Ideal Ratio between Listening and Reading in your TL?

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Ideal Ratio between Listening and Reading in your TL?

Postby german2k01 » Sat Oct 02, 2021 8:32 pm

Hello Guys,

Let's assume, if you are starting from scratch in your target language and if you have 8 hours of study time each day available over the course of 6 months. What should be the ideal ratio that you should spend on between these two main activities? For the sake of this hypothetical question, focus on these two core activities. I am excluding time altogether for doing any deliberate grammar study and SRS review.

My end goal is to read books aimed at 9-12 years old (preference for doing free flow reading without depending too much on dictionary use). Also, to understand day-to-day conversations. Is it a reasonable goal?

Thanks
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Re: Ideal Ratio between Listening and Reading in your TL?

Postby rdearman » Sat Oct 02, 2021 8:42 pm

I will assume that you're not learning a new alphabet or characters? You didn't specify which language is your target language, so I'll assume it is the same alphabet. In which case, I would recommend 95% listening and 5% reading. Because understanding a spoken conversation between two natives is way more difficult than reading. When reading, you can always stop and lookup the words or figure them out from context.
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Re: Ideal Ratio between Listening and Reading in your TL?

Postby german2k01 » Sat Oct 02, 2021 8:57 pm

In which case, I would recommend 95% listening and 5% reading. Because understanding a spoken conversation between two natives is way more difficult than reading.


Do you think 5% reading will be sufficient to develop enough vocabulary range to make sense of native conversations?
Just assume I am learning German so yeah I am not expending extra time on learning alphabets unlike Arabic or Russian etc
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Re: Ideal Ratio between Listening and Reading in your TL?

Postby Steve » Sat Oct 02, 2021 9:40 pm

I think the ratio will change over time. Also, the two activities are not mutually exclusive as some find that following along with the audio (either silently reading or chorusing/shadowing) is a helpful method. My opinion is that it is useful to have several options for activities involving combinations of using audio, L2 text, L1 text, and if possible parallel or interlinear texts in different ways. Looking at doing hours per day, there is no way most people's brains will stay focused that long. My experience is that switching between activities keeps my attention span going longer. I try to use my ongoing experience over days and weeks of what seems to be working best as a guide to which combinations of activities to use. As my level of progress changes, the mix of activities needs to change. Some activities simply work better at different levels of progress than others, hence the mix of activities needs to change.
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Re: Ideal Ratio between Listening and Reading in your TL?

Postby lusan » Sun Oct 03, 2021 12:20 am

Given that

1. At the beginning, the vocabulary is pretty limited. Reading is a real job/task without fun.
2. It takes a while to build up vocabulary and basic grammar.
3. Reaching Extensive level reading -that is 96+ % decoding- is very important.

I would believe, then

Beginning - Listening >>>> Reading/Intensive
Intermediate - Listening = Reading both Intensive+Extensive
Advance (whatever that means) - Listening <<<< Reading

This is what I did/do for both French and Italian.
It works.
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Re: Ideal Ratio between Listening and Reading in your TL?

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Sun Oct 03, 2021 1:40 am

If you are starting from absolute scratch I would dedicate some solid time towards building a core vocabulary based on frequency. The top 3,000 or so words will do nicely. I like Clozemaster for this, all the cards are already made for you. Maybe an hour a day? I don’t know how much would be ideal, it’s more a matter of how much you can stand.
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Re: Ideal Ratio between Listening and Reading in your TL?

Postby rdearman » Sun Oct 03, 2021 5:46 am

german2k01 wrote:
In which case, I would recommend 95% listening and 5% reading. Because understanding a spoken conversation between two natives is way more difficult than reading.


Do you think 5% reading will be sufficient to develop enough vocabulary range to make sense of native conversations?
Just assume I am learning German so yeah I am not expending extra time on learning alphabets unlike Arabic or Russian etc

You had indicated that you would be doing Anki decks for vocabulary and doing textbook study and grammar. So I skewed the ratio away from reading towards listening because I don't believe that reading to a nine year old level and listening to a native conversation are equivalent in difficulty.
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Re: Ideal Ratio between Listening and Reading in your TL?

Postby german2k01 » Sun Oct 03, 2021 8:05 pm

Beginning - Listening >>>> Reading/Intensive


I think you can apply L-R method at a minuscule level. For example, we can use SlowGerman for audio and then also use DeepL for parallel English translation. That's how I tried increasing my vocabulary level in German when I was a zero beginner instead of memorizing 3000 frequent words approach via SRS. But again how much that knowledge converted into actual acquisition I have no concrete track record of it. However, my understanding of the language has improved to an extent now Germans prefer speaking exclusively in German.
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Re: Ideal Ratio between Listening and Reading in your TL?

Postby lusan » Mon Oct 04, 2021 12:54 am

german2k01 wrote:
Beginning - Listening >>>> Reading/Intensive


I think you can apply L-R method at a minuscule level. For example, we can use SlowGerman for audio and then also use DeepL for parallel English translation. That's how I tried increasing my vocabulary level in German when I was a zero beginner instead of memorizing 3000 frequent words approach via SRS. But again how much that knowledge converted into actual acquisition I have no concrete track record of it. However, my understanding of the language has improved to an extent now Germans prefer speaking exclusively in German.


When I did French, I went through Assimil at least 1 hr/day.
ah... I remember that I began reading, after several months, easy readers/A1-A2.
Then I found a great French podcast for A2-B1 level. There were ~50 episodes of about 10 min/each. I listened one a day. After that I moved on to Buffy the Vampire killers serial. 2-4 episodes/days WITHOUT subtitles. Those were great days!

The path, as far as I am concerned, is very clear: Get the basic voc/grammar...Start ease listening.... Then ease Intensive reading.... Start Podcast and dubbed serial.... and move into native/translated materials.

Of course, after that I did FSI Basic French.... just for fun or insanity!

What I mean? I find that the L-R method ask me to work and not much fun. L-R is not for me.
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Re: Ideal Ratio between Listening and Reading in your TL?

Postby Iversen » Mon Oct 04, 2021 10:09 am

rdearman wrote:I will assume that you're not learning a new alphabet or characters? You didn't specify which language is your target language, so I'll assume it is the same alphabet. In which case, I would recommend 95% listening and 5% reading. Because understanding a spoken conversation between two natives is way more difficult than reading. When reading, you can always stop and lookup the words or figure them out from context.


It's funny how different our priorities are.

If the writing system was different then I would learn it by transcribing something (no matter what) - and neither listening nor reading would be relevant at that stage. And precisely because understanding a spoken conversation between two natives is way more difficult than reading I would just spend maybe 5% of my time listening in the beginning (without any hope of understanding anything, but just to get some kind of voice ringing in my head for the next step), and I would be doing wordlists, reading grammar and studying bilingual texts the rest of the time. And only when I could read somewhat fluently would I step up my listening time - and I can't give percentages because they would depend more on availability than on simple common sense.

The good thing about reading is precisely that you always can stop and look the words up or figure them out from context - and since the same applies to writing I would write short texts long before attempting to speak to anyone. In other words I would first concoct sentences laboriously, then try to think, then write more or less freely, then listen (if possible concurrently with the preceding step) and only try to speak in public after a solid dosis of input that would make my head spin. But I would probably never be in a situation where I could have conversations in any of my target languages for more than a few hours at any one time.

As I said we all have our priorities, and there's another good thing about reading - I can listen to classical music while reading. And I can read (or study) for hours on end, whereas people tend to run away after a few hours (with bleeding ears) if they have to listen to me.
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