Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn

General discussion about learning languages
desitrader
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Re: Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn

Postby desitrader » Sun Mar 25, 2018 4:53 pm

olim21 wrote:...


Hi Olim21,
I am finding your posts very thought-provoking and different from all the usual stuff one reads on language learning sites, and they make a lot of sense to me. I'd be very interested to know more about your learning method.
Last edited by desitrader on Sun Mar 25, 2018 6:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn

Postby reineke » Sun Mar 25, 2018 5:16 pm

desitrader wrote:Hi Olim21,
I am finding your posts very thought-provoking and different from all the usual stuff one reads on language learning sites, and they make a lot of sense to me. I'd be very interested to know more about your learning method.


desitrader wrote:
I stand by what I said. It is impossible for non-native people to have native-like listening comprehension.


This 90/10 in favor of reading will certainly "prove" you right.
Last edited by reineke on Wed Mar 13, 2019 4:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn

Postby Serpent » Sun Mar 25, 2018 5:22 pm

tastyonions wrote:I've always kind of wanted to test the hypothesis of the "99% reading is the best language learning method EVAR" crowd. Maybe select a language with a fairly straightforward phonology and orthography (Greek?) and see how it goes.

I focused heavily on reading and writing when I began learning Finnish. I did listen to music and I also went to Finland once. My listening was crap until I went through the Da Vinci Code audiobook while following the written text.
Ever since I've done my best not to let my listening fall behind.
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Re: Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn

Postby Dragon27 » Sun Mar 25, 2018 6:27 pm

olim21 wrote:This is a common misconception.

But what makes you think it's a misconception? Your personal experience?

olim21 wrote:What you mean by passive "reading understanding" (I think) is that you know what the text you are reading is supposed to mean, but this is very different from real understanding.
...
Now, to address this problem you could listen over and over while thinking at the meaning, and you will get there eventually.

I've seen examples of people (not on this forum) that have read MASSIVE amounts of literature in English language, but still weren't able to comprehend aurally rather simple English speech (could only understand some intermediate learner's audio material), which I had no problem with (having listened to a lot of audio material and gotten used to normal fluent English speech). You may argue that they didn't learn proper pronunciation first, or haven't achieved "real" understanding (didn't read properly). It's all anecdata anyway.

olim21 wrote:Also what is the big deal about listening. As far I'm concerned, when I read I hear what I'm reading. So in a way I am listening too.

I don't think one could achieve good enough pronunciation after a few hours to go reading books with impunity. When one has a good "sound model" of the language in their head one could go do that, of course.
Still, to be able to understand not very well articulated speech just reading isn't enough.

olim21 wrote:Except that in speech there is no boundaries. That impression that a sentence is made of words comes from meaning not from the speech itself. In a way your brain is putting spaces back. To do that properly you need comprehension.

Of course. Or you need to be shown where those boundaries are and get used to them. One can also start noticing (even subconsciously) frequent chunks of sounds after some time and start recognizing phonetic words boundaries in real speech without even comprehending its meaning.
Either way, you still have to do listening (coupled with comprehension) activity to acquire that skill. There's just no other way.

olim21 wrote:As for intonation, compressed words, etc. I don't deny it will have to be learned at some point. But this seems difficult from your point of view only because your are trying to do it before you understand the language. And this is a very small detail in a long learning journey.

It isn't. Especially intonation. And I do learn some stuff in advance, but still continue learning throughout the whole process for a long period of time.

olim21 wrote:Slight misunderstanding here. I never said you should never listen. What I'm trying to make you realize is that most of the problems you describe are not listening problems but comprehension problems.

What I'm not realizing is how reading alone is supposed to solve listening comprehension problems fully. The only thing I could do to "realize" that is to believe (take on faith) that excessive deliberate reading will just solve it sooner or later.

olim21 wrote:And sometimes I listen simply because I enjoy the sound but that's not really part of my learning.

That sounds like an important part of learning to me ;). Especially the "enjoying" part.

olim21 wrote:Your pronunciation does not have to be perfect. There is a lot of leeway actually. Think about all the variations in how people pronounce the same words in English for example. As long it's not too alien, our brain understands just fine. Don't forget that when you understand you have the whole context behind you.

One can, of course, have awful pronunciation and good listening comprehension. As well as learn to understand different English accents. One does not understand all English accents, though, at once by achieving some universal English comprehension. You still have to train your brain to understand these accents (depending on their "alienness" to the accents person already knows) by listening to them.

olim21 wrote:Take your time and think about it. It should help you (I hope) to get a glimpse of what I am talking about.

It doesn't change anything. I still can't see how reading can affect reaction of the brain to aural limit to that degree. You get the aural input, but your brain hasn't been molded properly to get it, and you need to listen to do that. You need to listen a lot, because this process of molding the brain doesn't get perfect results from a few tries. And the brain still needs to learn to do all of that pattern recognizing job and gather words, phrases, the way they sound, etc. By being molded.
I understand that learning is a process of "rewiring" brain. I have a general idea of what "neural networks" are (or the illusion of it - which can't be dispelled by some simple "mold" analogy explanation). But I still can't see how it changes anything I say.
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Re: Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn

Postby olim21 » Sun Mar 25, 2018 6:48 pm

desitrader wrote:I am finding your posts very thought-provoking and different from all the usual stuff one reads on language learning sites, and they make a lot of sense to me.


Happy to hear it.

desitrader wrote:I'd be very interested to know more about your learning method.


I'm not sure my learning method is that different from everybody else's. At the end of the day, we all have the same kind of brain, that learns the same way. And sure, some people do more of this and less of that and they learn at a slightly different pace. But all that are details with no consequences in the real world, I think.

I can describe my daily routine, if you really want to.

What could be more interesting maybe is compare our idea of the ideal resource for learning a language.

My ideal resource would be a large corpus of text with sentenced aligned close translation, where each word would be decorated with its base form, its segmentation marked for stress, case, etc, and a gloss giving the core meaning of the base form. Plus a second level of gloss for actual meaning or multi-word meaning. On top of that you would have the audio, sentence aligned and word aligned.

The translated sentence prevent me from misinterpreting the language I'm learning. The gloss help me develop a meaning for each word. The second gloss give an actual meaning helping me to understand the whole sentence. The segmentation help me notice how word are constructed and also develop a meaning for the different part, case, etc. The base form help me link the various forms of the same word together. The audio for each word enables me to check the pronunciation if I need it. The sentence aligned audio give me the opportunity to hear a full sentence which I can use to control if my idea of the sound of the language has shifted or not.

With that, I could learn any language to a very high level. Reading, listening, speaking and writing.

I really hope teachers and editors will at some point publish that kind of resource and stop wasting everyone's time with boring useless graded reader, for example.

--
OM
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Re: Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn

Postby reineke » Sun Mar 25, 2018 8:53 pm

Can simultaneous reading and listening improve speech
perception and production?
Last edited by reineke on Wed Mar 13, 2019 4:21 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn

Postby olim21 » Sun Mar 25, 2018 8:55 pm

Serpent wrote:My listening was crap until I went through the Da Vinci Code audiobook while following the written text.


Very interesting example, thanks.

As a Finnish learner myself I always wondered if it could happened with a language with a simple morphology and basically a what you read is what you get type of language. I have my answer now, I guess.

And it happened to me too, for the first language I learned in school. I learned by reading without worrying about pronunciation because this how we were taught. And so after years of reading, I could read quite well, but I could not understand what I was listening to, I could understand some of it (or so I thought) by concentrating very hard but nothing more. And at the time I didn't know what the problem was. My teachers and other people around me kept telling me to listen more, so I listened more, a lot more actually. And I made some progress, to be honest. But 2 years later I was still watching TV shows with subtitles on.

I don't remember all the details because it was a long time ago now. But one day as I was watching some movie frustrated to miss part of the action because I had to read those damn subtitles, I read the word "indictment" and heard it almost at the same time, it sounded way off, so off that without the subtitles I would not have understood it, despite the fact that I already knew it in writing. And then it hit me: how am I suppose to connect those 2 things when they sound nothing alike.

So I started to work on my pronunciation, I googled it, and after a few stupid links I found HTLAL and Forvo. The next day I was on Forvo, listening and repeating word after word. Trying to change my pronunciation to match the example. I did that for a few weeks. One day I became fed up with that, so because I thought I had made good progress already, I decided to test my listening instead, and... nothing happened, I still could not understand anything, although what I was hearing felt somehow more familiar. So I stopped and forgot about it. I thought I would never understand.

One or two weeks later, I wanted to watch some poker tournament for which I could not find any subtitles. Because understanding the commentary was not vital, I started to watch it anyway. I didn't realize it immediately, only in the middle of the video, I suddenly realized that I was laughing at the commentators jokes. At that precise moment I knew I understood. It was very different. I still didn't know 100% of the word but my reading was not at 100% either, so no surprise here. The biggest difference now was that I could extract from the speech the word I didn't know and look them up. I could transcribe what I was hearing with very little difficulty. Listening used to feel to me like the buzzing you hear coming from the next room in a bad motel. It sound like speech but it's all fuzzy. Now everything was crystal-clear. I understood English.

Sorry for the long story.

All that to say that what I think happened here is that by listening while reading you fixed your pronunciation (or some of it). And it's still not a listening problem, you could have used the Forvo method I described above and obtained the same result in maybe less time. But this is certainly less boring to read a book.

Serpent wrote:Ever since I've done my best not to let my listening fall behind.


Fully agree with that: Never let your listening fall behind. This is a nightmare to fix after the fact.

That's why I listen regularly, generally only for a few minutes, to check that everything is still in place. Then I go back to reading.

Also 10% of listening during a multi-year learning process is still a lot, despite what tastyonions seems to think. If your are not satisfied by your progress you can try 20% (I doubt it will make any difference), but more than that and you are wasting time, I think.

--
OM
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desitrader
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Re: Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn

Postby desitrader » Sun Mar 25, 2018 9:48 pm

olim21 wrote:I'm not sure my learning method is that different from everybody else's.


I'm especially curious to know your view on the following:
- How do you read? E.g., extensive, intensive,...
- Where are you on the "input only" vs "produce as soon as possible" debate?
- And what about SRS vs no SRS?

Thanks.
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Re: Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn

Postby Serpent » Sun Mar 25, 2018 10:11 pm

desitrader wrote:
olim21 wrote:I'm not sure my learning method is that different from everybody else's.


I'm especially curious to know your view on the following:
- How do you read? E.g., extensive, intensive,...
- Where are you on the "input only" vs "produce as soon as possible" debate?
- And what about SRS vs no SRS?
This is very interesting, but please answer in another thread, olim21. Feel free to start a log or use any of the "how do you actually learn" threads.
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Re: Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn

Postby Fortheo » Sun Mar 25, 2018 11:55 pm

I've been able to read French books fairly easily for about a year now. I've also read out loud for various French people in order for them to criticize my pronunciation--all of them said I had good pronunciation. Reading is no problem for me and it hasn't been for a while, but listening is still a problem.

Coincidentally, I started listening a lot more and my listening improved (I did shadowing exercises and various other listening exercises). Oddly, whichever aspect of the language that I focus on is where I see the most improvements. Despite improving my listening by listening more, it still lags behind my reading ability.

Just leaving my anecdote.
Last edited by Fortheo on Mon Mar 26, 2018 12:06 am, edited 1 time in total.
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