Thoughts on the Repetitive Listening Method?

General discussion about learning languages
Cainntear
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3468
Joined: Thu Jul 30, 2015 11:04 am
Location: Scotland
Languages: English(N)
Advanced: French,Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
Intermediate: Italian, Catalan, Corsican
Basic: Welsh
Dabbling: Polish, Russian etc
x 8659
Contact:

Re: Thoughts on the Repetitive Listening Method?

Postby Cainntear » Sat Jun 05, 2021 9:16 am

Mr Dastardly wrote:The host seems to have reached a high level of Korean, and attributes his success primarily to Repetitive Listening.

A Le Baron says, it's very hard to tell which component of your learning was the most effective. I often say, the most useless praise is "I learnt more in 3 days with X and than in 3 years of night classes", because that doesn't demonstrate that the new method is independently successful - it may just be filling in the last gaps.

My approach to repeated listening in the past has been much like others here have said -- start with a transcript to read and understand, then listen again later without a transcript, allowing memory and familiarity to aid my in picking things out from the audio.

With Scottish Gaelic, this was mostly material slightly above my level (a resource called "letter to learners" targeted specifically at upper-intermediate and advanced learners). With Catalan, I was using the Assimil lessons I had already completed, so everything was at my level.

With French and Spanish, I took a different approach. I had a good general level, but listening was my weak point.
I started listening to albums of songs, and the language was mostly within my level; although occasional words and phrases would need some clarification.
So what I did was learn to sing 1, 2 or 3 songs on the album with the aid of written lyrics. With every song I learnt from the same singer, every other song by the same singer would become more comprehensible -- I was tuning my ear in to hear them specifically. But it also generalised, because these were native speakers with native accents. I quite quickly got to the point where I could often identify the bits I didn't understand well enough to look them up directly in a dictionary without first having to look up the lyrics (more so in Spanish than French -- thanks for nothing, French orthography!!)

So yeah, to me repeated listening has been extremely useful, but I can't imagine it being the core of my "method" and I can't imagine doing it without transcripts.

I tried watching the video, but I couldn't get through the initial barrage of bad analogies, and it really sounded as though he was overstating his case. I was quite curious as to whether he would actually address the whole thing of having enough knowledge to start repeated listening, but not curious enough to sit through 25 minutes of YouTuber waffle.
10 x

User avatar
MorkTheFiddle
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2113
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 8:59 pm
Location: North Texas USA
Languages: English (N). Read (only) French and Spanish. Studying Ancient Greek. Studying a bit of Latin. Once studied Old Norse. Dabbled in Catalan, Provençal and Italian.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 11#p133911
x 4823

Re: Thoughts on the Repetitive Listening Method?

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Sat Jun 05, 2021 2:23 pm

Cainntear wrote:With French and Spanish, I took a different approach. I had a good general level, but listening was my weak point.
I started listening to albums of songs, and the language was mostly within my level; although occasional words and phrases would need some clarification.
So what I did was learn to sing 1, 2 or 3 songs on the album with the aid of written lyrics. With every song I learnt from the same singer, every other song by the same singer would become more comprehensible -- I was tuning my ear in to hear them specifically. But it also generalised, because these were native speakers with native accents. I quite quickly got to the point where I could often identify the bits I didn't understand well enough to look them up directly in a dictionary without first having to look up the lyrics (more so in Spanish than French -- thanks for nothing, French orthography!!)

So yeah, to me repeated listening has been extremely useful, but I can't imagine it being the core of my "method" and I can't imagine doing it without transcripts.

Surprising to me is the fact that AFAIK only you and Serpent mention this learning method. I have used it for individual Spanish and French songs. Using it for whole albums is an interesting idea which I am going to try.
Some apps that enable repeated listening (not necessarily to music) with transcripts/lyrics are

Lyricstraining and Apprendre are completely free, Readlang and LUPA are not. All except perhaps Readlang have mobile versions.
LUPA is for Spanish only, including several nationalities; Apprendre is for French only. Both apps IMHO deserve imitation (and maybe have them?)

Outside of them, several years ago I listened to a substantial part of a story by French writer Anna Gavalda 24 times (yes, I kept count), from an audiobook. Also several times (did not keep count) to a German radio Krimi (name forgotten). In those two cases repeated listening was quite effective for learning the meanings of the words and improving my listening.
3 x
Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson

s_allard
Blue Belt
Posts: 969
Joined: Sat Jul 25, 2015 3:01 pm
Location: Canada
Languages: French (N), English (N), Spanish (C2 Cert.), German (B2 Cert)
x 2302

Re: Thoughts on the Repetitive Listening Method?

Postby s_allard » Sat Jun 05, 2021 3:35 pm

After reading all the posts, my impression is that everybody here uses some form of repetitive listening. My question is then: can one learn anything without lots of repetition? Here what seems to be the issue is the length of the audio segment, the number of repetitions and the proper use of transcripts. I'm not sure if all this can be called the Repetitive Listening Method. Maybe in some extreme form.

In my approach, the point of repetitive listening is to develop what I would call an aural feel for the language. This means that I understand - or at least grasp - what is being said but also , very importantly, I am able to repeat reasonably well what I heard. I prefer relatively short audio clips (5 minutes) of a wide variety of voices, accents and speaking styles. How many repetitions? As many until I feel satisfied. Probably around 10 - 12 times. Certainly not 100.

I often use a variation of this technique as part of my warming up routine before meeting my on-line tutor. I'll listen to some favourite clips to get into the mood, as it were. with the phonetics and certain expressions ringing in my ears so that I hit the ground running when I meet the tutor.
6 x

cpnlsn88
White Belt
Posts: 26
Joined: Mon Oct 12, 2015 7:39 pm
x 69

Re: Thoughts on the Repetitive Listening Method?

Postby cpnlsn88 » Sat Jun 05, 2021 4:53 pm

I reckon this is a good idea provided you can tolerate it. 100 times sounds excessive.

I think the principle is good. Even if I understand a piece I often capture more and find new vocabulary with repeated listenings.

As a slight variation on this one could listen to a news or current affairs article, or indeed a whole news programme repeated every hour. One can vary this by accessing through various providers and also in different language and supplementing with written material or a transcript.

Suffice to say, I haven't ever listened to something 100 or more times. This is not to say I am unprepared to try it though I think my sanity might be at a premium if I did it to that extent. More likely 10 or so would be my limit.
2 x

sirgregory
Orange Belt
Posts: 171
Joined: Sat Apr 27, 2019 5:22 pm
Location: USA
Languages: Speaks: English (N), Spanish
Studies: German, French
x 615

Re: Thoughts on the Repetitive Listening Method?

Postby sirgregory » Sat Jun 05, 2021 7:49 pm

Around 10:30 he says he started doing this "a few months ago." I gather that he already had good Korean by that point and used this as an advanced technique. I've been doing a fair amount of repetitive listening with my beginner German (native materials and Assimil dialogues), but I like to start with a bilingual text and work up to the pure audio. I don't do much repetitive listening with the foreign language I understand pretty well (Spanish) and I imagine I would get incredibly bored listening to something 80 times. But I'm tempted to try a less extreme version of this as there probably is some benefit to it.
5 x

User avatar
sporedandroid
Blue Belt
Posts: 656
Joined: Mon Jan 07, 2019 6:54 am
Languages: English (N), Spanish (heritage/intermediate), Hebrew (A2-B1)
x 1371

Re: Thoughts on the Repetitive Listening Method?

Postby sporedandroid » Sun Jun 06, 2021 12:23 pm

I like to do extremely repetitive listening for clips at are only one phrase long to get better at parsing sound. I’m not sure I’d be able to handle 20 minute clips. I’ve tried doing some variations of repetitive listening for longer clips, but I’ve never been able to stick with it. I do get some benefit from re-listening to things that are highly detail oriented. There’s this psychology podcast that mentions case studies. I have a pretty hard time following them. I do notice my comprehension is better after re-listening.
3 x


Return to “General Language Discussion”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Dragon27, emk, themethod and 2 guests