einzelne wrote:I didn't bring this high/low brow distinction into conversation. You did.
I do hope you are joking. It wasn't me who derisively pooh-poohed the notion of listening to 'reality TV' speech as 'a tremendous waste of time' compared to "philosophy, science, history, literature, art..." Withdraw this false claim please.
einzelne wrote:I was just pointing out the simple fact that in the majority of cases these materials are really damn boring. You really loose you motivation quite fast. So, unless you're a dog owner or a parent, I imagine all these conversations about dogs or teenagers would be rather bland and uninspiring. I tired, I gave up quite fast (and, judging from the discussions on forums of language learners, I was not alone who experienced that) and switched to The Wire — is an example of high or vernacular culture? I couldn't care less.
Yet a lot of people
are dog-owners and parents, and cyclists and whatnot. Not many are philosophers, practically none. And the fact is most people learning languages in a functional way for real-life use really are talking about everyday things and not Tolstoy or the money multiplier or Schubert song cycles, or 'cool stuff' on Vice. Or even far-fetched codswallop occurring in some Netflix series about an unlikely series of crimes in a small Scandinavian village.
einzelne wrote:I think, at the end of the day, it's a question of smart and realistic goal setting. If you study a language sitting while sitting in Russia, most of your time you will interact with artificial sources, as you name it: movies, books, radio, newspapers. I don't have zero problems with that, since this artificial products are the main reason why I study languages.
If you want to train your ear for informal conversations with natives, prepare to listen to a lot of boring materials. (Although, I would still ask myself first: do I really need it?)
Well I'd challenge the premise and say that it's actually more likely that it's
because someone is sitting in e.g. Russia learning a foreign language which is unlikely to be used in an interactive manner, that the falsely limited parameters are being set: 'I only want to read/consume passive culture'. That's fair enough, but it's not really a position from which to offer practical listening advice. I don't dissuade anyone from using books, radio, newspapers, film or TV, but stated that when people are talking on e.g. the news, or in a podcast about Rembrandt or in a public lecture, or in your presence or whatever, they are not talking like scripted characters. And that a good half of listening should reflect this otherwise it's much harder to understand them.