I posted a thread about learning how to listen a few months back but I have since narrowed down the way I want to approach the situation. As background, my reading skills are what I would call good (I exclusively focused on them for a long time). I've read about 18-19 light novels and went through the Kanzen Master N1 Reading Comprehension workbook without much difficulty. I have seen about 17,500 words in my Anki deck so far. I have also gone through the Kanzen Master Listening workbooks including the N1 one. For the N1 version, I usually have to listen to each dialog multiple times to get the full gist of what is going on. My speed of recognition is slow when it comes to listening.

I am now working on Jdramas. The listening differs from the dialog in the N1 workbook in that that there is background sounds and the words are slurred more. Right now I am viewing the JDrama once and then sticking it in Anki using sub2srs. Is this inefficient? Should I listen to a whole scene once without subtitles and then go back and listen to it with subtitles? And then maybe just listen to the whole episode again on my iphone when traveling? I'm trying to find an efficient manner in order to get my listening up to speed like I did with my reading. I think sub2srs may be a bit slow since it can take 2 weeks or more to go though as whole episode in an Anki deck.

I don't know if it helps, but right now I'm watching an anime with bad german subs. And all the time I hear that something is wrong with the subs I switch to the more correct english subs to check myself.
I don't know but I think that helps me really a lot, because I'm yet not in the level were I could understand enough to really help my listening. But with the sometimes wrong subs I can understand it so I also train my listening.
I really got surprised when I watched the anime on how much better I could translate some parts. And the more I watch it now the more attention I pay to sound.


For something normal I would say if you can't understand the dramas a little bit without su s, watch something easier. Without subs.
The problem with subs is, that you have to pay attetion to them, so your listening suffers also you relly too much on them.
That's what I can say about me while watching something in english. (I'm german)
If in an english video have subs I automatically read them and don't pay much attention to the spoken language.

PotbellyPig Wrote:I posted a thread about learning how to listen a few months back but I have since narrowed down the way I want to approach the situation. As background, my reading skills are what I would call good (I exclusively focused on them for a long time). I've read about 18-19 light novels and went through the Kanzen Master N1 Reading Comprehension workbook without much difficulty. I have seen about 17,500 words in my Anki deck so far. I have also gone through the Kanzen Master Listening workbooks including the N1 one. For the N1 version, I usually have to listen to each dialog multiple times to get the full gist of what is going on. My speed of recognition is slow when it comes to listening.

We seem to be on a roughly similar spot. I've read about double your amount of LNs, but never used any textbook, and I'm now seriously starting with listening, which I'm trying to improve through JW articles.

Just out of curiosity, how easy/difficult do you find an article like this?

http://www.jw.org/ja/%E5%87%BA%E7%89%88%...%E3%82%8A/

(Obviously try not to read along.)

I found that my listening improved a lot just from doing it a lot when it was lagging a long way behind my reading. Perhaps focusing too much on systematic learning is counter productive and what you really need is lots of practice recognising basic stuff you already know?

Listening is really not easy. Now seems I maybe not to try this first...

I'd advise keeping it simple. The best way to practice listening skills is to... well, you know... listen to stuff. Lots of stuff, as much as possible. Exposure is the key here -

If you want a more systematical approach, and if you're into drama & movies, read a synopsis first and watch the movie second. Or watch once with subtitles and once without. But I'd strongly advise against pausing every 2 seconds to look up words and stuff - just accept that you're not going to understand everything, and try to enjoy what you're listening to. That way you won't get burned out, and it makes for really good practice.

Podcasts are a great source of listening materials btw.

Linval Wrote:I'd advise keeping it simple. The best way to practice listening skills is to... well, you know... listen to stuff. Lots of stuff, as much as possible. Exposure is the key here -

If you want a more systematical approach, and if you're into drama & movies, read a synopsis first and watch the movie second. Or watch once with subtitles and once without. But I'd strongly advise against pausing every 2 seconds to look up words and stuff - just accept that you're not going to understand everything, and try to enjoy what you're listening to. That way you won't get burned out, and it makes for really good practice.

Podcasts are a great source of listening materials btw.

I agree with the above, it wasn't as obvious at first but I definitely notice how my listening has improved after watching a bunch of dramas and anime.

If you want to go the more actively listening and writing down words bit, then I would recommend using music (assuming you have some Japanese music on your ipod). I have around 30-50 or so of my favorite Japanese songs that I will listen to all the time (often to the point of skipping other stuff on my ipod), that I have heard many times and at this point recognize the content fairly well. Sometimes I will sit down with the song playing and then if I come across an interesting/important sounding or often repeated word I will write it down somewhere. At the end of the song I will look up all the words I found to see if they are a) real (sometimes I accidentally mistake bits of multiple words as one word) b) if the given dictionary makes sense in the context of the song (sometimes it might be a case of I thought I heard A, but really B was said, so I discount the word because I'm not sure which it was) It probably helps that a lot of my songs are from shows that I have seen before (in terms of knowing context), but sometimes there are certain definitions that just don't make sense

^After passing the gained words through my "filters", I am generally left with words that I then put in more permanent storage (as in Anki or some master word list of words learned in the wild)
*It might be a bit inefficient, but considering how strangely language can be sung vs being said, to me it's a fun little exercise to gain some interesting words as well as a little confidence booster that I can actually understand some music (even if only in bits and pieces)

Splatted Wrote:I found that my listening improved a lot just from doing it a lot when it was lagging a long way behind my reading. Perhaps focusing too much on systematic learning is counter productive and what you really need is lots of practice recognising basic stuff you already know?

Is it just my impression, or does your second sentence contradict your first one? What do you mean exactly by "doing it a lot"?

Linval Wrote:I'd advise keeping it simple. The best way to practice listening skills is to... well, you know... listen to stuff. Lots of stuff, as much as possible. Exposure is the key here.

1. Has exposure worked for you personally? I know nothing about academic research on this, but passive exposure never helped my German listening even a fraction of the active, targeted listening that took it to a decent level. While having a low level of listening, don't you feel it's more white noise than a useful aid? I stopped randomly listening to Japanese podcasts in the background when I realized my mind was perceiving this only as an alternative to Rainy Mood or Coffitivity, which actually helped me to focus on whatever else I was doing but listening.

2. Perhaps "keeping it simple" could be defined otherwise? I like JW articles because, although not exactly "simple" in the traditional sense, you can read the script (so no need to guess when you miss a word), you can read the English version (so no need to guess then you don't get a sentence), you are actually reading a translation into Japanese (so you get this "special" kind of Japanese, which is actually advantageous in that it's missing lots of natural quirks that would throw you off at an intermediate level) and you can even decrease the speed of delivery (so you avoid frustration by not losing so often the thread of what's being said). A final perk is that it's all text/speech from the beginning to the end, which is useful if your time to study each day is limited and you're not willing to bear with the pauses and silences of dramas. In other words, you keep it simple by doing away with lots of factors that would, under normal circumstances, hinder your listening ability. Somewhat like RTK simplifies Kanji learning by having you focus on one thing and one thing only.

JackBS Wrote:1. Has exposure worked for you personally? I know nothing about academic research on this, but passive exposure never helped my German listening even a fraction of the active, targeted listening that took it to a decent level. While having a low level of listening, don't you feel it's more white noise than a useful aid? I stopped randomly listening to Japanese podcasts in the background when I realized my mind was perceiving this only as an alternative to Rainy Mood or Coffitivity, which actually helped me to focus on whatever else I was doing but listening.

I don't know about academic research either, and I don't really care to be honest - talking from personal experience, exposure, be it passive / semi-passive / active has helped me tremendously while learning english. So I do talk from experience here. Active listening has always been a fantastic bore to me, because when I listen to something I actually enjoy, the last thing I want to do is pause it every time I miss something to look it up.

I'm not saying you should put podcasts while you sleep or anything, but having a fire-and-forget kind of approach to exposure is always beneficial. When I need to focus on something, I just zone out and the audio becomes background noise, but as soon as I can afford it, I switch part of my attention back to the audio. It's a good way to train your ear to all those alien sounds. Think about it ; when you hear a language you've never heard before, it's hard to make out all the sounds clearly, and it just sounds like a big mumble-fest. Exposure fights that. It trains your ear to the ... "music" of the language. I don't know how else to put it, but after being exposed to tons of english audio, I could pretty much tell by ears only whether a sentence sounded "right" or "wrong", which is a very "native" trait to develop.

It's hard to quantify the efficiency of such a method, it affects your listening comprehension on very subtle levels, one small increment at a time --- but honestly, what's the worse that could happen ? Unless it gives you a massive headache, there's literally nothing to lose by just doing it.

And by "Keeping it simple", I didn't mean the audio content itself, but rather the "method", or lack thereof.

JackBS Wrote:

PotbellyPig Wrote:I posted a thread about learning how to listen a few months back but I have since narrowed down the way I want to approach the situation. As background, my reading skills are what I would call good (I exclusively focused on them for a long time). I've read about 18-19 light novels and went through the Kanzen Master N1 Reading Comprehension workbook without much difficulty. I have seen about 17,500 words in my Anki deck so far. I have also gone through the Kanzen Master Listening workbooks including the N1 one. For the N1 version, I usually have to listen to each dialog multiple times to get the full gist of what is going on. My speed of recognition is slow when it comes to listening.

We seem to be on a roughly similar spot. I've read about double your amount of LNs, but never used any textbook, and I'm now seriously starting with listening, which I'm trying to improve through JW articles.

Just out of curiosity, how easy/difficult do you find an article like this?

http://www.jw.org/ja/%E5%87%BA%E7%89%88%...%E3%82%8A/

(Obviously try not to read along.)

The issue with an article like that is that everything is pronounced very clearly. I can't say I grasp it all on the first time through. I'm still slow at it. Usually in a Jdrama, the pronunciation isn't nearly as clear. It looks good to practice with so thanks for the resource. However, I want to try to stick to something like Jdrama's since that is the type of thing I want to listen to. Or maybe an anime. I'm thinking of trying to listen to like 2 minutes at a time and then viewing the section with subtitles. Like someone else stated, constantly turning subtitles on and off for each line is annoying. Are anime's perhaps a bit easier to learn from than Jdramas's since they use professional voice actors?

JackBS Wrote:

Splatted Wrote:I found that my listening improved a lot just from doing it a lot when it was lagging a long way behind my reading. Perhaps focusing too much on systematic learning is counter productive and what you really need is lots of practice recognising basic stuff you already know?

Is it just my impression, or does your second sentence contradict your first one? What do you mean exactly by "doing it a lot"?

I don't think they're contradictory. By doing a lot I meant lots of doing lots of active listening. I.e. finding a tv program podcast or whatever you understand enough of to enjoy and then just binging on it. When you're just trying to activate what you already know in a different medium there shouldn't be any need to learn new words or understand everything.
You just need to practice practice practice. (Is what I was trying to say.)

Splatted Wrote:

JackBS Wrote:

Splatted Wrote:I found that my listening improved a lot just from doing it a lot when it was lagging a long way behind my reading. Perhaps focusing too much on systematic learning is counter productive and what you really need is lots of practice recognising basic stuff you already know?

Is it just my impression, or does your second sentence contradict your first one? What do you mean exactly by "doing it a lot"?

I don't think they're contradictory. By doing a lot I meant lots of doing lots of active listening. I.e. finding a tv program podcast or whatever you understand enough of to enjoy and then just binging on it. When you're just trying to activate what you already know in a different medium there shouldn't be any need to learn new words or understand everything.
You just need to practice practice practice. (Is what I was trying to say.)

I actually found J-dramas to generally be a bit easier to understand (at least compared to the type of anime I watch). The anime I watch has a lot of slang, slurred language, and I'm fairly certain there are a number of made up words in there. That type of thing might be in dramas, but in my experience it is either less prevalent, or they make a big deal of how you normally don't talk that way. You also get the benefit of potential body language cues as to what is going on with the real people in dramas which you don't necessarily get with anime. However I tend to watch a fair bit of both with my listening practice. Between the 2 I get a fair amount of exposure to a variety of different topics/language

1) Open ears
2) ?
3) Profit

What would you need a "technique" for?

andikaze Wrote:1) Open ears
2) ?
3) Profit

What would you need a "technique" for?

1) If the normal way you do something isn't working
2) Or you feel lost and have no clue how to do things
3) Or you have a real craving for "efficiency" and believe that other people's methods might help you more than your own.