Over the past few months, I have been able to greatly boost my confidence as far as reading Japanese. I found that I could understand most written text as long as it wasn't too technical (ie. political, economical, military, medical, etc.) In other words, I could follow most everyday conversations in written form. I can even read (some) light novels now without hardly having to consult a dictionary. All this got my confidence up quite a bit, because I thought I was really starting to get it. Everything, the grammar, vocab, etc, was finally coming together. Then I watched a video in Japanese on Youtube. It felt like I was back at square one. Throughout my time learning Japanese, I never focused on listening because my vocabulary wasn't good enough for me to understand more than a few words, but now it should be different. However, when I listen to real Japanese, more often than not, its just jibberish. Sure, I catch the occasional phrase, but the main idea or even the subject completely eludes me.

I didn't expect a miracle, though. I've read from countless people on this forum that reading skills don't equal listening skills. But surely they do have some impact. I mean, I know all these words now! I thought reading was the hardest part!!!

The only remedy I've heard of is just to listen passively to a bunch of material. Is this effective? Efficient? What about Japanese subtitles? Won't I just be reading the text and ignoring the speech? If anyone has any ideas on how to help "transition" my reading skills to listening skills, I'm all ears... Thanks in advance.

For daily conversation speech, you can try reading Japanese subtitles for drama (http://www.d-addicts.com/forum/subtitles.php#Japanese) or anime (http://kitsunekko.net/).

It's all spoken dialogue. So you can pretty much use most of it in conversation (of course, 99% of it is Tokyo dialect, but I wouldn't worry about that right now).
Instead of just reading, actually speak the dialogue and try to act out the scenes.
Pretend you're the actor/actress. This helps to put the words to actual use.

There are streaming drama sites (like dramacrazy, dramafever, and crunchyroll) for watching videos.

Also, you can try chatting on a Japanese bboard (like 2chan).

At a similar stage, I went to Erin's challenge https://www.erin.ne.jp/ and went through all of the videos. They're probably way below your level as -learning- material, but they have the advantage of being able to turn on/off text with kanji, pure kana text, and english translations. After doing that, I went to http://hukumusume.com/douwa/betu/index.html and followed along the audio for all the 有名な話 that have audio. (Having done so I've picked up quite a few references that otherwise would have been totally perplexing asides in various drama.)
After that I used the resources that chamcham mentioned and watched video with subtitles, and also I have Read Real Japanese http://www.amazon.com/Read-Real-Japanese...4770030584 and listen to that sometimes.

And, no, reading along is a pretty natural action if you can read fast enough to keep up. It's easy to get lost at first, but reading-along is a much more enjoyable (and perhaps more effective) way to get your listening comprehension up than listening things that you can't understand and hoping to pick out words. I certainly don't find myself reading and -not- listening, although there's a lot of rewinding the audio when you're at the edge of your ability in either reading speed or listening speed and you lose your place.

I'm not a fan of passive listening in the sense of putting on something way above my level and ignoring it. I just tune that sort of thing out as noise and don't think it helps. If you do that kind of thing, try to make sure the content is at your reading level even if the speaking speed is beyond you. Personally, if I have audio on that I'm passively listening to, it's music... often in Japanese.

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:I'm not a fan of passive listening in the sense of putting on something way above my level and ignoring it.

No one who promotes passive listening is giving such terrible advice such as this. You should at least know the context of what you are listening to and preferably it should be from something you've actively watched before.

Passive listening is for solving the exact problem HououinKyouma is having and it reenforces so much of your active studying that you can never start too soon.

HououinKyouma Wrote:The only remedy I've heard of is just to listen passively to a bunch of material. Is this effective? Efficient? What about Japanese subtitles? Won't I just be reading the text and ignoring the speech?

You need to do passive listening, but, like tokyostyle above pointed out, you need to do it the right way. Watch something with subtitles (even English ones, if you can't find Japanese ones). Then watch it again, without subs (if the subs are hardcoded, place something over them - like another, tiny window). Then rip the audio, put in on your iPod and listen to it as many times as you can.

Another good source of passive listening are songs. This is a thread I started, with some song lyrics translated and made into an Anki deck. http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=10427 The link is just for anyone reading this later, you probably don't need it. At your level, you can probably just read the lyrics of any song online, as you listen to the song. Do that a few times, to make sure you know exactly what's being said in in some songs you like, then add the songs to your iPod. Song lyrics are widely available, just google for them in Japanese.

As you progress, another thing you should do is find a daily radio show, podcast or some other audio source that is episodic and features the same speakers, that you like, and listen to that one show. The reason why this works better than varying your sources is because, once you get used to the voices, rhythm, dialects, learn the names, verbal crutches etc. of the participants, it's a lot easier to follow something. If it's comedy, you can, once again, listen to your favorite parts more than once. Serious talk is rarely interesting the second time you hear it, but comedy is usually funny 3-4 times.

I disagree with having to do it the "right way" Maybe it works for you to watch something subbed and then again unsubbed, I for one can't stand having to watch something twice in a row. I watch things once and I'm doing fine.

I say if you hate listening to things you don't understand, then yeah, do that kind of thing, but you shouldn't just discount any other forms of learning because of your peculiar condition. There are a million different ways to do this and all of them have one thing in common: you just have to be able to do it for an extended amount of time and you'll succeed.

You don't listen to stuff while you make or review flashcards? I don't think I could do either without listening to something. I would be bored to tears.

When I listen to Japanese passively, its very frustrating because, although I can make out some words and phrases, the ones I don't (even if its just one word) are the difference between comprehension and being just plain lost. However, most study plans are frustrating at first. Maybe I'm just not giving it a chance. That's why I'm asking you guys who have actually made it that far Do I just suck up this feeling of total non-comprehension and keep trudging through audio? Or should I listen to less volume, but more actively (ie look at subtitles, watch same ep twice after seeing the English)? Finally, is it more important for me to focus on reading so I can learn more of the vocab, grammar, etc that's preventing me from that 100% comprehension? After all, its so much easier to learn words/grammar when you can look them up and read over the sentence again to process it. Thanks for all the help so far.

HououinKyouma Wrote:When I listen to Japanese passively, its very frustrating because, although I can make out some words and phrases, the ones I don't (even if its just one word) are the difference between comprehension and being just plain lost. However, most study plans are frustrating at first. Maybe I'm just not giving it a chance. That's why I'm asking you guys who have actually made it that far Do I just suck up this feeling of total non-comprehension and keep trudging through audio? Or should I listen to less volume, but more actively (ie look at subtitles, watch same ep twice after seeing the English)? Finally, is it more important for me to focus on reading so I can learn more of the vocab, grammar, etc that's preventing me from that 100% comprehension? After all, its so much easier to learn words/grammar when you can look them up and read over the sentence again to process it. Thanks for all the help so far.

Are you listening to the advice people gave you?
Try them out and see if any of them work for you.

Stop whining about non-comprehension.
Look at it as a challenge and work towards getting it done.
The improvement can be very gradual and it's hard to measure how much you improve each day.

Also, you can try using http://www.lang-8.com
Make your own blog and native Japanese will correct your sentences.

Lastly, forget about 100% comprehension. That will hold you back. If you hear words that you don't understand, it's no big deal. Over time, you'll understand more and more words. You have to get comfortable with not being able to understand everything. Otherwise, conversation and listening will become a chore.

Try watching shows with Japanese subtitles, but don't get caught up in having to know every word. If you can get the gist of the sentence, that's enough. If you can't understand anything, move on to the next sentence. With japanese subtitles, you can also study the vocab in your spare time (before or after watching the show/movie). With enough exposure, speed won't be an issue (and if you have the script, you can always go back and see what they said).

Gisting is learned by hearing chunks of info and understanding words here and there. 100% comprehension is not going to happen. You can't learn new words without first not understanding them.

Hashiriya Wrote:Gisting is learned by hearing chunks of info and understanding words here and there. 100% comprehension is not going to happen. You can't learn new words without first not understanding them.

What i meant was that with the japanese subtitles he can study and understand the words whenever. But pausing every time you hear a word you don't know will make it hard to finish anything. If he's finished RTK, he can get an idea of what is being said, then at a later (or earlier time), study the vocabulary and pronunciation. Even without the extra review, he's bound to pick up new words if his reading is good enough.

One of my problems is that, even though I can read a couple thousand words, I can only make out 100 of the most common ones. The lack of kanji is crippling.

I'm currently finding that subs2srs is good for listening practice.

Also maybe try getting audio of some short stories. Read the story a few times so you understand it well. Then read along with the audio a few times. And then go with just the audio. Do this with more and more things and you will gradually get better at listening.

Also check out japanesepod101 (there is an advertisement link on this forum). There is a ton of listening material for all levels.

I think the biggest challenge with moving from reading to listening, is in knowing material REALLY WELL. When you read, you can sit there and think about it for a moment. You can take it all in. It might take a moment for some of the words to come to you. You might ponder about how the words fit together in the overall grammar of the sentence.
But when listening, you've got 1 shot, and you gotta keep up. If you stop to think, you just missed half of a sentence. Your core grammar and lots of basic vocabulary has to be to the point where you just understand instantly.

Back when i was feeling like my japanese was going nowhere I decided to try a subs2srs deck of K-ON. I studied with only audio and image on the front, and made sure I knew the meaning of each word. After getting through some of the deck i realized I could now watch those scenes with no subs and actually hear each word being said. This gave me a boost of motivation like no other, and i did subs2srs decks of 3 more episodes. After that I was able to watch and 80-90% understand the rest of the series with subtitles. Normally I might not watch K-ON, but I'll always be a fan now after how much it helped me learn Japanese.

chamcham Wrote:Stop whining about non-comprehension.
Look at it as a challenge and work towards getting it done.
The improvement can be very gradual and it's hard to measure how much you improve each day.

Lastly, forget about 100% comprehension. That will hold you back. If you hear words that you don't understand, it's no big deal. Over time, you'll understand more and more words. You have to get comfortable with not being able to understand everything. Otherwise, conversation and listening will become a chore.

I know mentioning AJATT can be controversial, but I find it a great motivator, and one of the things that keeps me going at times is Khatz's advice to not worry about getting better, but concentrate on sucking less.

chamcham Wrote:For daily conversation speech, you can try reading Japanese subtitles for drama (http://www.d-addicts.com/forum/subtitles.php#Japanese) or anime (http://kitsunekko.net/).

How accurate are the fan subs listed in these?

Zlarp Wrote:I disagree with having to do it the "right way" Maybe it works for you to watch something subbed and then again unsubbed, I for one can't stand having to watch something twice in a row. I watch things once and I'm doing fine.

I say if you hate listening to things you don't understand, then yeah, do that kind of thing, but you shouldn't just discount any other forms of learning because of your peculiar condition. There are a million different ways to do this and all of them have one thing in common: you just have to be able to do it for an extended amount of time and you'll succeed.

There are a million different ways to do something, and they are on a million different levels of effectiveness. Out of the whole million of them, there is one that is the most effective, and one that is the least.

When we memorize words, two factors are in play: the ability to associate a sound with a concept and the frequency of doing that for each sound. Listening to different things you don't understand will eventually achieve both: you will very slowly begin to associate specific sounds with concepts, and you will eventually do this enough times for each sound.

But it will take the absolute longest time possible. You are, on purpose, sabotaging yourself by making sure it's hard to associate a sound with its concept, and that, even when you do, it's as unlikely as possible that this same sound will come up in a similar meaning anytime soon. Best of luck with that. Keep at it, and it will work. The Japanese language is indeed finite, therefor, despite your best efforts, it is mathematically impossible for your method not to work, eventually.

hituiuc Wrote:

chamcham Wrote:For daily conversation speech, you can try reading Japanese subtitles for drama (http://www.d-addicts.com/forum/subtitles.php#Japanese) or anime (http://kitsunekko.net/).

How accurate are the fan subs listed in these?

D-Addicts has been around forever.

These days, translators are able to extract the exact Japanese subtitles from the video stream. The subtitles are not transcribed by hand, but rather are the actual Japanese subtitles that air on TV in Japan. Basically, the Japanese subtitles are perfect. The fansubs are very accurate (and if they're not, you can always download the Japanese subtitles if they're available).

Also, the Japanese subtitles are an excellent study tool since they're the exact words the actors are saying.

Stansfield123 Wrote:There are a million different ways to do something, and they are on a million different levels of effectiveness. Out of the whole million of them, there is one that is the most effective, and one that is the least.

What's best for some people is not the same as what's best for other people though. People have different learning styles that work best for them. They also have different circumstances which influence the effectiveness of a particular method (available free time, amount of motivation, etc.).

Say there's some magical method which is the most effective. What if the requirements included things like this (just for example's sake)?

1. Live in Japan
2. Study for 8+ hours daily

#1 is naturally infeasible for people that don't live in Japan and do go to school, have work, have a family, etc. #2 depends on both available free time and motivation. Some people would burn out; others would not. If this method causes one to burn out and take a long break or quit altogether, then this method is not the most effective for that person. But another highly motivated individual could find success in that kind of "cram-style" method.

The idea that there's a single optimal method sounds pretty far-fetched to me. Sure, some methods will be better than others for many people, but I don't think we can say much more than that.