When you get to a certain level when you understand the audio pretty well at the speed you're listening to it...

Increase the speed of the audio that is playing!

If you do that, you'll hear more dialogue in the same amount of time!
Thus, efficiency in terms of time.



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I don't do it as of now, but this kind of a small thing is obviously useful imo.
So I thought I'd throw in a couple of words.

Wait, what?

So if I have native level audio, I should speed it up? Wouldn't this result in the "fast-forward" effect on the audio, throw off pronunciation, and just make it generally unpleasant to listen to?

I'm not sure I understand this completely.

Ryuujin27 Wrote:Wait, what?

So if I have native level audio, I should speed it up? Wouldn't this result in the "fast-forward" effect on the audio, throw off pronunciation, and just make it generally unpleasant to listen to?

I'm not sure I understand this completely.

Maybe speed it up by 1.1 times or something. A little bit.

And some audios and podcasts have quite slow conversations. So if you speed them up a bit then they will be like an everyday fast conversation. So probably nothing so incomprehensible.

It's all still about staying in your comfort zone. It's just that it's possible to get more exposure in a slightly smaller amount of time.

Take for example reading a text...you can read it slowly, or you can read it 3 x faster and it's still comprehensible.

It's not like a rule which applies to everything, it's just that you can probably use it at least to some extent on a large amount of audio.

great idea
would have worked for pimsluer and the like
actually I may try that...

tried this for one episode, didn't have problem understanding it even at a fast pace. I'd say stick with slow for now...

The problem with increasing the speed of the audio is that it won't reflect how fast speech actually sounds. Fast speech is not just the same thing faster. For one thing, when talking quickly it doesn't mean that every aspect of speech is sped up by an equal percentage. For example, maybe the amount of words said per minute increases, but the length of pauses within speech doesn't decrease in the same proportion. Or, slurred speech won't occur in the same way it would with actual fast dialogue.

You can think of a million examples, but what it comes down to is the fact that you'll be practicing with unnatural Japanese, and that's a problem.

i think it's kinda ridiculous if this is what you have to resort to in order to increase so-called efficiency...

i'm convinced that faster isn't better in this case.

kainzero Wrote:i think it's kinda ridiculous if this is what you have to resort to in order to increase so-called efficiency...

i'm convinced that faster isn't better in this case.

agreed

I don't know, I wouldn't discount the idea entirely. Sometimes people talk incredibly quickly. Not everyone talks at the same speed all the time, or always with the clear enunciation of a newscaster, audiobook narrator or professional actor. I also think occasionally listening to content at faster speeds could train your grammar intuition better because it forces your brain to think faster. If you've only listened to classroom Japanese or other learner content, then real Japanese will seem incredibly fast. If you listen to sped up Japanese for a month, the opposite will be true.

I think there is also benefit in listening to difficult content at slower speeds. There is actually a podcast (though the name escapes me now) for Japanese English learners that offers slowed down recordings of real TV news. It's a way to start using content that would otherwise be too difficult for you.

I think if you step aside from any concerns with hearing natural sounding speech then it is probably a good idea if you are just looking for a vocabulary review or you have listened to something 20-30 times and just want to speed through it to remind yourself of the vocabulary. This could, therefore, be a good review idea. Additionally, as language course stuff tends to be a bit slow compared to the real stuff, this is probably a great idea once you are really comfortable with the material.

In truth though, I've done it before quite a bit and there's not much difference in understanding. I listen to enough material to not have to worry about slow or fast listening, so it never caught on with me. Then again, I will give this a go with my material reviews and let you know if anything interesting happens.

Furthermore, as mentioned above, this could be used to train yourself to hear faster paced speech. It would be unnatural, but at the same time the vocabulary items would occur at a faster rate, which may aid recognition at slower speeds, if, of course, the speed weren't excessive. It's definitely something to consider (specific training for specific purposes, perhaps.)

How about slowing down audio - to people think that is also problematic?

I have an issue where regular movies/tv are too fast, but slower material meant for learners is too slow and boring. Wonder if anyone has tried this?

I still maintain if you want to practice understanding incomprehensible Japanese, just listen to Kitano Takeshi more.

Cranks Wrote:Furthermore, as mentioned above, this could be used to train yourself to hear faster paced speech. It would be unnatural, but at the same time the vocabulary items would occur at a faster rate, which may aid recognition at slower speeds, if, of course, the speed weren't excessive. It's definitely something to consider (specific training for specific purposes, perhaps.)

Now that I think of it, I listen to Japanese music a lot, but the fact that music is faster hasn't aid me well enough in comprehending it better. I've done it for 1,5 years now, And I listen to music all the time when I'm home.
In English it's the same, I can understand most online lectures without problems, and I know maybe all vocabulary there is in a song, but When I listen to that song I just don't get the words...even though I listened to english music very much. I wonder why?

Well maybe it's the music-specific pronunciation case and it doesn't concern Japanese speech, whether fast or slow. But according to this experience, I should say that it doesn't help much...I dunno

[ファブリス]

... Use cotton swabs.

Ok, I'm out. ^_^

aphasiac Wrote:How about slowing down audio - to people think that is also problematic?

I have an issue where regular movies/tv are too fast, but slower material meant for learners is too slow and boring. Wonder if anyone has tried this?

I think slowing down is perfect when you're a beginner and you're learning pronunciation.

Not to boast or anything, but thanks to the JPod101 lessons where newbie audio was broken down a lot, my pronunciation was much better that that of other people of the classes I went to.

I think that slowing down is significantly better for pronunciation, as compared to faster speech.

Regular movies > watch them for a while and you'll notice that you have no problems with the speed of the talk ( you'll get used to it), but the main problem is unknown vocabulary!

jettyke Wrote:Not to boast or anything, but thanks to the JPod101 lessons where newbie audio was broken down a lot, my pronunciation was much better that that of other people of the classes I went to.

The ones with Peter-san? His pronunciation is terrible

aphasiac Wrote:

jettyke Wrote:Not to boast or anything, but thanks to the JPod101 lessons where newbie audio was broken down a lot, my pronunciation was much better that that of other people of the classes I went to.

The ones with Peter-san? His pronunciation is terrible

Yes!

it is terrible haha...

Actually every time there was new vocab the same Peter-san asked the native speakers to say words once fast , then 2 times very slowly and exactly or something (newbie series).

So it helped very much. His pronunciation might not have been good, but the fact that he asked native speakers to tell new words very slowly helped a lot.

Music still gives me trouble in english. It's just hard to hear what they are saying but with subtitles/captions, it's easy to understand. I wouldn't worry about understanding music, as it's sometimes hard even in our native-language

jettyke Wrote:Now that I think of it, I listen to Japanese music a lot, but the fact that music is faster hasn't aid me well enough in comprehending it better. I've done it for 1,5 years now, And I listen to music all the time when I'm home.

I wouldn't let the fact that music doesn't make great learning material (compared to other audio) discourage you from trying the sped-up audio thing. There are all sorts of reasons unrelated to speed why music isn't great for learning from. Lyrics are often obscure, esoteric, poetic etc. Sentences are often fragmented. You can get easily distracted by the melody and ignore the lyrics. The density of words is usually lower (compared to say podcasts) because of intros and solos etc. Lyrics are frequently banal or devoid of any real communicative intention etc.
If you can find software which can easily speed up audio without altering the pitch I think it's definitely an experiment worth trying. I think progress is basically a measure of time*intensity. This seems like a good way to multiply both.

nadiatims Wrote:If you can find software which can easily speed up audio without altering the pitch I think it's definitely an experiment worth trying.

Transcribe can do that. http://www.seventhstring.com/xscribe/screenshots.html "Transcribe! offers many features aimed at making the transcription job smoother and easier, including the ability to slow down music without changing its pitch..."

You know the only reason I have found to Subs2srs is to A) Be able to sing it at Karaoke and B) to understand the song (listening because you like it is fine, but understanding and listening is a lot better.)

I did a bit of music at the beginning and it did help me to tune my ear to the sound of Japanese (I like rap). That said, after doing podcasts, TV, radio, etc. I can say I am pretty happy with my ability, so music is more a "for fun" activity.

not to mention most japanese music leaves a lot to be desired...

zachandhobbes Wrote:not to mention most japanese music leaves a lot to be desired...

What do you mean ?

It's like saying most of the music in the world leaves much to be desired, Japanese music is no worse than English!

There's a horde of good Japanese artists and shitloads of fantastic music.

The only reason why I see you saying that is that you haven't spent enough time searching for good music.

zachandhobbes Wrote:not to mention most japanese music leaves a lot to be desired...

that's is so notrue. you're just not trying hard enough to find GOOD japanese music. i'm sure it's very difficult with english music too ( i wouldn't know but i do know i hate mainstream top 40 english songs in america)

honestly seriously get over this phase... it only took me a few weeks to realize that japan has really good music it's just i had to find it... it's realy not that hard with youtube.
please just get over this phase or just say i haven't tried hard enough or i'm too lazy to whatever

i don't know about this.. but i used to do this with the nhk news
http://www.nhk.or.jp/r-news/
the normal speed was just too slow and i was thinking why the hell would anyone would listen to it on yukkiri. at this point i understand most of the news but not 100% but i don't really care or at least i realized i don't... it's not fun. i like japanese talk/variety shows and honestly the only reason i would do news all the time to get bettter at it would be to impress other people... but in the end i dont do that anyway it doesn't make any sense for me to do the news... when i don't care about it.