Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn

General discussion about learning languages
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reineke
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Re: Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn

Postby reineke » Tue Mar 27, 2018 11:09 pm

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Last edited by reineke on Fri Dec 27, 2019 3:28 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn

Postby tastyonions » Wed Mar 28, 2018 12:19 am

olim21 wrote:
tastyonions wrote:Because it is easy to fool yourself.


Why? You can't compare between what you hear and what you pronounce? I can.

I can manage pretty well by myself, I think, but listen to non-natives who learned as adults speak any language you care to mention, even ones who have been speaking the language for a number of years, and you will quickly find evidence that many people...can't. They may be understandable, but one can be perfectly understandable with a grating accent or even a significantly flawed pronunciation, provided that it's flawed in ways that don't erase too many distinctions present in the target language.
I can't say that I have. You can always find oddballs, I guess. What I have seen very often however is comments below a youtube video telling the guy in the video how amazing he is, speaking flawlessly, with no accent, like a native, when I would have described the performance as crappy at best.

That happens, too. Maybe some of those hyperbolic comments are even from natives trying to encourage learners. That's why it can pay to find someone who will just give it to you straight.

;)
Last edited by tastyonions on Wed Mar 28, 2018 2:42 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn

Postby smallwhite » Wed Mar 28, 2018 1:27 am

desitrader wrote:
olim21 wrote:...

Hi Olim21,
I am finding your posts very thought-provoking and different from all the usual stuff one reads on language learning sites, ...

I agree. I know LLorg is heavily biased, but when I googled things myself, I found that many sites were just regurgitating info copied from one another. You need a lot of patience to sift through the repetition to find different opinions. So I thank olim21 for taking the time to patiently explain his thoughts to us. I know it's hard, we've always been rather hostile towards non-conformers. But for members for whom LLorg forms 99% of their knowledge and expectations about language-learning, and for members for whom 99% of their academic reading about the subject comes from extracts that are extracted by reineke, including myself, olim21's participation is invaluable. Thank you again, olim21.
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Re: Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn

Postby Adrianslont » Wed Mar 28, 2018 1:45 am

smallwhite wrote:
desitrader wrote:
olim21 wrote:...

Hi Olim21,
I am finding your posts very thought-provoking and different from all the usual stuff one reads on language learning sites, ...

I agree. I know LLorg is heavily biased, but when I googled things myself, I found that many sites were just regurgitating info copied from one another. You need a lot of patience to sift through the repetition to find different opinions. So I thank olim21 for taking the time to patiently explain his thoughts to us. I know it's hard, we've always been rather hostile towards non-conformers. But for members for whom LLorg forms 99% of their knowledge and expectations about language-learning, and for members for whom 99% of their academic reading about the subject comes from extracts that are extracted by reineke, including myself, olim21's participation is invaluable. Thank you again, olim21.

I’ve been meaning to say something like this for some days now. I’ve found it a very interesting discussion, too. Thanks olim21 and others for the interesting read.

I will add that I especially liked olim21’s questioning of how the brain works - I personally think we shouldn’t just use a brain-computer metaphor. I think terms like store, retrieve, process and pattern matching are inadequate to describe what is going on in the brain. I think they give us a framework for research and discussion but I suspect that framework is delusional. I’m not so sure about mold, either, though! Maybe someone will be able to convince me of something regarding brains and earning one day.

I’m not a fan of questioning orthodoxies just for the hell if it. I’m not a complete contrarian but I’ve enjoyed olim21’s calm questioning of certain orthodoxies - while he also promotes viewpoints that are not so alien to many on this forum ie lots of reading is good for you and you need to get on top of the phonology! Like smallwhite i enjoyed the “patient” explanation.
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Re: Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn

Postby olim21 » Wed Mar 28, 2018 3:00 am

reineke wrote:The learning brain is less flexible than we thought


What "flexible" is supposed to mean here? Because the brain is capable to take the shape you want with the right training and time. Seems pretty flexible to me.

If it means it takes time. Then this a good thing. You don't want a brain jumping all over the place, changing immediately when you want to learn something new. Your consciousness would be very chaotic, you would think that things happen outside your control. You would go crazy very quickly.

Our brain "use" an "algorithm" that give it the ability to gradually change toward a solution. Your brain changes all the time, continuously and gradually. Each time you see, hear, feel, smell, each time it receives a signal in fact, your brain changes slightly, those changes are so small they are unnoticeable, but over time they add up in a particular "direction", slowly approaching some sort of solution. It works that way because nobody knows what the solution is in advance, you don't know, your brain doesn't know. So it can't jump to it.

reineke wrote:“When faced with a new task, we’re finding that the brain is constrained to take the neural activity patterns that it’s capable of generating right now and use them as effectively as possible in this new task.”


Isn't that obvious? What were they expecting?

reineke wrote:“When we learn, at first the brain tends to not produce new activity patterns, but to repurpose the activity patterns it already knows how to generate,”


Of course. But it doesn't repurpose, it just keeps doing what it was doing, taking new input and gradually, unnoticeably tending toward a new solution that will maybe solve the problem at hand.

reineke wrote:Acquiring a skill is very difficult, and it takes a lot of time and a lot of practice.


Really, who would have thought?

reineke wrote:By repurposing neuron patterns the brain is already capable of generating, the brain applies a “quick and dirty fix” to the new problem it’s facing.


So the brain is just patching itself. How amazing: an explanation with no explanatory power.

reineke wrote:“None of us predicted this outcome,”


Oh boy, it makes me so sad...

That's exactly the kind of study that should not have been published, full of childish made up explanations (in other words a story) of some observed phenomenon with no connections to the real world. No connection with physics, neurobiology, AI, philosophy or any of the others possibly related fields.

Like you could explain how the brain works in isolation, ignoring everything else. But because we have named and located a few new things, and we have a story for it, we somehow think we have learned something.

Important note:

I haven't read the full article, not very encouraged by the few passages quoted by reineke.

I finally decided to read it. And I have nothing to change.

--
OM
Last edited by olim21 on Wed Mar 28, 2018 5:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn

Postby amardeep » Wed Mar 28, 2018 3:41 am

olim21 wrote:
reineke wrote:The learning brain is less flexible than we thought


What "flexible" is supposed to mean here? Because the brain is capable to take the shape you want with the right training and time. Seems pretty flexible to me.

If it means it takes time. Then this a good thing. You don't want a brain jumping all over the place, changing immediately when you want to learn something new. Your consciousness would be very chaotic, you would think that things happen outside your control. You would go crazy very quickly.

Our brain "use" an "algorithm" that give it the ability to gradually change toward a solution. Your brain change all the time, continuously and gradually. Each time you see, hear, feel, smell, each time it receives a signal in fact, your brain change slightly, those changes are so small they are unnoticeable, but over time they add up in a particular "direction", slowly approaching some sort of solution. It works that way because nobody knows what the solution is in advance, you don't know, your brain doesn't know. So it can't jump to it.

reineke wrote:“When faced with a new task, we’re finding that the brain is constrained to take the neural activity patterns that it’s capable of generating right now and use them as effectively as possible in this new task.”


Isn't that obvious? What were they expecting?

reineke wrote:“When we learn, at first the brain tends to not produce new activity patterns, but to repurpose the activity patterns it already knows how to generate,”


Of course. But it doesn't repurpose, it just keeps doing what it was doing, taking new input and gradually, unnoticeably tending toward a new solution that will maybe solve the problem at hand.

reineke wrote:Acquiring a skill is very difficult, and it takes a lot of time and a lot of practice.


Really, who would have thought?

reineke wrote:By repurposing neuron patterns the brain is already capable of generating, the brain applies a “quick and dirty fix” to the new problem it’s facing.


So the brain is just patching itself. How amazing: an explanation with no explanatory power.

reineke wrote:“None of us predicted this outcome,”


I think you are being unnecessary hostile. As someone who studied computer science and AI, all of this does sound common sense to me now, but it is not true of everybody. Especially, when you think of these in terms of challenges involved in learning a new language. For me, it was an epiphany when i realized that the reason Pimsleur Japanese worked amazingly for me, and Pimsleur Russian didn't work at all, was to do with the fact that japanese phonemes were easily matched to my existing repertoire of phonemes, so i was able to hear what was being narrated, but this was not true of Russian at all, and i needed to first focus deliberately on being able to pronounce these new sounds and learn to be able to distinguish these new novel sounds - and that is a slow process.
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Re: Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn

Postby olim21 » Wed Mar 28, 2018 3:53 am

Adrianslont wrote:Thanks olim21 and others for the interesting read.


Thanks.

I was wondering if people other than those already participating in the discussion were reading. Happy to see that you are re-thinking about the subject.

Adrianslont wrote:I personally think we shouldn’t just use a brain-computer metaphor. I think terms like store, retrieve, process and pattern matching are inadequate to describe what is going on in the brain.


I do think the brain is a computer (no metaphor). But a computer in the most basic sense, i.e. a device that transforms an input into an output in a repeatable way.

But also, I agree that in a lot of minds the term "computer" means something like a PC with a processor, memory and everything that you can program to do what you want. And those ideas of parsing, storing, etc comes from there. We have heard and read them so many times that we now think they are real and forgot that they used to be just metaphors for something we do not fully understand.

Adrianslont wrote:I think they give us a framework for research and discussion but I suspect that framework is delusional.


Exactly.

Adrianslont wrote:I’m not so sure about mold, either, though!


Yes, not too happy myself. :-)

I use the mold idea more to illustrate the difference of speed between the two processes. Of course the brain is not a mold either. This idea comes from how we talk about certain machine learning algorithm. But that idea makes sense when you understand it, I think.

Adrianslont wrote:I’m not a fan of questioning orthodoxies just for the hell if it.


I don't think many people enjoy going against the current. I'm not a fan either. Having to convince the established majority is never a comfortable position to be in.

--
OM
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Re: Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn

Postby Serpent » Wed Mar 28, 2018 4:33 am

olim21 wrote:Was it listening? Or more like hearing?
Listening. I understood the easy stuff for learners and I recognized familiar words in songs but I couldn't process the language fast enough otherwise.
Well, there is if you trained correctly from the beginning.
We have different definitions of training correctly.
What I'm trying to make people realize is that most of the learning happens during reading.
Historically, people have always learned languages by speaking. See Bakunin's posts.
Also, we vary a lot in how easily we can read in a new language, etc. My reading speed is atrocious even in L1.

that forum, and HTLAL before it, are full of failed experiments of people trying to learn just by listening. Is there even one success story?
Depends on what you consider success. At one point I used subtitled videos to get my Spanish reading to the level of my listening. Is that перемога success?
Because if you listen without understanding, what are you supposed to learn?
I never mentioned listening without understanding. In a related language you have some understanding from the very beginning (okay there are some complicated cases like Danish).
One solution to resolve this would be to lower the amount of vocabulary tremendously and increase the amount of context and repetition. Basically trying to recreate the situation you have when reading. And in that case you will be able to learn again. It will be slow, painful and boring but it will work. However that's not how I would like to learn, looks too much like torture to me.
Still better than going through a typical textbook :P If you use visual clues, generally there's much more interesting video stuff than books with pictures. (and children's books are expensive and have very little text)
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Re: Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn

Postby reineke » Wed Mar 28, 2018 6:12 am

We've already have several "listening sucks" discussions here and over at HTLAL.
Last edited by reineke on Wed Mar 13, 2019 4:15 am, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: Learning to Listen and Listening to Learn

Postby Fortheo » Wed Mar 28, 2018 6:24 am

olim21 wrote: Since I don't know you I can't really judge and compare with what I know. But I have a few comments. I will try to be nice, however if you feel offended by some of them, feel free to ignore.

Fortheo wrote:I've been able to read French books fairly easily for about a year now.


Just to be clear, here. It's not really about being able to, but more a question of level.

For example, I can read Finnish quite easily this days, but my vocabulary only cover 70-80% of the words of a random text still. So despite being able to read and understand quite a lot, my listening is still not very good, yet. I can read better, (or so it seems), because I can break some of the words I don't know into pieces that I do know, or use the context to infer the meaning of some other words, or reread to solve issues when I misunderstand.

But if you remove all the advantages that help me read better, my comprehension level is the same whether I read or listen. It has been this way from the beginning and when my reading improves, my listening improves with it.


I couldn't give you an exact standardized answer for what my reading level is, but I can say that I haven't had any big comprehension problems reading a French book for a while now. That said, I'm not reading academic books with high brow writing--more-so just modern day fiction writers, websites, comics or what my friends write to me, etc etc. Don't get me wrong, my reading comprehension in French isn't flawless, but it's not far off from my reading in English.


Fortheo wrote:I've also read out loud for various French people in order for them to criticize my pronunciation


olim21 wrote:I don't know why you need someone else to evaluate your pronunciation. Can't you do it by yourself?


I have access to native speakers, so why wouldn't I want to hear their input on my accent? Especially since it's their accent and their pronunciation that i'm trying to mimic? Native speakers are a useful tool and they're part of the reason why my accent has improved over the years. I can critique my own accent, but when in doubt, I'd rather go to a native speaker for advice.


olim21 wrote: Because then you have to interpret what they mean. What do they mean by good pronunciation? Does that mean, they can understand you? Does that mean this is not that bad for an English speaker? Does that mean this is very impressive?


I'll be sure to ask my friends what "good" means, but if you want every single critique I've ever received it would be common errors like slipping up on the u / ou distinction in French. I've always suspected I've slipped up on nasal vowels from time to time, so I point them out to native speakers and ask for advice, but apparently I pronounce them correctly. So my guess is good means good, but definitely not perfect.

To be clear, this is a work in progress for me and has been for a while. My reading isn't perfect. My accent isn't perfect. I cannot give you the definite answers that you want in regards to my reading level or in regards to my pronunciation because these are very hard for me to qualify and I've never been tested or critiqued in a truly professional/scientific/linguistic context in regards to my French language abilities; and because of that, any response I give would be anecdotal and could lead into an endless circle of questions and equivocations. This is just a hobby for me--i can't give you the exact, well studied answers that you need.

All I can say for certain is that my reading comprehension is above my listening comprehension and that my pronunciation has never posed a comprehension problem with native speakers.

This is just a fun hobby for me and my post was just anecdotal. I hope you find somebody willing to be a case study for you, because you have a lot of good questions, but I think they'd be better asked in a controlled experiment/ environment, and I can't provide that for you.

Take care. It's always nice to see people bring in different ideas.
Last edited by Fortheo on Wed Mar 28, 2018 7:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
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