How do you bridge the gap between intermediate and advanced listening comprehension?

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yossarian
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How do you bridge the gap between intermediate and advanced listening comprehension?

Postby yossarian » Wed Mar 13, 2019 9:38 am

Hola a todos!

At the end of last year I went on a podcast binge and reached what I think is an intermediate level of listening comprehension; I can understand most of the podcasts aimed at learners and the majority of what my tutors on iTalki are saying to me. However, in the last month or so I feel like I've hit a brick wall and am finding it hard to jump from intermediate content to spontaneous conversation like you might hear on the radio. I find TV shows are becoming more comprehensible, but it's obviously hard to consume these while working to work etc...

What are your strategies? I feel like there is a dearth of material available for getting past this plateau.

Cheers
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Re: How do you bridge the gap between intermediate and advanced listening comprehension?

Postby Cavesa » Wed Mar 13, 2019 10:07 am

I usually start with TV series around B1, picking something easier (an easier genre, good dubbing, possibly something already known or similar), and progress to harder stuff.

It takes a few hundred hours to get really comfortable with almost everything. When you are ok with hard original series, you are likely to find anything else (normal natives in real life, radio, C2 exam listening) easy.

Whether or not you can just listen to a series while doing other stuff, that depends. There are series, that are absolutely ok this way, some others are not. Perhaps listening to an already known series could solve your trouble completely. Most fans have a series we know so well, we cold narrate the whole episode just based on a short extract. We know what is being said, even without the sound on. And similarly, we know what is going just based on the dialogue too.

It is likely to be harder than the watching normally though, your learnin curve is likely to be steeper at first. The combination of listening with the visual clues is one of the main advantages of tv series. But I think this complication can be overcome by a good choice of the tv series.

the "tricks" on how to progress with extensive listening:
1.The more, the better. Yes, you are likely to see first improvements soonish, but don't expect miracles and immediately. That's where most people fail and give up. To give you some idea about realistic expectations: In a new intermediate language, I tend to leave the first shock "help, I can't undertand" behind after an episode or two. I notice improvement after approximately one season of the first tv series, that's where I'd say the initial phase ends. Then it is a more progressive process for months or years, all depending on the time I put in.
2.Only enjoyable stuff. You'll need to spend a lot of time on this, so why torture yourself. Spanish is great and offers so much, there is something great (or at least bearable without suffering) for everyone.
3.Based on my experience, I am more and more convinced that longer sessions, even though less frequent, are much better for this than the frequent short ones, at least at the beginning. Basically, the brain needs some time to adjust at the beginning of every session, and it is a longer time at first. So, if you watch(or listen) for 3 hours in a row, the time spent improving after the initial phase is much longer, than in 3 one hour long sessions.
4.Create a learning curve adapted to your needs. If something is too hard and frustrating, perhaps putting it aside for now and returning later is a good choice. But remember that almost everything new will feel hard for the first episode or two, until you reach a certain level. But when you find a tv series or a genre too easy, it may be time to leave your comfort zone (and return to it just for enjoyment :-) ).
5.If you want to be efficient, don't stop using your other learning methods. The individual activities support each other. This is my main difficulty btw :-D Don't be like me.

Of course, intensive listening with transcript dissection is possible too and some learners have excellent experience with it. It has different advantages and disadvantages. But the extensive way is being underestimated a lot and it has worked for me four times already. Very briefly and incompletely summed up: intensive listening is probably better for fast increase of your vocabulary, while extensive listening is much better for real life listening comprehension.

No matter the details of your method (you may opt for more dictionary use then me for example), the main point, spending a lot of time on this, is always the same. Listen for long enough, and you'll get to your goal :-) have fun!
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Re: How do you bridge the gap between intermediate and advanced listening comprehension?

Postby StringerBell » Wed Mar 13, 2019 4:47 pm

I think listening comprehension requires 2 main things: (1) Knowing enough vocabulary, and (2) being able to process what you're hearing quickly enough. First, I focus on increasing the words and phrases I can recognize using intensive listening, then I slowly work on getting my brain used to processing the speed of target language by using extensive listening.

I've had a lot of success with doing things like:
1) watch a TV show dubbed in Italian with English subs (to understand what people are saying), then rewatch the same episode without subs. When possible, I make notes of new words or the timestamp where a character is saying something I don't understand and ask a native speaker about it later.
2) Read a novel while listening to the audiobook. I've tried various ways of doing this. If my level of reading is fairly low, I read the chapter in English first, then I listen and read to the same chapter in my target language. When my level is higher, I skip the English translation, but look up 1-2 words per page.
3) Listen to a podcast that has the transcription, or watch videos with duel subtitles or watch videos with target language subtitles (but then I pause the video a lot to look up unknown words). Once I understand the podcast or video sufficiently well, I listen to it multiple times without the text.
4) Read shorter stories, articles, blog posts, basically anything "short" and contemporary and look up new vocabulary. Very often these words show up later when I'm listening, and if I've come across them in reading, I'm more likely to recognize/remember them when I hear them in a different context.
5) As time goes on, I listen to more and more native media without looking up words; the focus shifts to processing what people are saying in real time, and not worrying about missing a word here or there. When I find a podcast that's particularly interesting, I listen to the episodes repeatedly; sometimes I have episodes I've already listened to playing in the background when I'm brushing my teeth or doing something equally mindless; it doesn't matter if my attention drifts in and out since I've already listened to the episode.

As a beginner I have to accept "good enough" which means looking up/asking about just enough words so that I can get the gist; otherwise I would get too overwhelmed and I think it would be counterproductive. As I move into intermediate territory, I have to consciously replace the mindset "good enough" with really wanting to understand every word or phrase that doesn't quite make sense, because usually it's an idiom or a grammatical construction that I need to learn.

Advanced listening comprehension really just takes time, patience, and consistency. To get good at anything, you have to do it a lot.
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Re: How do you bridge the gap between intermediate and advanced listening comprehension?

Postby CardiffGiant » Wed Mar 13, 2019 9:08 pm

StringerBell wrote:I think listening comprehension requires 2 main things: (1) Knowing enough vocabulary, and (2) being able to process what you're hearing quickly enough. First, I focus on increasing the words and phrases I can recognize using intensive listening, then I slowly work on getting my brain used to processing the speed of target language by using extensive listening.

I've had a lot of success with doing things like:
1) watch a TV show dubbed in Italian with English subs (to understand what people are saying), then rewatch the same episode without subs. When possible, I make notes of new words or the timestamp where a character is saying something I don't understand and ask a native speaker about it later.
2) Read a novel while listening to the audiobook. I've tried various ways of doing this. If my level of reading is fairly low, I read the chapter in English first, then I listen and read to the same chapter in my target language. When my level is higher, I skip the English translation, but look up 1-2 words per page.
3) Listen to a podcast that has the transcription, or watch videos with duel subtitles or watch videos with target language subtitles (but then I pause the video a lot to look up unknown words). Once I understand the podcast or video sufficiently well, I listen to it multiple times without the text.
4) Read shorter stories, articles, blog posts, basically anything "short" and contemporary and look up new vocabulary. Very often these words show up later when I'm listening, and if I've come across them in reading, I'm more likely to recognize/remember them when I hear them in a different context.
5) As time goes on, I listen to more and more native media without looking up words; the focus shifts to processing what people are saying in real time, and not worrying about missing a word here or there. When I find a podcast that's particularly interesting, I listen to the episodes repeatedly; sometimes I have episodes I've already listened to playing in the background when I'm brushing my teeth or doing something equally mindless; it doesn't matter if my attention drifts in and out since I've already listened to the episode.

As a beginner I have to accept "good enough" which means looking up/asking about just enough words so that I can get the gist; otherwise I would get too overwhelmed and I think it would be counterproductive. As I move into intermediate territory, I have to consciously replace the mindset "good enough" with really wanting to understand every word or phrase that doesn't quite make sense, because usually it's an idiom or a grammatical construction that I need to learn.

Advanced listening comprehension really just takes time, patience, and consistency. To get good at anything, you have to do it a lot.


Any suggestions on the tv shows dubbed in italian that you listened to? What italian materials did you find the most interesting when you were doing this method?

Thanks
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Re: How do you bridge the gap between intermediate and advanced listening comprehension?

Postby Lianne » Wed Mar 13, 2019 9:31 pm

StringerBell wrote:I think listening comprehension requires 2 main things: (1) Knowing enough vocabulary, and (2) being able to process what you're hearing quickly enough. First, I focus on increasing the words and phrases I can recognize using intensive listening, then I slowly work on getting my brain used to processing the speed of target language by using extensive listening.


I've been realising lately just how hard that second part is. My reading has improved by leaps and bounds recently, so I keep thinking it should transfer to my listening abilities, but I think there are two obstacles there: 1) there are probably lots of English cognates in French that I can easily read but won't necessarily catch in spoken form, and 2) the speed makes everything incomprehensible to me.

I can understand almost everything said in Peppa Pig, but even then I have to really focus. Most things I listen to, I catch words here and there but just can't keep up to understand it as a whole. :(
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Re: How do you bridge the gap between intermediate and advanced listening comprehension?

Postby StringerBell » Wed Mar 13, 2019 10:10 pm

CardiffGiant wrote:Any suggestions on the tv shows dubbed in italian that you listened to? What italian materials did you find the most interesting when you were doing this method?
Thanks


Since I wanted to learn conversational Italian, I specifically focused on shows with ordinary people who were likely to be speaking in a way I'd want to mimic. So I automatically discarded shows that featured mafia characters, police procedurals, etc... If you have Netflix, a good option is That 70s Show; there are 8 seasons (200 episodes), with dubbing available in several languages, including Italian. For a language learner, this kind of show is great, because it focuses on a group of teenagers and their parents, so they are going to be using everyday dialogue. The great thing about watching TV series instead of movies is that you start to get used to how characters talk; they tend to recycle the same phrases and eventually you can predict the kinds of things they're probably saying even when you can't totally understand the words.

I worked with the first seasons the most intensively; I took a lot of notes, I rewatched scenes multiple times to try to hear the words they were saying. Once I was able to understand most of what the characters were saying in the first 2 seasons, I didn't have to write much down in the following seasons because those same words and phrases would keep popping up. So there were progressively fewer things I didn't understand. By the time I got to the 6th or 7th season, I didn't feel like I needed to watch it first with English subs, but I decided to keep using the same routine until I finished the whole series. In retrospect, I'm glad I did that.

I worked intensively with other series, too, but most of the others only had 1 or 2 seasons; I think by far the most useful dialogue that I learned was from That 70s Show.

I recently did another TV series experiment; I watched both seasons of La Casa de Papel dubbed in Italian (without subs). I understood it well, though I missed a little at the beginning (I always seem to miss something in the beginning, because I think I'm distracted by trying to figure out the show and get my bearings), and I missed a few little things here and there, but overall I was able to follow the plot and dialogue without a problem. Then, I rewatched those 2 seasons a 2nd time in Italian with English subs, just to pick up on whatever little things I missed. This was useful for other reasons, because there are a few moments where I'd read the subs in English and listen to how they expressed that idea in Italian, and I was like, "Oh, that's how you could translate that!" Now, I'm rewatching it a 3rd time without subs. It feels so easy to understand that I don't have to put any effort into it or even pay attention 100%, so I think of it as reinforcement than learning. I can't rewatch everything multiple times, so I try to mix in other shows that I just watch once without subs to keep myself from getting too bored by the repetition.

In terms of podcasts, my favorites were Italiano Automatico (especially the earlier episodes) and Podcast Italiano (Davide has created episodes for beginners, intermediates, and advanced. The beginner stuff has transcripts, while most of the advanced stuff doesn't). Early on, I worked intensively with the amazing podcast series Veleno (which has a transcript on their website).
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Re: How do you bridge the gap between intermediate and advanced listening comprehension?

Postby golyplot » Thu Mar 14, 2019 2:50 am

One tip: Look up a plot summary before you watch. That way you won't get lost as much and will be able to understand more of what is said.

Also, I don't think there's much point in listening passively to TV while doing other stuff. That's not what it's made for, and you have to be at a high level already to get anything out of it. Perhaps it would be better to listen to music.
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Re: How do you bridge the gap between intermediate and advanced listening comprehension?

Postby Perchta » Sun Mar 24, 2019 10:10 pm

What really helped me with my French listening skills was living in Belgium for ten months and attending university courses in French. I know that you don’t have the possibility to move to another country for several months. But, at least for some time, to simulate this I would force me to watch TV series or to listen to podcasts every day for several hours. But choose the topics you like (to stay motivated) and you know something about (to catch more - if you watch a TV series, choose one you’ve already seen). It is important to have some practice with listening (you have) and a sufficient vocabulary basis - to be able to understand, you have really to know the vocabulary and to remind it quickly.
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