jeff_lindqvist wrote:I remember a similar discussion at HTLAL many years ago. (I can't find it now.) Repeated listening (and reading) has its merits. It's not unusual to listen to say, Assimil lessons many times. With the right approach, you understand more and more each time. But 100 times? What can be learned from the 100th time? The 90th? The 50th?
Repeated reading may have some benefits but I generally find that if I've not understood something, going back and re-reading it more slowly may help. But if it doesn't (even after looking up all the vocab and grammar etc. that I can find) then I'm not likely to understand it at this sitting. I probably won't understand it tomorrow either. I might understand it a few weeks or months later when I've learned whatever pattern was eluding me (or maybe I've just had a similar sentence decoded for me and that unlocks this one). I've been working through the past papers I've been taking lately, thoroughly translating them. If I come back today to the bits I found hard yesterday, I don't often make too much further progress. I might get further or even crack a problem just because I'm not tired today, but usually I need an insight (from my tutor, from the net or from the next three months of general reading practice ...).
Repeated listening, for me at least, is different. I have flashcards made by SUBS2SRS for some JPOD lessons and that helps. The bits I understand vanish fairly quickly, leaving me with the chunks I don't understand. Each day I listen to all the ones I have trouble with and concentrate on one or two, which I pull apart, learning all the vocab and listening repeatedly until I think I've got it or I just don't want to hear that sentence again right now. In a day or two those sentences will be back and I get to find out whether I did really learn them well enough or not.
I'm also trying to listen to a specific 45m episode of a specific drama series every day. I usually do this at the end of the day when I'm too tired too do much else. I listen to it all the way through without interruption and without replaying anything that I miss. I'd previously watched the entire series a year or so ago and even tried to work intensively through the first few episodes. After three or four runs through I knew each scene well enough to know what was coming up. I still miss goodly chunks of dialogue. However, I'm noticing that I'm missing fewer chunks of dialogue than I was just before Christmas (which is when I started). It isn't awfully exciting to be re-living my own personal Groundhog Day, but I'll keep going for as long as I'm seeing some benefit. I will try some intensive work on this episode as soon as I can find the time and I'll see if that helps too.
If it doesn't work for you or you don't think you could stand to do it, don't do it. I'm certainly hoping I won't need to watch this episode 100 times to clearly hear and understand the majority of the dialogue, but I do intend to keep going for now (unless I find something that is more effective for listening comprehension).