How do you improve listening comprehension for a language that has no listening material for learners

[Dragon27]

I think there is a significant gap between listening to the Bible and improving listening comprehension for native material and native speakers.

Imagine for example that French was a language that had lots of native material but no intermediary, let alone beginner listening comprehension tools. No audiobooks, no subtitles, no scripts, no tapes, no CDs accompanying the textbook (or if there are, very few and hard to get). Sure, the Bible is a good place to start, but I want to know what you would do after that. How do you move on from the Bible so that you can be ready for a conversation of 3-4 native speakers in a bar or be able to watch and understand a French movie that uses contemporary, colloquial language?

Audiobooks (including the Bible one) surely are in the category of native material, aren't they? And once you have that initial listening comprehension boost you just go and listen to native material (of various difficulty) and develop it further. It's totally doable without learner's beginner or intermediary (or advanced) audio. Understanding everyday speech or TV series or anything like that is going to take time and effort, but it's not impossible. You could listen to authentic (not learner's) podcasts and radio. You could watch Youtube clips: vlogs and tutorials on various subjects, Let's Plays and commentaries, educational materials (physics, maths, history, whatever), comedy skits, choose the type of material that is interesting to you and makes you engaged and go with it. That's what I actually do (after the audiobooks). And then after I feel bold enough and more confident in my listening skills I just watch some long TV series until I learn to understand them.

[Lawyer&Mom]

If you can understand the New Testament you can follow a news bulletin or a kids cartoon. I actually used the Bible with French. Yes, this is a language with a ton of resources, but the Bible was familiar and free.

[Beli Tsar]

If you can understand the New Testament you can follow a news bulletin or a kids cartoon. I actually used the Bible with French. Yes, this is a language with a ton of resources, but the Bible was familiar and free.

And it tends to be recently, often well, translated, usually into reasonably accessible language. If you can get the Old Testament as well as the new that's more than 700,000 words. Even the New Testament alone is 160,000.

That's an awful lot more audio than most learners had in any language fifteen years ago.

[languist]

It’s a slight aside from the main topic, but addressing this tangent on using the bible to study -

I haven’t read anything from any bible since I was a young child and we had mandatory bible study at school. Do you think it could still be useful/accessible to use translated bibles in order to study languages with fewer resources? Do the translations tend to be quite true to the English version? Is the language not too formal or archaic?

[jend]

First off you I'd to study phonectics, so that I can articulate the proper phonemes for the words I read. Then if just learn by reading and listen to native media right off, I'll begin to be able to pick a word here and there, then some phrases, until I'm undertanding almost everything.... You are sure to see a lot of progress if you practice often over a few months.... your listening level is bound to match your reading level eventually....

I'm pretty sure I could learn any language if I have a phonetic description, a basic grammar tutorial, texts to read, a dictionary, and native media...

This right here.
Get the phonetic first.

[Lawyer&Mom]

It’s a slight aside from the main topic, but addressing this tangent on using the bible to study -

I haven’t read anything from any bible since I was a young child and we had mandatory bible study at school. Do you think it could still be useful/accessible to use translated bibles in order to study languages with fewer resources? Do the translations tend to be quite true to the English version? Is the language not too formal or archaic?

There are lots of different bible translations. Some are formal and archaic. Some are very accessible and contemporary. Bible.is usually does a good job of identifying the version and date of each translation. Some languages have more than one version to choose from.

[Beli Tsar]

It’s a slight aside from the main topic, but addressing this tangent on using the bible to study -

I haven’t read anything from any bible since I was a young child and we had mandatory bible study at school. Do you think it could still be useful/accessible to use translated bibles in order to study languages with fewer resources? Do the translations tend to be quite true to the English version? Is the language not too formal or archaic?

There are lots of different bible translations. Some are formal and archaic. Some are very accessible and contemporary. Bible.is usually does a good job of identifying the version and date of each translation. Some languages have more than one version to choose from.

This is true. The more unusual a language is, the more likely a translation is to be relatively recent - and therefore neither formal not archaic. Some nineteenth century or early twentieth century ones are a bit like that, but there's been a huge flurry of translation in recent decades, into contemporary language. There are many languages where it's the first thing written.

The big thing to remember is that as they are translated from Greek and Hebrew you want to read alongside an English translation that is too - and a relatively literal one is better (ESV, NASB, NRSV are examples, perhaps the NIV), not a freer translation and certainly not something like the King James, which is not just archaic but also based on less accurate manuscripts, and so will differ slightly from more modern translations in places.

But all the versions I mentioned are free to read online.