super effecting listening comprehension excercise

[jeff_lindqvist]

Would you care to elaborate on this? assuming you mean focusing on listening in particular, which is my main goal for the next 2 weeks until I take the TEG.

Actually I was thinking of a multi-track approach (but with many kinds of listening approaches). Though some of my languages are closer to A0-A1 nowadays, there were times when I listened to lessons over and over, shadowed them, read along, reviewed words in isolation (Anki and similar), did grammar-translation... The end result was a lot more than a mere "memorized" version of the lesson(s) in question.

[yong321]

Very interesting. Your talk about writing down in IPA reminds me of a French textbook where an appendix meticulously shows full lesson text in IPA only ("Intermediate Conversational French" by Julian Harris, André Lévêque). Reading that is supposed to reproduce what you hear but not you see, so at least theoretically, it should help train listening comprehension. (We all know listening comprehension of French is hard. I guess the author was trying to be creative.) But of course, nothing replaces real listening.

[drp9341]

I'll be curious to hear how your trip to Spain goes with regard to listening comprehension, and to see if you have a similar experience to what my girlfriend and I had. Since we are Americans our ears are accustom to Mexican/Central American/South American Spanish, and I figured Spain Spanish would not be too rough since some of the learning materials I used when I first started learning were made by native speakers from Spain. When we finally got to Spain I discovered that I could hardly understand the vast majority of people that we spoke with. My girlfriend had the same problem and she speaks at a higher level than I do.

That's interesting. My first six moths learning Spanish I spoke with my two El Salvadorian friends daily, and watched Telemundo. I had little exposure to Spain Spanish. I went to Spain for a trip after those first six months and I would have put my Spanish around a B2 level, except for my writing which I neglected during my initial learning period, (I am a semi-native speaker of Italian, as in I spoke it pretty badly but well enough to converse up until I took courses for it in High School at age 13).

I found Spain Spanish to be slightly easier to understand than Mexican / Central American Spanish (spoken colloquially, not the kind of standard Mexican you hear in the media here in the US), due to it being similar to Italian. I didn't know anything about phonetics back then, so I can only assume which features made it more comprehensible. However, nowadays I find Spain Spanish to be harder to understand than most Latin American accents, although still easier than some very heavy Mexican accents.

Caribbean Spanish on the other hand, is quite easy for me to understand for some reason. Once I learned the Dominican vocabulary and got used to the sound shifts, I had very little trouble. Some of this may be (warning, here comes a stereotype!) because Dominicans speak extremely loudly. I had an internship in the DR, and lived and worked with monolingual Dominicans for a month one summer, and I don't really remember the Spanish ever being an issue, despite it's quirkiness.

[DaveBee]

I found Spain Spanish to be slightly easier to understand than Mexican / Central American Spanish (spoken colloquially, not the kind of standard Mexican you hear in the media here in the US), due to it being similar to Italian. I didn't know anything about phonetics back then, so I can only assume which features made it more comprehensible. However, nowadays I find Spain Spanish to be harder to understand than most Latin American accents, although still easier than some very heavy Mexican accents.

Caribbean Spanish on the other hand, is quite easy for me to understand for some reason. Once I learned the Dominican vocabulary and got used to the sound shifts, I had very little trouble. Some of this may be (warning, here comes a stereotype!) because Dominicans speak extremely loudly.

A spanish teacher once told me that Puerto Rican spanish is very good castillian. (She was from Santander, Spain).

[coldrainwater]

Thanks for the contribution. Despite my low listening level in ES (A2 as of June 2017), I would like to try the method and report back results in the future. For my test case, it makes sense to choose an episode from Aquí no hay quien viva (Peninsular Spanish, intermediate similar to Vecinos). I am in the midst of the third season and have purely listened extensively to date for that series. While I am capable of enjoying the show and understand much of it, my listening comprehension is clearly lacking. Progress is notable but very slow as is typical. In addition, I think it would be fun to compare/contrast a couple of different but related learning resources here:

1) Using Yabla to complete a very similar exercise.
2) Using telenovela and doing this as described in the OP.

Comparing option 1 and 2 above are what interest me most. Yabla serves up both English and Spanish transcripts on a silver platter and also makes repeating and slowing down almost too easy. I have used Yabla before and am aware of the fallacy of attributing language learning success to the most recent activity undertaken so all impressions will be taken with a grain of salt. Also very high on my list are the DLI (defense language institute) resources for similar work.

[guiguixx1]

Very interesting method. I'm currently living in Spain with a B2-ish level and struggle with pronunciation and keeping up with natives who speak too fast. I'll try it out!

[leosmith]

Dear drp9341,
Thanks for posting this - it’s an interesting method. As you have mentioned, you primarily used it to revive advanced listening skills rather than to reach a new high, but your feeling that you reached one anyhow got my attention.

I’ve been thinking about coming up with a general purpose listening exercise since I read a post on another forum a few weeks ago. The post from an English teacher talked about a textbook designed for improving listening. The methods used sounded similar to methods in several textbooks I’ve used in real classes many years ago. There’s audio, text and questions. The order varies, but they use the questions to engage or get the students to discuss what’s going, presumably increasing the interest and intensity with which the student listens. There are sometimes new vocabulary and grammar too.

I always disliked/dreaded those types of exercises in class, because I did horribly on them, and I think I know the reasons why. First, I never did enough listening in the old days. Second, they asked for too much in the exercises. I just want to improve my listening. They want me to use and develop other skills to explain what’s going on. Even if that’s just a ruse to get me to pay closer attention, it’s still wasting my time, or at least using my time where I don’t want it to be used. And if they add new grammar and vocabulary, it’s just too much.

Maybe the textbooks are justified in doing things that way; students need to be well-rounded. But I want an exercise that I can use on my choice of material, which is really focused on listening and listening only. So your method appealed to me.

But before just going out and doing it exactly as you did, I decided to break down what my listening problems are and try to add a solution to target each problem.

Listening problems and solutions:
1) Problem: Just a general “can’t understand at normal listening speed”.
Solution: Normal listening for as many repetitions as necessary to understand.
2) Problem: It’s too fast, meaning you can’t figure out the first part of the sentence before the second part of the sentence comes. It’s like the sentence is too long.
Solution: Pause often enough and for as long as needed to understand each portion before going onto the next.
3) Problem: It’s too fast, meaning that the words seem to come too quickly and too tightly together to understand.
Solution: Play as slowly as needed to understand.
4) Problem: It’s too fast, meaning the words seem to come too quickly to properly parse.
Solution: Transcribe the text, repeating, pausing and slowing down as much as necessary to do it.
5) Problem: Words not sounding like you expected.
Solution: Listening and repeating enough to sound more native like.
6) Problem: Sentence stress/rhythm/prosody not sounding like you expected.
Solution: Listening and repeating enough to sound more native like.
7) Problem: Vocabulary/grammar you’re not familiar with.
Solution: Learn or review vocabulary/grammar.

drp9341’s method simplified (for quick comparison):
Watch a 6 min native video at normal speed.
1. Watch again, pausing and replaying as much as needed to understand it completely.
2. Write down sentences with grammar that you don’t command actively.
3. Watch again, pausing for a few moments every 30 sec.
4. Watch again, writing down and analyzing deeper the grammar that you feel still needs clarification, thinking about the function and meaning of each word while contemplating the written form.
5. Slow the video to ½ speed and transcribe into IPA anything that sounds different than expected while clearing your mind of all visual information.
6. Play the video normal speed, paying close attention to intonation/prosody/rhythm.
Repeat

Comparing your method to my list of solutions, the only thing it lacks is listening and repeating unexpected sounds enough to sound more native like. That would be my one criticism of it. You did some extra stuff, but I consider that more like personal preference.

I started out copying your list, trimming off the parts I felt I didn’t need, and adding the listening/repeating step. Then I looked for a suitable video. That’s when I realized I was doing something quite different from you. I’m intermediate in Korean, and unless I wanted to spend forever on new vocabulary and grammar, I couldn’t just grab a 6 min native video. I want my exercise to work for me when I’m at the intermediate level. To me, it’s the long trudge from intermediate to advanced that’s most frustrating, and most of my languages are intermediate, so I feel I’m justified.

So I chose a TTMIK “natural talk” video about pizza in Korea, but right off the bat there was an indecipherable word, and I got a bit discouraged. I tried multiple listens and half speed, but no luck. That’s what convinced me of the benefits of a transcript when all else fails. So I saw a transcript available for purchase. I was lucky that there was a preview for the first page, and I was totally justified in missing the word. But the price, even though quite low, was what convinced me to try this exercise with audio rather than video. There is a ton of free Iyagi podcasts with transcripts at the same site.

Then I selected a similar pizza Iyagi, 6 min long, and started in earnest. I was only 10 minutes into it when I realized that the 6 minutes would take way too much time for 1 sitting, and decided to only do the first half. Also, this was really intense. Even though I was using an intermediate product, there were a lot of unknown words/grammar/pronunciations for me, making it a slow process. So I started looking for ways to reduce the time on task, and I wound up combining some things, which you can see below.

My exercise:
1) Listen to Iyagi at normal speed.
2) Listen again, pausing, replaying, playing half speed as much as needed to understand everything but unknown grammar/vocabulary. After all else fails, check the transcript and write down the phrases with unexpected pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary I don’t know. Look up the unknown vocabulary. Listen to and repeat the unexpected pronunciations until I sound more native like.
3) Listen again, pausing for a few moments every 10 sec.
4) Look up the grammar that I don’t know, review the grammar I know but don’t command actively.
5) Listen at normal speed. If I don’t understand it all the way through, listen again with pauses. Repeat until I can listen all the way through with full understanding.

The experiment
Goals: Bring my listening skill up to a level closer to my reading ability. For example, if I know the vocabulary and grammar well enough to understand 80% of a transcript at the sentence level, I would like my listening to be at 70% instead of 50%. I hope periodic use of this exercise will be enough to close the gap significantly. Due to it’s difficulty, I’d prefer not to do this too frequently.

Procedure: I did the first half of an intermediate podcast last night, and the rest tonight, 2 hours each night for a total of 4 hours to do a 6 min podcast.

Cons: I started getting restless and sloppy after about 1.5 hrs both nights. Imo this is too intense of an exercise to do for such a long period of time. I found my brain was unwilling to dig down and give me a word-for-word comprehension when I got tired at the very end when I tried to give one extra listen. Also, I knew the material and was bored. I had begun to lose beginner’s mind. I still understood everything, but I had it memorized so I wasn’t really listening. Hard to explain.

Pros: I was quite pleased to understand the material almost 100% by the last step. I feel I understood about 60-70% on the first listen, so that was quite an improvement. About an hour after I finished the second half, I tried a different Iyagi podcast, this one about milk. I understood 80-90%, which I’m sure is better than I’ve ever understood it before.

Conclusions: I have no doubt that this exercise improves listening comprehension. It improved for the podcast I worked on, and for a different podcast. I don’t know how quickly it will decay; I may try listening again a week from now to give another data point. I’ll probably make this part of my learning method, because I’m impressed by the results so far. Due to it’s intensity though, I will limit my sessions to 1 hour in the future.

[reineke]

You guys have discovered intensive listening?

[Sayonaroo]

I'm too lazy so the most I do is repeat 20-30 seconds chunks for French over and over again while looking at the french and english translation for my active listening. It still makes a significant difference compared to just letting the audiobook play to the end of the chapter. I use kmplayer and set point a and b which is f5 and f6 for the keyboard shortcuts and use f8 to turn the repeat on and off. I did this with the petite prince for a little bit because I don't particularly like this story. I think I will feel more inclined to do this with a better french story since it'll feel very rewarding.

[Flickserve]

Transcribing in Chinese is difficult due to the different writing system.

I just started with Anki. Made a listening card that repeats the audio of a sentence about ten times automatically. You can always stop it earlier if you want or repeat audio. Autorepeating ten times saves you having to press the repeat audio.

If I can't comprehend, then I press answer and repeat the sentence another x amount of times. (also use this to shadow).

It seems to help. I load up the deck into my smartphone with the podcast which makes it convenient use at odd times of the day. Having the script is essential for the answer.