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+--- Thread: Is it normal for reading to progress faster than listening? (/thread-13545.html)
Is it normal for reading to progress faster than listening? - Snesgamer - 2016-01-25
I currently am off from work, so I am using a lot of my time sinking in a lot of listening training time. One thing I'm noticing is that while my listening skills ARE improving, they seem to be moving almost at a snail's pace even though I've been watching Japanese stuff for literally hours a day for weeks. At the same time though, I've noticed the indirect effect of my listening exercises on my reading has been tremendous and has been well outpacing my listening skill itself, even though I'm not directly working on my reading.
Is this normal? I'll even go through some episodes and can relax a bit, only to come back and watch another one and hardly understand a single thing!
RE: Is it normal for reading to progress faster than listening? - kameden - 2016-01-25
Yeah I think it's pretty normal. Reading is much easier to learn for various reasons, mostly going at your own pace and being able to look things up easily. The problem with listening is you are probably not actually listening most of the time. You get distracted and don't notice. You can't really do that with reading. You have to make sure you're actually putting in effort into listening and not just letting it play and catching a word here and there when you 'tune in'.
RE: Is it normal for reading to progress faster than listening? - SunlightUnderWater - 2016-01-26
I think reading progresses faster (or more accurately, seems to progress faster) because the reader controls the pace that the text is coming at them. It's easy to slow down or even re-read something. In contrast, a listener has to deal with audio at the audio's pace. Sure, one can rewind and pause, but it's a lot more of a hassle and doesn't happen as seamlessly as slowing down for trickier words/characters.
I also think it's easier to track and measure progress in reading, therefore making growth more apparent.
Just my two cents...
RE: Is it normal for reading to progress faster than listening? - gaiaslastlaugh - 2016-01-26
The general rule is that speaking lags behind writing, which lags behind listening, which lags behind reading. In general, your comprehension skills will increase faster than your production.
The posters above explained well why reading outpaces listening. Speed is the main factor. You can get by with slowing down and figuring things out from context when reading, but with listening, it's a lot harder. You have to know a lot of core words, know their various meanings, and know them well in order to get to the point where you can pick unknowns up from context.
Also, your brain isn't trained to hear Japanese, and training it as an adult is hard. Even after you've been listening for a while, your brain's noise filters will try and reject Japanese as a self-defense measure, and hence your attention will wander, you'll miss huge chunks of dialogue, etc. Active listening to a second language requires effort, and that effort takes a toll. My Japanese colleagues who come to the US for meetings always tell me that, after a few days of listening to English-only conversation, they're utterly exhausted. After the past week of meetings here in Tokyo, I can sympathize.
I've found it helps to find at least one show with Japanese subtitles, watch it once or twice with subs, and then listen to it over a period of a week or two without the subs. This can be a good bridge to transitioning from aided to unaided listening.
Re: not understanding the next episode in a series - yeah, that's normal too.
I've found its one of two things: either I'm not used to the way a certain string of words is spoken, or the sentence contains too many unknown words. Subtitles can help here, as can repeated listening. Some video players, such as OPlayer for iPad and Android, contain 10-second rewind, slowdown, and A/B Repeat functions that make it easy to listen to a specific phrase repeatedly at slower speed. (Typed from an iPad from Shibuya Center Starbucks - please forgive any typos)
RE: Is it normal for reading to progress faster than listening? - nella - 2016-01-27
I am in a opposite situation and find it frustrating still trying to figure out the best study method for me.
My listening is better than all the others followed by speaking, vocab and the least is kanji/reading/writing.
I haven't studied grammar since Genki and I can manage N1 and N2 listening without a problem just my kanji lagging behind which means reading and writing is also behind. I have recently started going through kanji in context to help me link the vocab with the kanji and also started reading more.
Has anyone had a similar situation? Any study suggestion would be helpful. Thanks
RE: Is it normal for reading to progress faster than listening? - Snesgamer - 2016-01-27
(2016-01-26, 9:47 pm)gaiaslastlaugh Wrote: I've found it helps to find at least one show with Japanese subtitles, watch it once or twice with subs, and then listen to it over a period of a week or two without the subs. This can be a good bridge to transitioning from aided to unaided listening.
Re: not understanding the next episode in a series - yeah, that's normal too.
To be honest, I break 2 very fundamental rules most Japanese learners live by: I do my Japanese listening with ENGLISH subtitles (so I can actually enjoy the storyline of what I'm watching somewhat while still getting listening practice, and also because Japanese subtitles seem hard to come by - not to mention the nightmare of having to find the exact right download or having to fix the sync issues yourself), and I very rarely re-visit the same old material (I'm re-watching some Lupin III movies since I like them enough, but that's about it).
RE: Is it normal for reading to progress faster than listening? - gaiaslastlaugh - 2016-01-27
(2016-01-27, 6:17 am)Snesgamer Wrote:(2016-01-26, 9:47 pm)gaiaslastlaugh Wrote: I've found it helps to find at least one show with Japanese subtitles, watch it once or twice with subs, and then listen to it over a period of a week or two without the subs. This can be a good bridge to transitioning from aided to unaided listening.
Re: not understanding the next episode in a series - yeah, that's normal too.
To be honest, I break 2 very fundamental rules most Japanese learners live by: I do my Japanese listening with ENGLISH subtitles (so I can actually enjoy the storyline of what I'm watching somewhat while still getting listening practice, and also because Japanese subtitles seem hard to come by - not to mention the nightmare of having to find the exact right download or having to fix the sync issues yourself), and I very rarely re-visit the same old material (I'm re-watching some Lupin III movies since I like them enough, but that's about it).
I agree about subtitles; I don't want the media to consume to be constrained by whether subtitles are available, and I also hate spending valuable time adjusting subtitle timing. The way I handle this is using subtitles in a very limited fashion - i.e., when I really want to crank down and improve my listening by studying. If a subtitle's timings are off, I'll usually just use it as a text reference for later study instead of futzing with the timings.
The vast majority (90%) of my Japanese listening is raw. If something goes completely over my head, I'll set it aside for a later day. This is easier to do at higher levels, but there are enough simple anime and TV shows that you should be able to do this starting at N4-N3 level, if your vocab is expansive enough.
RE: Is it normal for reading to progress faster than listening? - yukamina - 2016-01-27
(2016-01-27, 6:17 am)Snesgamer Wrote: To be honest, I break 2 very fundamental rules most Japanese learners live by: I do my Japanese listening with ENGLISH subtitles (so I can actually enjoy the storyline of what I'm watching somewhat while still getting listening practice, and also because Japanese subtitles seem hard to come by - not to mention the nightmare of having to find the exact right download or having to fix the sync issues yourself), and I very rarely re-visit the same old material (I'm re-watching some Lupin III movies since I like them enough, but that's about it).
I tend to watch anime with English subs too. I like to think of it as a form of Listening-Reading :p When it comes to listening I can't seem to overcome the problem of missing words and phrases I don't know. When I'm reading I can clearly see the unknown words and even write them down or look them up. But with listening it's like a blank spot and it's hard to pick up words that way (not impossible, though, I've learned a lot of Japanese from watching media, partly aided by the translation. Common phrases are much easier to learn than advanced vocab).
Kitsunekko is a website that has Japanese subs for quite a few shows. I want to try watching more with Japanese subs, so I can see those unknown words and learn them better.
I tried fixing the syncing for Japanese subs with Aegisub as people suggested, but for the life of me I cannot figure that program out. I just recently discovered there are websites that can re-sync the files very easily if you know how many seconds the subs are off by. http://subshifter.bitsnbites.eu/ My favorite show was off by a whopping 31 seconds... next time I watch it I will definitely try the Japanese subs.
RE: Is it normal for reading to progress faster than listening? - CureDolly - 2016-01-28
Aegisub really works the same way as the website I think. You just tell it by how much the subs are off (forward or backward) and it adjusts them. You just do "Shift Times", check "forward" or "backward" and enter the amount you want to shift by. Make sure "Selection Onward" is checked and it will move all the subs after the one you are adjusting.
If you are using VLC, the H and J keys shift the subs backward and forward by small increments so if they are only off by a few seconds you can adjust them on the fly.
Knowing enough vocabulary and knowing it well enough to recognize it quickly is crucial, and if one is learning largely organically (ie mainly through actual Japanese materials) then that vocabulary mostly comes through reading, either books or subtitles (or games, manga etc). For that reason listening almost necessarily lags behind reading.
If one gets a lot of real-life exposure, reading can lag behind listening because one is primarily learning aurally. That is an excellent way to learn but not really available in most cases.
RE: Is it normal for reading to progress faster than listening? - cophnia61 - 2016-01-28
Snesgamer Wrote:At the same time though, I've noticed the indirect effect of my listening exercises on my reading has been tremendous and has been well outpacing my listening skill itself, even though I'm not directly working on my reading.
Could you kindly argue more about this? Could you please give us some examples? Do you think listening helps much with those words with kanji with more than one possible reading? Like 生物 where you don't know if the second kanji is butsu or motsu (this is just an example). Thank you in advance. I ask this because my dedication to listeing is less than zero and I wonder if listening would help me to make those readings stick better.
RE: Is it normal for reading to progress faster than listening? - SomeCallMeChris - 2016-01-28
(2016-01-28, 12:12 pm)cophnia61 Wrote:Snesgamer Wrote:At the same time though, I've noticed the indirect effect of my listening exercises on my reading has been tremendous and has been well outpacing my listening skill itself, even though I'm not directly working on my reading.
Could you kindly argue more about this? Could you please give us some examples? Do you think listening helps much with those words with kanji with more than one possible reading? Like 生物 where you don't know if the second kanji is butsu or motsu (this is just an example). Thank you in advance. I ask this because my dedication to listeing is less than zero and I wonder if listening would help me to make those readings stick better.
I don't know exactly what Snesgamer was thinking of, but I certainly agree with his sentiment.
One thing that helps, yes, is the readings, although not so much as in ぶつ vs. もつ because you can just look that up anyway. It's something like 生物 as せいぶつ vs. なまもの ... you can look up both readings, but it's easier to have the feel for the right reading if you've heard it many times. Of course なまもの in particular is pretty rare, but 入る - はいる vs. いる is perhaps the most common such example. There are probably only a couple dozen of these ambiguous words, but some of them are very common.
Of course in theory you can memorize the correct definitions and figure out the correct pronunciation in context, but for that to work you have to pick the correct pronunciation every time you read the word so that you reinforce the correct reading in your memory, or perhaps more importantly so that you -don't- start building up the -wrong- reading in your memory. This can involve a lot of revisiting the dictionary, searching for kana example sentences, or just asking native speakers for the correct reading. (Beware that many example sentences that provide furigana or mouseover readings are unreliable - those readings are machine generated and just give the more common reading, not the one that is correct in context.)
So you can do all that, or you can listen to some actual Japanese and build up a sense of what 'sounds right'.
Having heard the same sequence of words also helps when you start coming across unexpected spellings, 此処, 凡て, 五月蠅い and so on. Of course I always look stuff up that I haven't seen before, so it doesn't save me much even when my prediction was right.... although if my prediction was right then that's pretty much a done deal as far as learning that spelling of a word, I'll probably never need to look it up again and certainly won't need to drill it in Anki or anything.
Readings aside, something important to realize about listening practice is simply that everyone subvocalizes when they read. Natural Japanese is spoken -very- fast compared to beginner Japanese lessons, and natural Japanese is also much more nuanced in pronunciation than simply pronouncing a string of kana as if you were reading them off of a kana chart. Anyway, if you can 'hear' Japanese as it's actually spoken when you're reading, then your reading will be quicker and smoother.
A specific subset of that effect is common spoken expressions that you might come across in dialogue ... often these truncated idiomatic expressions are impossible to understand on first reading, difficult to look up in a dictionary, and still a little fuzzy if you find an en-jp example sentence pair.
On the other hand, if you've heard the expression a few times in context then when you read it, it's entirely clear what it means and what tone of voice the speaker would have when saying it.
「いや、そういわれても…」 and 「いそがないと」 are simple examples of such expressions, but there's an endless list of expressions in Japanese that are in principle ambiguous but in practice used in a certain way.
RE: Is it normal for reading to progress faster than listening? - cophnia61 - 2016-01-28
Thank you SomeCallMeChris for you exemplary answer
I think the same but I've never truly tried the listening-reading method... but I perceive it is a great method for the reasons you explained.I know that the written form is above all a written representation of the spoken one, and to actually listen what you're reading, expecially in japanese where there are those ambiguities, must be inevitably helpful.
The fact is that I don't particularly like anime, movies, drama so I don't know what to listen to. I like variety but it's hard to find transcripts :/ I was thinking about audiobooks but I don't know what to buy...
RE: Is it normal for reading to progress faster than listening? - SomeCallMeChris - 2016-01-28
Well... if you don't like -any- form of acted fiction, then I really don't know if you like written fiction either but if you do, I found this book/cd useful,
http://www.amazon.com/Read-Real-Japanese-Fiction-Contemporary/dp/1568365292
I also applied some of the L-R techniques and general listening practice to
http://www.erin.ne.jp/
Also useful for listening practice is
http://www.nhk.or.jp/kokokoza/library/
Depending on the class, you can sometimes read a transcript, but other classes only have a paraphrasing.
Even the classes with transcripts may have little side comments that aren't written. Still, if you can read the notes for a class, then you should be able to understand a lot when you watch (or listen in the case of radio classes, but video classes are easier to follow with a lot of written and visual cues to help keep context.)
If you choose classes that you never actually took in school you could learn something other than Japanese too.
As for variety shows, they splash so much written material up on the screen I don't think you really need a transcript to get a benefit out of it.
RE: Is it normal for reading to progress faster than listening? - yukamina - 2016-01-28
(2016-01-28, 3:20 pm)cophnia61 Wrote: Thank you SomeCallMeChris for you exemplary answer
I know that the written form is above all a written representation of the spoken one, and to actually listen what you're reading, expecially in japanese where there are those ambiguities, must be inevitably helpful.
The fact is that I don't particularly like anime, movies, drama so I don't know what to listen to. I like variety but it's hard to find transcripts :/ I was thinking about audiobooks but I don't know what to buy...
Have you tried any of the free audiobooks here? http://forum.koohii.com/thread-752.html
Or news websites with audio and text?
I also noticed my reading fluidity is much better when I read right after watching anime (I'm sure any comprehensible audio works). Something about hearing the language primes my brain for reading or something.
RE: Is it normal for reading to progress faster than listening? - yogert909 - 2016-01-28
(2016-01-28, 5:33 pm)yukamina Wrote: Have you tried any of the free audiobooks here? http://forum.koohii.com/thread-752.htmlHoly crap. Thanks for this!! Planning on getting into listening in the car and this will be perfect.
Or news websites with audio and text?
(2016-01-28, 5:33 pm)yukamina Wrote: I also noticed my reading fluidity is much better when I read right after watching anime (I'm sure any comprehensible audio works). Something about hearing the language primes my brain for reading or something.
I notice this too. Even with anki reviews it takes a few minutes for my "Japanese brain" to get warmed up.
RE: Is it normal for reading to progress faster than listening? - gaiaslastlaugh - 2016-01-28
(2016-01-27, 12:14 pm)yukamina Wrote: Kitsunekko is a website that has Japanese subs for quite a few shows. I want to try watching more with Japanese subs, so I can see those unknown words and learn them better.
I tried fixing the syncing for Japanese subs with Aegisub as people suggested, but for the life of me I cannot figure that program out. I just recently discovered there are websites that can re-sync the files very easily if you know how many seconds the subs are off by. http://subshifter.bitsnbites.eu/ My favorite show was off by a whopping 31 seconds... next time I watch it I will definitely try the Japanese subs.
Subtitle Edit is a more intuitive program, IMO. In SE, it's pretty easy to offset all subtitles going forward or backward by a set time. SE also supports loading the video you're timing to, and re-syncing subtitles as you watch.
A site that resyncs by x seconds will work with some videos; however, on others, the subtitles are thrown back off every time there's a commercial break. If the subtitle is only off by a few seconds consistently, like CureDolly said, you can use VLC or OPlayer to adjust the sync offset on the fly and get the subs roughly where you need them.
RE: Is it normal for reading to progress faster than listening? - kendo99 - 2016-01-29
Audio dramas are pretty awesome for listening. Check out: http://podcast.dojin.com/ranking.php
RE: Is it normal for reading to progress faster than listening? - zdo_vision - 2016-01-29
Quote:Check out: http://podcast.dojin.com/ranking.php
I didn't know this resource. Thanks a lot!
RE: Is it normal for reading to progress faster than listening? - gaiaslastlaugh - 2016-01-29
(2016-01-29, 3:20 am)zdo_vision Wrote:Quote:Check out: http://podcast.dojin.com/ranking.php
I didn't know this resource. Thanks a lot!
Neither did I, and now I'm downloading frantically for the plane ride back to Seattle. Thanks!!
RE: Is it normal for reading to progress faster than listening? - SomeCallMeChris - 2016-01-29
(2016-01-29, 3:21 am)gaiaslastlaugh Wrote:(2016-01-29, 3:20 am)zdo_vision Wrote:Quote:Check out: http://podcast.dojin.com/ranking.php
I didn't know this resource. Thanks a lot!
Neither did I, and now I'm downloading frantically for the plane ride back to Seattle. Thanks!!
Nice! I didn't know it either but I've heard some of these before from random searching around for podcasts that match the オーディオドラマ search. I liked Sakura Under the Water and Rainy Girl, hmm, ... I liked stuff from the Paulownia and ねこ玉 groups but those weren't the same shows that are listed here so I guess I have something to look forward to!
I've never been able to get through a whole episode of いちごSoda ... one of the main female characters is just excessively shrill and I can't take it anymore after a few minutes. If somebody promises me it gets better maybe I could try again. Maybe I can just customize my equalizer settings for the duration of the show or something.
RE: Is it normal for reading to progress faster than listening? - Snesgamer - 2016-01-30
(2016-01-28, 12:12 pm)cophnia61 Wrote:Snesgamer Wrote:At the same time though, I've noticed the indirect effect of my listening exercises on my reading has been tremendous and has been well outpacing my listening skill itself, even though I'm not directly working on my reading.
Could you kindly argue more about this? Could you please give us some examples? Do you think listening helps much with those words with kanji with more than one possible reading? Like 生物 where you don't know if the second kanji is butsu or motsu (this is just an example). Thank you in advance. I ask this because my dedication to listeing is less than zero and I wonder if listening would help me to make those readings stick better.
Sorry I'm a bit late.
I'm not exactly sure listening would help multiple-reading kanji words, but I do know if you encounter vocab words enough times by natural listening (that is, in the wild like in something you're watching, as opposed to just it coming up artificially in your Anki decks for example), the "sticking power" is a LOT stronger for some reason.
Yeah, I'd say listening is an invaluable tool.
RE: Is it normal for reading to progress faster than listening? - cracky - 2016-01-30
(2016-01-28, 8:55 pm)gaiaslastlaugh Wrote:(2016-01-27, 12:14 pm)yukamina Wrote: Kitsunekko is a website that has Japanese subs for quite a few shows. I want to try watching more with Japanese subs, so I can see those unknown words and learn them better.
I tried fixing the syncing for Japanese subs with Aegisub as people suggested, but for the life of me I cannot figure that program out. I just recently discovered there are websites that can re-sync the files very easily if you know how many seconds the subs are off by. http://subshifter.bitsnbites.eu/ My favorite show was off by a whopping 31 seconds... next time I watch it I will definitely try the Japanese subs.
Subtitle Edit is a more intuitive program, IMO. In SE, it's pretty easy to offset all subtitles going forward or backward by a set time. SE also supports loading the video you're timing to, and re-syncing subtitles as you watch.
A site that resyncs by x seconds will work with some videos; however, on others, the subtitles are thrown back off every time there's a commercial break. If the subtitle is only off by a few seconds consistently, like CureDolly said, you can use VLC or OPlayer to adjust the sync offset on the fly and get the subs roughly where you need them.
I use media player classic to adjust the subtitles on the fly. It works pretty well but it doesn't really work if I want to watch it again later so I'll check out SE.
RE: Is it normal for reading to progress faster than listening? - CureDolly - 2016-01-30
(2016-01-30, 8:18 am)Snesgamer Wrote: I'm not exactly sure listening would help multiple-reading kanji words, but I do know if you encounter vocab words enough times by natural listening (that is, in the wild like in something you're watching, as opposed to just it coming up artificially in your Anki decks for example), the "sticking power" is a LOT stronger for some reason.
Yeah, I'd say listening is an invaluable tool.
This is very true. Hearing words, expressions, ways of talking a lot of times, even if you aren't paying full attention, helps a lot. It gives you the feeling of what "just sounds right". You tend to actually pick up speech mannerisms in the same way you do in your native language.
For example, in casual speech I sometimes find myself saying わかんない for 分からない. When you "find yourself" saying something you know you are on the right track - even if that something is a bad habit. Just as in English you might think "where did I pick up that silly expression?"
The point is that a part of your brain is living the language rather than just studying it.
This is a subtle effect of a lot of listening that goes beyond the usual considerations of "by how much is my listening improving?" It is helping to get Japanese into your blood.