What your brain expects to hear can be as important as the sound itself.

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Kraut
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What your brain expects to hear can be as important as the sound itself.

Postby Kraut » Sun Jul 18, 2021 3:30 pm

Effective Listening Skills – A Weird Fact About How We Process Foreign Languages




https://universeofmemory.com/category/languages/

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Possible Explanation Of This Phenomenon

It seems that the most plausible explanation is as follows – the brain is all about expectations and context. Have you ever noticed that when you learn something in one context, like the school, it becomes difficult to recall when that context shifts?

This is because learning depends heavily on how and where you do it: it depends on who is there, what is around you and how you learn.

It turns out that in the long-term people learn information best when they are exposed to it in different ways or different contexts. When learning is highly context-dependent, it doesn’t transfer well or stick as well over the years.

.......

1) Browse /this should be: thematic dictionary if available, something which we called at school Thematischer Grundwortschatz/ dictionary before listening

If you know in the advance what the programme/audition/episode is about, pay special attention to the vocabulary which might appear there. That is pure logic – it’s unlikely that you’ll need to know the names of herbs if you intend to watch an action movie.

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2) Read the transcription before listening

...........

3) Read the general outline of the thing you’re going to listen to

Watching TV series in original? Read an episode description beforehand! This way, you will know (more or less) what to expect. And as you have learned so far – it’s all about what your brain expects to hear!


This is the exact approach in this online German course, a kind of pre-calibration of the brain, an attention directing like Dehaene wants it.

minute 8:10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWhzerCnvwk&t=445s
Last edited by Kraut on Sun Jul 18, 2021 8:08 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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luke
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Re: What your brain expects to hear can be as important as the sound itself.

Postby luke » Sun Jul 18, 2021 4:14 pm

Kraut wrote:Effective Listening Skills – A Weird Fact About How We Process Foreign Languages
It turns out that in the long-term people learn information best when they are exposed to it in different ways or different contexts. When learning is highly context-dependent, it doesn’t transfer well or stick as well over the years.

That sounds like another vote for language learning while walking the dog. :)

Also makes me think that although I may prefer a certain narrator, a different one is not bad.

And, for books that we dog-ear and note, having more than one copy can be helpful.

Noting that during a Marie Kondo (KonMari) cleanup, my thematic dictionary disappeared, y lo siento mucho.
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Iversen
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Re: What your brain expects to hear can be as important as the sound itself.

Postby Iversen » Sun Jul 18, 2021 6:56 pm

I have also repeatedly recommended the use of more than one grammar book - the rule not only functions for sounds, also for ideas. But the title of this thread reminds me of a slightly different angle, namely that you can confuse people by showing them a person whose mouth shows one sound, while the sound you hear is a totally different sound. Here the ambiguity is inherent in one source, not divided between two.

Apart from that: my deepfelt condolences to Luke for the loss of his thematic dictionary. I vaguely remember a film stump I once saw on with a little Japanese lady who went through the home of some naive people and systematically threw everything away while she laughed like a cracked halloween pumpkin, but I had forgotten her name. Thank you for the warning!
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