(2016-05-22, 10:11 pm)FlameseeK Wrote: When you guys finished going through most grammar points and vocab required for N3, could you listen to podcasts like hotcast at all? And while I'm at it, how about when you finished going over most N2 vocab/grammar?
Not that I'm interested in this specific podcast per se, but I've been told it's one of the easiest ones to get started. The thing is, despite having studied all vocabulary and grammar points in Tobira, it still seems impossible to follow podcast conversations. I mean, I did study these things in advance, so I'm still halfway through the book when it comes to reading and listening. But on the other hand, it seems easy enough to go through the reading and listening sections of a chapter in a single day at this point, as long as there's enough time.
If the answer is no, do you think there was something in particular that helped you bridge this gap?
Absolutely not, no.
Studying grammar and vocab never got me anywhere near listening comprehension (although it did get me some amount of reading comprehension).
For listening comprehension, I borrowed some L-R techniques and went through Erin's Challenge, the first two Harry Potter books+audiobooks, and a bunch of NHK高校講座 and NHK News (easy first, and ふつう when I had time and the story was engaging enough and there was a video to listen to along with or after reading).
In short, I listened to a lot of stuff that I had written confirmation for, roughly speaking starting with read-first then listen and read-along, then reading along unprepped, then read-first and listen without reading along, then
listening first and reading only for confirmation or clarification. Not exclusively like that, I've mixed all those techniques around quite a bit and still do even now (sometimes unintentionally... like I'm playing FinalFantasy X remastered right now, so of course I'm reading along to spoken dialogue with the subtitles).
Once you get your ear well-trained and can identify all the mora in clear, natural speech it becomes a lot easier because you can start looking up words even when you only hear them. Before putting dedicated effort into training my listening though, I misheard far too many sounds to simply jump in like that.
Reading also becomes much smoother once you can listen well, because the 'sound' of the words on the page echoes smoothly and correctly in your mind as you read. It's known that we always subvocalize what we are reading even when reading silently, so this is actually quite important and mostly unknown or unappreciated.
Also I found it much easier to listen to the other podcast the Hotcast people do, Sokoani. If listening to episodes about an anime that I was watching, then I simply had a ton of context to help keep me in the conversation. Hotcast is cool and all, but it's about very random general topics. Similarly I found audio dramas and the like easier to follow than conversational podcasts ; conversations can jump around quite wildly, while stories generally adhere to a steady timeline with only occasional jumps, those jumps almost always simply moving the narrative forward in time a bit (though there is the occasional flashback or rambling internal monologue).