!Recently, I have been tackling listening comprehension, the skill I struggle with the most, in a new and incredibly more effective way.
The method I am going to detail below is quite analytical and many may find this unbearably boring, but if you have an understanding of phonetics and a love for the sounds of different languages, I find this method can be extremely useful.
BACKGROUND, and how I arrived at this method
I reached about (my university professor's claim,) a C1 level in Spanish during my 2 and half month stay in Perú during the summer of 2012. Unfortunately, since roughly 4 years ago, I have not taken a class, studied nor been immersed in a Spanish speaking environment.
Here I am, 4 Years later, and I am about to go to Spain for a short trip in a month. About a week ago I started attempting to revive my Spanish by watching telenovelas, but to my unpleasant surprise, I was unable to follow what was going on without really straining myself and rewinding repeatedly. I put on Spanish subtitles, and even then it was difficult for me to read them quickly enough to keep up. Towards the end of my 2 year love affair with Spanish I watched TV exclusively in Spanish, and found it to be nearly as pleasant as watching TV in English.
Despite all this, I could still construct grammatically accurate complex sentences, it just took a moment or two longer, and I still completely understood all of the various sentence structures. For example, even complex sentences, such as those you would find in a well written contemporary Spanish novel or a newspaper, were completely understandable and made perfect sense even though I had forgotten some of the more obscure vocabulary.
So here I was, frustrated that a language which at a time was almost as easy for me to communicate in as is English, was suddenly fuzzy and strange. I could still understand Telemundo's news programs / interviews fine, but trying to understand Mexican/Central American guys talking amongst themselves in real life was a lesson in humility.
After a few hours and days of frustration and slow improvement from my lazy attempt at a Spanish revival via Netflix, I attempted something else.
The Solution to my Problem!
I watched a 6 minute video by a Mexican "Youtuber" by the name of Fichis in the house (https://www.youtube.com/user/fichisinthehouse) at first, I could barely understand 75% of what he was saying. So here's what I did.
1. I watched the video, taking my sweet time. It took me about 20-30 minutes to get through a 6 minute video, despite the fact that if I was to have read a transcript of the video, I could understand it with ease. I rewinded and replayed anything I didn't understand 5-6 times, and this was enough to understand what he was saying word for word.
2. I wrote down all the sentence structures that I did not command actively, but could understand passively, as well as any utterance where the use of a verb tense or reflexive caught me off guard, etc.
3. I watched the video once again. Pausing for a few moments every 30 seconds or so, in order to ensure that I didn't zone out, and to remain hyper-focused.
4. I then analyzed the video again, going more into depth as far as the meaning of the words. For example if he said, "abróchate la blusa, que se te ve la chichis" I would write it down and consciously analyze that sentence, understanding and "thinking about" the semantic function of each and every word in that utterance, (I used this example because it was the best example of a sentence that despite expressing something simple, contrasts greatly with it's English counter-part in terms of structure/syntax.)
...As us language learners know, a word's written form can impact our perception of how it sounds. Our perception of words is affected by our prejudice that derives from how that word is written. It causes us to hear phonemes that aren't present, and causes interference with how we perceive the sounds of a language. This is a result of our brains trying to make what we hear match up with what we think we should be hearing...
5 I slowed down the video to 1/2 speed and transcribed into the IPA anything that sounded different than I would have expected it to sound. I listened to the video at half speed in the way I would listen to an instrument being played, I heard the sounds that were uttered and mentally linked the sounds to the meaning of the word (if this isn't clear let me know I'll elaborate.) I tried to clear my mind of all visual information and simply aggregate the sounds I was hearing to the meaning of what was being said.
6. Now that I was conscious of every sound, and able to pick up almost every phoneme that was uttered, I played the video back on full speed. I payed very close attention to the sentence intonation, Mexican Spanish has a unique prosody, and sentences don't have the same rhythm as they do in English. Just as a multisyllabic word has stressed and unstressed syllables, so do sentences. The prosody/melody of a sentence has to do with it's structure and complexity (the type / number of clauses that form it), and the mood of the sentence. If you're saying something like, "yeah man this is great, but you already know that!" The sentence is going to have a markedly different prosody than a simple, indicative sentence, such as "I love to go to the beach."
...By this point I could have probably recited the entire 6 minute video, about as accurately as I would sing a song I knew by heart.
and then!
I did this AGAIN with a second video following a short 10 minute break, and overall spent the better part of 3-4 hours analyzing and memorizing the two videos in the way I just described above.
Great Results!!
I took a good 20 minute break after working with the two videos, I came back and watched a third video by the same Youtuber. It was a similar, 6-7 minute long funny monologue. Just 4 hours later, I was able to understand the meaning of 95+% of the utterances, and I understood and heard almost every word that was said. Not only that, but the whole video felt easy, enjoyable, and natural to watch. 4 hours ago this video was in a different language, now it was just some guy saying some stuff that made me laugh; I was hardly cognizant of the fact that it was in a language other than English.
Later on that night, I listened to a Spanish rap song that I had listened to a few times over the course of the past few days, "Mi Proprio Cielo" by Nach (a Spaniard, unlike the Mexican Youtuber), and I understood nearly everything that was said. Not only that, but the song had more meaning, I could appreciate the poetry and the ideas he was communicating instead of getting hung up on the language itself.
I have struggled for years with listening comprehension and have poured hundreds of hours into watching TV shows I didn't even enjoy just to try to improve. I could have spent 20 hours watching telenovelas with Spanish Subtitles and not have gotten a third of the results I got in these mere 4 hours.
I understand that this may be a little abstract or complex for someone just getting into language learning, but for the veterans out there, spending an intensely focused 3-4 hours doing this, even once a week, can really give your listening skills, speaking skills and even your accent some serious progress.
I also am aware that the fact I am "reviving" a language that was once at a much higher level instead of learning listening comprehension in the first place played a big part in my success, but it seems that I improved, at least temporarily, beyond even what I was capable of in the past, (although I cannot be certain as this youtube video didn't exist back in my "spanish prime.")!!
Please let me know what you think, if you think there is anything I should tweak, or anything I should add, I would be happy to try and improve this method even further, and I hope someone out there finds this useful! If I would have done this instead of passive listening, I could have progressed much more in the same amount of time.
Thanks!
- Danny
