Is listening to slowed down audio useful for improving listening skill?

[kikenyoy]

I'm intermediate level in speaking and reading Thai, but my listening skills are really lagging behind. Most advice seems to be some variation of "just listen more" and in the Word Brain book he says it takes 2000 hours of listening to be able to effortlessly parse a foreign language. I've taken long breaks at times and haven't logged my hours so I don't know how many hours I've put in but it's probably around 2000. I've done spurts where I'll spend several hours a day listening for weeks at a time and I don't notice any improvement. I haven't found much intermediate level material so most of it has been movies where I'm understanding about 30-50%.

There is a website with short Thai videos with the transcript and translation so I started watching them. There was one phrase that I just couldn't hear correctly and I thought maybe there was a mistake with the transcript. I asked a Thai friend to listen to it and write down what she heard and she wrote it the same as the transcript. This top sentence is the correct version; below that is what I heard:

bplai kaa naa sawng kaang

sai tan maa sawng kaang

Quite a big difference. I listened to it about 20 times trying to hear it as it was written but I couldn't. I slowed the audio down to 40% then I could clearly hear it spoken correctly. In this case I knew all the vocabulary but was just hearing it incorrectly (and what I was hearing has no meaning. It wasn't a case of guessing something else due to the context).

A few years ago I asked a couple language bloggers about listening to slowed down audio and they both said it wasn't a good idea. I should just keep listening to native material and my ear will eventually be able hear correctly. I've occasionally slowed down a short section of audio to try to hear it clearly but I've never tried it as a method. My idea is to try adjusting the speed so that I can clearly hear everything and then to gradually increase the audio speed as I improve. Does anyone have any experience doing this?

[jeff_lindqvist]

Two related topics:
Slowed-down speech - the root of listening comprehension failure?
LIE to a polyglot

[Dylan95]

I prefer to listen to natural native audio, but with subtitles. Then I listen without reading, read while listening, and then once again without reading.

Of course..subtitles are not always available.

[Aozora]

If slowing it down makes it comprehensible, then it's better to slow it down, imho.

[blaurebell]

I think the biggest obstacle to listening comprehension is not having the pronunciation system properly internalised. I found that listening comprehension became easy once I could actually be sure that I hear the differences between all the different sounds. The way to get there is by using minimal pairs drills, but I'm not sure whether anything like that is available for Thai. There is a Thai FSI course though and most FSI courses contain at least some minimal pairs listening drills at the beginning. There also seems to be a book called Improving Your Thai Pronunciation, but it might not contain the minimal pairs, I don't know.

In any case, once I have the pronunciation system solidly internalised, for me the best strategy is to start with listening-reading with an audiobook. Then afterwards I listen to another audiobook read by the same speaker without the text. Then I start with a dubbed series that is very action heavy and where visual cues help a lot, like Stargate, Buffy or something like that. Usually you don't need to understand everything in those kinds of series to get what's going on. Watch the first season with subtitles, then turn them off *even if you don't seem to understand*. It will get better. Keep watching for about 7 seasons and you should understand 95-98% of what is said in that series. Your comprehension will still be a little worse for properly native stuff, but it's a solid basis. From there a good next step is to listen to audio only authentic native material, radio documentaries, audiobooks that sort of thing. You will notice that you relied heavily on visual clues and it will take a little while to adapt, speakers on the radio and voice actors usually enunciate quite well though, which makes things easier. Again, keep listening even if you miss a certain amount of the content. And as soon as you understand most of it, listen to podcasts instead. They usually aren't done by professional speakers, so they are a little more challenging. After about 150h you'll probably understand most of what you hear. And then you're at a good point to start watching native series.

You see, slowing things down doesn't help you to understand natives who mumble and speak fast. The trick is to go from easier material to the really difficult stuff. First try to understand voice actors who tend to enunciate better, but still speak fast, audiobooks, radio documentaries, dubbed series. Then move on to native speakers, who don't speak so clearly and use slang, podcasts, native series. The hardest are usually native movies with actors who mumble a lot in an unfamiliar accent. Movies are usually too short to get used to the way the actors speak. Leave them for last.

And as LesRonces said, often it's also a vocabulary problem. I have some numbers for comparison: In Spanish I only read 5000 pages extensively and my vocabulary is imprecise and mainly colloquial. I clocked more than 800h of listening, but scored only B2 in the Dialang listening comprehension test. I read about 10,000 pages in French, the first 5,000 pages intensively, so my vocabulary is quite precise, literary and broad. I only clocked 315h of French audio. Yet, in the Dialang listening comprehension test I scored C1! So, the trick to good listening comprehension seems to be to read a lot! Unintuitive, isn't it? Often we don't even realise how many unknown words we skip while listening. I tend to find my listening comprehension in Spanish not so bad, but when my husband sits next to me and points out a difficult word I actually realise that I didn't even hear the word in the first place. My brain just ignored it altogether if it's not essential to understanding.

[DangerDave2010]

I did it for a little while, I started at 80%, then increased speed gradually. I took me just a few days to get used to 100% speed.

This is probably only going to be useful for those who haven't been listening enough to catch up. Nowadays I'd start listening to native content from day one, I don't think speed would ever be an issue.

PS. You should probably start with cartoons, then progress to harder genra.

PS2. at your low comprehension level, you should be working with transcribed audio, work through it untill you can understand it fully, then re listen regularly.

[Henkkles]

"Is listening to slowed down audio useful for improving listening skill?"

Yes it is. Any time you understand messages in your target language, the parser in your brain gets a little bit better. If you work with an audio lesson at 80% speed and increase it gradually back to 100% you should see improve.