of processing speed, like how fast you can understand the words that you "know". That almost feels like it goes somewhere in between parsing the speech and understanding the words.
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Re: Primary focus on listening comprehension

Postby Gordafarin2 » Fri May 28, 2021 2:22 pm

Lianne wrote:
Gordafarin2 wrote:Yes, there are two main hurdles in listening comprehension - parsing the speech, and understanding the words. The first one can seem huge, but it's actually the easier of the two. If you expose yourself to comprehensible speech at native speed often enough (from a variety of different speakers, with different accents, in different situations, at different levels of formality), you'll train your ear.

In the last couple of years, my reading comprehension has progressed beyond what I had imagined possible, but my listening comprehension, not so much. So I have not found the "parsing the speech" part to be the easier part!! Although I think there is also the factor of processing speed, like how fast you can understand the words that you "know". That almost feels like it goes somewhere in between parsing the speech and understanding the words.

My experience is that it took a bit of focused training to get better at parsing, it took a while sure but it happened eventually. But vocabulary? Vocabulary never ends. I will be learning new words until the day I die :)
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Re: Primary focus on listening comprehension

Postby Le Baron » Fri May 28, 2021 4:28 pm

Is Subs2SRS available for Linux? The download at Sourceforge is only for Windows.
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