My reading is slowly getting better with time and it's much easier to practice than listening. How did people here start practicing their listening skills? What are good methods for beginners?

I do some listening practice with core2k like single vocabulary words and a single sentence with the vocabulary word. I was wondering how helpful that is in terms of getting better. When listening to Japanese audio, I can pick up words here or there but most of it is not understandable.

Perhaps material aimed at beginners, where you get a dialogue and it is broken down afterwards (and finally repeated again), might help. IIRC Japanesepod101 used that sort of format, where you hear the dialogue, and then they go through it line by line and explaining the vocab, then you hear the dialogue again.

And maybe listening while looking at a script, so you have an association between the written and spoken word, then gradually trying to listen without the script?

Doing more listening is the best, but I think having material where you can check that what you think you've heard is what actually is being said will help.

In terms of developing listening comprehension, I've found that just consistently listening to as much Japanese for as many hours as you can per day helps tremendously in the long run.

And since you're learning vocabulary, that will help even more, because the more often you hear particular words being repeated, the more familiar your sense of hearing will be with them.

Listening to single words repeatedly, alongside within a sentence, can help with singling those words out in a stream of Japanese dialogue because you'll already be accustomed to hearing them plenty of times. Your brain will most likely just recognize them after a while (assuming the spoken accents aren't difficult to discern).

But when I talk about listening to a lot of Japanese, I don't mean light listening, as my experience with it comes from about 3,000 or so hours of consistent listening... which can be tiresome to intake, particularly if you don't enjoy watching/listening to something that you don't fully understand.

Aside from that, maybe just speaking with other native speakers will help.

Aside from the occasional listening homework or test section in my classes, I never really did much in the way of formal/intentional listening practice. As mentioned above, getting exposed to a lot of content (anime, music, dramas, etc.) over a long period of time will be a good way to improve things. I'm fairly certain my recent relatively large increase in listening ability came from listening to the same several dozen Japanese songs on my ipod on the train ride to/from work. Eventually I was able to pick out words and then phrases/sentences out of the jumble of speech. I also got practice listening to quick, sometimes strangely spoken words as singing can be a bit like that. But overall my biggest improvement in listening has probably been from just doing a lot of media consumption.

Though I have been studying for a while, I just started listening practice relatively recently. You can use sub2srs to study from TV shows etc., but depending on your level, native material may be a bit beyond your reach at this point. For a more systematic approach, there is a Kanzen Master N3 Listening workbook which starts off helping you to distinguish sounds and various contractions before breaking into full dialogs. In the N3 workbook, the explanatory notes are in English but the scripts are not translated.

Is the problem that the audio you're listening to is above your level in terms of vocabulary? Because no matter how good your listening skills are if you don't know the words they're using it's not going to help.

Otherwise yeah - subs2srs is a great tool.

I've tried a few graded readers recently. What I do is listen to the audio and barely understand anything (these are low level and I know almost all the vocabulary but I guess not that well with listening), follow along with the text while listening to the audio again, going over any words I haven't seen before without audio, and finally listening to the audio again and being able to understand almost all of it. The problem with this though is I feel like maybe I'm just remembering the events in the short story rather that just understanding from listening only.

For Kanzen Master N3 Listening workbook, should I be N3 for that? I'm not sure what level I am but it's definitely not N3. That brings me to my next point which is should I even start listening practice at my current unknown but low level?

Quote:The problem with this though is I feel like maybe I'm just remembering the events in the short story rather that just understanding from listening only.

I think that's normal and helpful. Next time you hear something similar to that you'll have a better chance at making it out.

I would recommend finding a children's show with a Japanese subtitle track. Using subs2srs and Ankiing it is probably the most effective way, but even just being able to watch/listen and then check what you heard is helpful. If you choose the right show it shouldn't have much weird or specialised vocabulary (as always I recommend Heartcatch Precure, but I think anything that revolves around the real world and fighting evil is a good place to start - simple topics with fairly simple vocabulary sets)
Listening has never really been a problem for me and I fully credit subs2srs+Anki for that.

I've heard and thought about using subs2srs before but the biggest problem was always finding the content. First I have to choose a show to use and I don't know what a good one would be. Then I have to find subtitles for that show if there are even any. After that I have to find a show to download (I guess you download it right? Never used it before). And then I kept reading about synching them together which I don't know how to do.

[RawToast]

learningkanji Wrote:My reading is slowly getting better with time and it's much easier to practice than listening. How did people here start practicing their listening skills? What are good methods for beginners?

If your reading is ahead of your listening then incorporating some reading to your listening practice will help. You should try watching dramas, TV, film, even anime with Japanese subtitles.

If you're struggling for content try searching for kamigami on nyaa torrents. Everything this group/person releases seems to have Japanese and Chinese subtitles, which is very useful when you can't get hold of timed Japanese subtitles.

If the News is your thing and you can read NHK News Easy, then audio is provided so you can try listening-reading. Likewise, there's plenty of content in buonaparte's thread.

Quote:I've tried a few graded readers recently. What I do is listen to the audio and barely understand anything (these are low level and I know almost all the vocabulary but I guess not that well with listening), follow along with the text while listening to the audio again, going over any words I haven't seen before without audio, and finally listening to the audio again and being able to understand almost all of it. The problem with this though is I feel like maybe I'm just remembering the events in the short story rather that just understanding from listening only.

That sounds similar to what Steve Kaufmann would advocate (with radio transcripts instead) :

Add a few more short stories to your listening practice and listen to them over and over. Add your audio to your phone/ipod/mp3 player and listen (use shuffle!) to a few stories on the way to work, school, wherever. Shortly you will feel confident enough to add some harder stories (maybe from the next graded reader), just continue with this practice.

I used to watch variety shows with subs, and then without. Then, I would rip the audio, and listen a few more times (when commuting, or out for a walk).

I also listened to radio shows, even before I could understand what was being said. Here's one I'd recommend, because it's high quality audio, structured (it's mainly answering listener questions, and a few bits that they do every show), it's two female voices with Tokyo accents making light conversation (by far the easiest format audio to understand), and they play enough (Japanese) music to keep it enjoyable even if you don't understand most of what is being said: http://www.hello-online.org/index.php?ap...rent=52638

The downsides are the annoying production (typical radio voice announcing the station and show title in and out of every music break, in English), and they don't talk about anything interesting. They are funny though, at times. But I'm recommending it under the assumption that you won't understand most of it anyway, so that really doesn't matter.

UCLA researchers write:
"Previous research on the redundancy principle in multimedia learning has shown that although exact correspondence between on-screen text and narration generally impairs learning, brief labels within an animation can improve learning..." (Abstract)

Reducing Verbal Redundancy in Multimedia Learning:
An Undesired Desirable Difficulty?
http://bjorklab.psych.ucla.edu/pubs/YueB...ndancy.pdf
(Abstract, Introduction, 1) (Theoretical Implications, Practical Implications, Limitations and Future Directions, 274)


Using VLC, Bleach and One Piece with hardcoded English subtitles.

Video: Optional, Crop Video (removes subtitles)
Audio: Japanese Audio

•Less visual stimuli (optional)
•Increase focus on visual stimuli (cropped portion, focus on center)
•Increase focus on auditory stimuli (Japanese audio)
•Less textual stimuli (optional)

Optional: Ctrl+H or full-screen; anki reviews
I've always preferred a crop ratio of 2.39:1 (in older series).
Not sure how this would work in Media Player Classic.
Use Japanese or Dueling subtitles (cb4960's subs2srs).

I find that dueling subtitles works well with episodes I've seen before.
&Japanese subtitles provide good reading + listening practice.

Little tidbit(s).
Somewhere on brainpickings mentioned we experience 11,000,000 pieces of stimuli at any given moment, but on average we focus on 40/second.

Games like Starcraft or n-back can improve our ability to multi-task by improving our working memory, which allows an individual to hold more pieces of stimuli at any moment.

Considering that the OP seems to not know too many words, I would suggest he sticks to listening to the Core sentences for now. The Kanzen Master N3 Listening Workbook I mentioned is meant for people at the N3 level.