Processing Speed - Is there any way to improve it?

General discussion about learning languages
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tungemål
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Re: Processing Speed - Is there any way to improve it?

Postby tungemål » Sun Sep 19, 2021 9:23 am

I also find listening comprehension particularily hard in Spanish.

Listening comprehension consists of (at least) two skills:
1: hearing the sounds and interpreting them correctly as words
2: processing speed - understanding the sentence

For me, no. 1 is the hardest with Spanish. Only more listening will help. If it is no. 2 that is your problem, it is something that you should get better at the more you use the language, so I think reading a lot will help with this.
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Cavesa
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Re: Processing Speed - Is there any way to improve it?

Postby Cavesa » Sun Sep 19, 2021 11:16 am

FeoGringo wrote:When I say "processing speed" I'm referring to listening comprehension. I feel I'm at the point where I understand a lot but my brain lags behind and it is not instantaneous recognition; like I'm on a 10 second delay from whoever is speaking. I would like to close that gap and I'm not sure how to go about doing it.

I know listening comprehension is one of the hardest skills to learn, and anything close to near native listening comprehension will take a long, long time. Just want to pick the brains of the forum members and see what can be done. I guess this is kind of up there with the question of "how to I stop translating in my head?"

Anyway, I'm interested to hear people's thoughts.


I don't agree it is one of the hardest skills to learn. I'd say it is very likely the skill people have the least reasonable expectations about. A beginner (you put that on your profile info) is simply not supposed to understand normal natives speaking. That's the issue. The problem is in most cases not listening, it's being a beginner with totally exagerated expectations. I blame mostly the tons of youtubers and revolutionary product sellers, who pretend you should deal with native resources from day 1. Nope.

Very few people are actually gonna progress like this and understand a lot of normal native speech at a normal speed while still being overall beginners. Most of them already knows a closely related language. I can do that in a new romance language and easily get my listening several levels above the rest, but I definitely couldn't do that back when I was learning my first one!

The "translating in your head" is also a totally normal phase, that will get better and better as you progress.

So my advice: keep learning, don't waste too much time running against the wall. Most people do best, if they just complete their beginner and intermediate coursebooks, do the listening exercises appropriate for their level (as most listening problems are actually not about the "processing speed" of listening, but about too weak vocab and grammar), and adapt their expecations. You are supposed to understand normal natives (and media for them) approximately at B2 and it will still be uncomfortable at times.

So, a very brief overview of "how to get native like listening comprehension skills":
-a series of coursebooks (grammar books, other workbooks, srs, whatever) up to B1
-add tons of native media (while continuing the previous point to B2 or C1 level of the resources), 300 hours of tv series are an example of a good goal. But you may need anything from 200 to 500
-enjoy your C2 or even native like listening.
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Re: Processing Speed - Is there any way to improve it?

Postby Axon » Sun Sep 19, 2021 5:35 pm

Just yesterday I was at a Chinese restaurant and the cook gave me some sesame balls as a free appetizer, saying in Cantonese "These are the sesame balls you like." At first I understood nothing, then my brain caught up and I realized that I had accurately understood the meaning and even caught the necessary words. Certainly a case of slow processing speed, which is quite understandable as my Cantonese learning has been very artificial from the start.

I even have this delayed effect with written Polish, where I'll glance at a sentence, have nothing make sense, and then realize that I know all the roots and enough of the grammar to parse the sentence.

Compared to what I experience in my stronger languages, it's clear that this processing speed difference comes when most of what I've learned from has been stuff teaching me the language, instead of stuff I've interacted with in the language.
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