How effective is methodology of reading and listening to the same material repeatedly

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Re: How effective is methodology of reading and listening to the same material repeatedly

Postby Serpent » Wed Jan 09, 2019 1:51 am

CompImp wrote: It will always take the easiest route, which is reading. Which means if you're listening and reading, you're mostly just reading. Try and watch a show with subs in your native language, and ignore the subs. It's very hard.
Scandinavians beg to differ. They generally ignore the subtitles when their level of English is high enough. I can't do this myself, but from what I know it's just a habit you can train.
Reading is not necessarily the easier part, this depends on your level, on the language and its orthography, other languages you know etc.
Not to mention how many people seem to prefer videos to articles (in L1 at least), which probably shows watching is easier than reading to them. (in this context i prefer reading, at least when it's genuinely an equal choice)
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Re: How effective is methodology of reading and listening to the same material repeatedly

Postby zenmonkey » Wed Jan 09, 2019 2:25 am

CardiffGiant wrote:
jeff_lindqvist wrote:
CardiffGiant wrote:As far as repetition for each dialogue passage (which is up to 12 minutes in length), one should re-listen at least 100 times.


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?

I am about 40 times in and I am asking myself the same question. I am sure that there is value to this method but I am unsure whether the law of diminishing returns kicks in and perhaps I would be better served moving on to the next dialogue. This is one of the reasons I started the thread :D


I feel that this is ineffective over learning - you may be memorizing but you’ve gone beyond what Assimil recommends. After 8 or more, there shouldn’t be much more that you are getting from each repetition. At this rate you’ll spend 5 yrs on beginner level material before moving on. It’s also about moving on quickly to the next material and eventually to native material.

100 x 12 min? That’s like 1.5 lessons a month.
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Re: How effective is methodology of reading and listening to the same material repeatedly

Postby CardiffGiant » Wed Jan 09, 2019 4:14 pm

CompImp wrote:A few things:


In practice, reading and listening 'at the same time' is great for garnering meaning but it's not the best or most efficient way to improve either skill. You're much better off isolating and practising than doing both. The benefit of this is also that just listening without words removes a crutch and forces your listening to get better.

In my opinion, we should listen repeatedly to at least give our ear a chance of picking stuff up on its own. Going over something a few times and then getting the subs to read meaning is a disservice to your ear. We need to give it a fair shot, and then rely on subs if we truly can't get it. Subs in this instance should be used to garner meaning where all other avenues have failed. This also only works if we already have enough vocabulary or enough of the context is known for acquisition to occur.


A couple of things:

1. With some dialogue, one cannot discern the words that are being spoken, not for lack of vocabulary, but because words are essentially pronounced together so wouldn't reading and listening assist with learning the words that are being said in the target language? If you don't read a transcript while listening or separately, listening repeatedly won't provide much value in some cases(this may be what you meant by suggesting reading and listening may help with ascertaining the meaning).

2. The method that I am following suggests that one listen first to the dialogue 2-3 times without reading along. I am curious if you think that that is enough repetition before employing reading or subs with the understanding that everyone is different. How much do you think is enough using just the ear?

Thanks
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Re: How effective is methodology of reading and listening to the same material repeatedly

Postby NoManches » Wed Jan 09, 2019 4:55 pm

When I was somewhere in the low intermediate to intermediate level with Spanish, I spent a TON of time with repeated listening. Just the mere thought of it now makes me shudder.

Let me give a little background:

I used to find podcasts that I liked which were made for native speakers. I would hire somebody to make a transcript of the podcast for me, usually costing about $5-10. I would then spend hours and hours listening to the same 10-15 minute long podcast. I would spend hours reading the transcript and looking up words that I didn't know (and adding them to Anki). I'd also put the podcast into the music program Audacity. With Audacity, I could break the podcast into snippets, and put those snippets on repeat. I would then spend even more hours transcribing the podcast, filling up notebooks....while using the transcript to check my work.

So you can say I have some experience with repeated listening....

Here are a few things I noticed and my thoughts on the idea of repeated listening/reading:

-There comes a time when you are better off moving on to new material. I think repeated listening has its benefits, but when you are on your 100th listen and are barely making any improvements...maybe your time is better spent with a new podcast???

-I remember sitting down with some podcasts and even after the 500th+ listen WITH the transcript, my brain just couldn't comprehend some of the things said. TO THIS VERY DAY (3+ years later) I remember one podcast that gave me a lot of trouble came from a show called "Dicen Por Ahí". A woman was telling a story about being in Mexico City and it was raining outside and she didn't have an umbrella...or something like that, and I always remember her saying something so fast that no matter how many times I listened, even with the transcript, I couldn't make it out. It was SO FRUSTRATING. I had the damn transcript in front of me but anytime I listened without looking at the transcript I couldn't make out what she was saying even though I knew what she was saying because I had it on paper. I think the problem was that how she said it didn't match up with how I thought it would/should sound based on my intermediate level at the time. What I eventually realized is that you have to give your brain time develop when it comes to listening comprehension. In this case I was better off moving to another podcast instead of spending hours trying to go from 89% comprehension to 90% comprehension. It's funny how I still remember that one podcast and episode all these years later because I listened to it so many times.

- As an advanced learner, I now find 2-3 listens of a podcast more than sufficient. Sure, I could listen once and move on. However, I like using the 1st listen as a way of knowing what to expect in the podcast, and then using the 2nd-3rd listen as ways of REALLY trying to understand everything. For some podcasts (such as a daily talk show), one listen is more than enough. No need to repeat that stuff. The ones I give a second and third listen to are usually podcasts about interesting or educational topics. I treat them as a way of learning about a new topic....not just as a podcast I only listen to in order to work on my Spanish.

-In my opinion, you are better of sitting down with a pen and paper while taking notes about a podcast, rather than relying on 1,000 repetitions while walking around and being distracted.

In regards to repeated reading:

-I've done it with books a few times and really like the idea. I have returned to books I read years ago and found that although my comprehension has increased, the book still poses a challenge. In many cases, one of the only real ways of encountering many of the words you read in a book is to read that book over again...or maybe read more books by the same author. I would only do this for books I find very interesting. And since most of the fiction I read is of the mystery/detective genre, it often makes sense to go back to looks for clues that you missed the first time anyway.

-A new habit I've developed is that if I'm reading a chapter but don't finish it.....I HAVE to start from the beginning the next time I start the book. I don't follow this rule all the time, but it has helped to improve my comprehension for a few different reasons.

Final thoughts:

Repeated listening and reading can be good.....up to a certain point. I don't think listening to something with the goal of reaching 100% comprehension is a good idea. Aiming for 85% comprehension and moving on is a better use of your time, in my opinion. If you like the idea of "mastering" a podcast, then maybe do it once in a great while....but sometimes quantity is better than quality. I like the idea of working with a podcast and returning to it months or years later, so maybe try this method instead of burning yourself out on the first go.
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Re: How effective is methodology of reading and listening to the same material repeatedly

Postby reineke » Wed Jan 09, 2019 7:54 pm

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Last edited by reineke on Fri Dec 27, 2019 3:55 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: How effective is methodology of reading and listening to the same material repeatedly

Postby StringerBell » Thu Jan 10, 2019 4:41 am

reineke wrote: Listen to your new TV programme for 15 to 60 minutes every day, starting on the very first day that you begin studying another language.
http://www.thewordbrain.com/


Interestingly, this is in direct conflict with what Luca Lampariello says in his book; that starting out by watching TV/movies that you don't understand and are way over your level is an extremely inefficient way to approach language learning and he doesn't recommend it.

I've read of many experiments where people tried massive passive listening to native material when they were at a A0/A1 level (having TV/radio on all day) and I have never really heard of it being successful. I'm sure there are success stories somewhere, but I don't see the value (nor the enjoyment) in listening for an hour a day to a TV show that is completely incomprehensible.
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Re: How effective is methodology of reading and listening to the same material repeatedly

Postby reineke » Thu Jan 10, 2019 4:22 pm

My first baby steps in Italian, German, Spanish and Portuguese were made solely with the help of TV programs. I'm still in the playpen with a couple of these languages.

Russian: TV and audiobooks.

Polish: music and audiobooks.
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Re: How effective is methodology of reading and listening to the same material repeatedly

Postby Serpent » Thu Jan 10, 2019 4:47 pm

reineke wrote:" Unless you emigrate, speech recognition training is as lonely a task as word learning.

"The final surrogate for speech in real life is TV. Apart from high quality documentaries, which are rare, TV is a poor source of content, and most of us would prefer reading books or scientific journals. TV is also mostly irrelevant. ... drug-intoxicated gangs of youths... "

..." all this has little or no impact on your personal and professional life, and watching TV is basically tantamount to killing precious life time. Imperfect though it may be, some broadcasts, for example TV news programmes, can nonetheless be outstanding speech trainers.
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Re: How effective is methodology of reading and listening to the same material repeatedly

Postby dampingwire » Thu Jan 10, 2019 8:07 pm

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).
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