How do you manage passive listening?

[sporedandroid]

I'm guessing that the OP is trying to make a distinction between normal/active listening and "passive" background listening of easy and/or already-familiar material while doing other activities?

I suspected that might be the case, but in that case, I question the value of the entire endeavor.

I often listen to TL music while eating because I might as well, but I don't think it actually helps much. In my experience, I basically don't hear the music at all unless I am actively paying attention to it.

I find it way too easy to obsess over one genre of music, so it might as well be TL music for me. I’m not sure how much it helps. I don’t consider listening to music studying. It seems to make vocabulary stick more. When the lyrics are simple enough I seem to be able to understand quite a bit. It must be at least some listening practice.

What I mean by passive listening is doing more listening where I’m not sitting down and studying. It doesn’t necessarily mean I won’t be paying attention.

[Cavesa]

Binge watching tv series. It works really well (but of course it isn't for true beginners).

[Iversen]

My experience is that I learn absolutely nothing from purely passive passive listening.

On the other hand: If it is a weak language I can at least learn to parse the sound stream into words and sentences if I listen attentively. I may also get some valuable information about the sound system of the language in question if I listen attentively, plus some tips about style. However to really learn vocabulary and grammar I have to see things and maybe even write them down. It might have been different for me before I learnt to read and write, but that's at least how it is now. I'm not a baby anymore so I have to use the system I'm equipped with now.

With strong languages I may pick up some rare or very topic specific words here and there, but again: I would learn much more by reading a text about the same subject.

By the way: I did a lecture about vocabulary gains from reading and listening during the polyglot conference in Novi Sad, and my conclusion that even reading only boosts your vocabulary if you really do something to notice and pick up new words. Reading in an uninterested way (or just pretending to read to satisfy some researchers) will be close to wasted time. Those experiments which reported about great gains systematically used multiple choice testing for greater convencience, and when you do that you don't test the recall skills of the testees, but only their recognition skills, i.e. their passive vocabulary (plus some amount of 'guessable' words). And it is much easier to recognize words than it is to produce them without assistance. However you can change that situation if you really try to be attentive to not only the content, but also to the language of your sources. And because language learners are supposed to be more interested in language for its own sake than others they are more liable to skip the passive thing and become active - and that's when they start picking up things.

It's to some extent the same thing with listening, but with the added problem that speech comes out of the blue and disappears again, and if you try to hard to understand anything you miss several seconds from the stream. OK, if you have a recording and press replay and listen to the passage again and again this may help, but written text (apart from subtitles) doesn't just disappear - it stays put so that you can examine it.

[reineke]

Based on my reading of sporedandroid's first post he's describing reviewing and later listening to material above his skill level. Most other posts seem to refer to relaxed, mostly attentive listening and a couple of posts possibly refer to background noise. Elsewhere on this forum "passive" listening may involve some attention, no attention or worse.It is likely posters are not sure what others are referring to when discussing "passive" listening.

At least one study I can remember refers to "passive" listening as listening while paying attention and tests it against diverted attention listening.

Intensive listening presupposes linguistic analysis and comprehension checks ie work that requires more than simply paying attention.

Extensive listening normally involves listening for gist and enjoyment to "easy" material.

Active listening involves interaction.



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