分かりました。

It really is hard to fit everything in isn't it? With Amenbo no uta I am now at the stage where I can harmonize a fast version in under a minute so I can definitely do that at least once a day! I aim for either one or two 15-minute sentence harmonizing sessions but don't always make it. I always start anything vocal with Amenbo (as do most Japanese voice professionals).

Amenbo is a nice fast way of getting some rhythm training and doing a little harmonizing. Of course you need to go slower at first and it takes a while to get used to the nonsense verse, but this can still be done without taking much time out of your day if you want to do it.

My method was to break it down. Harmonize the first four "verses" at training speed first (they and the training speed audio are on my article). You can break it down further if you want. I took it in bites of four.

You can do the section you are working on for as many days as it takes to get comfortable, then do the same with the next section, then put them together. If you take them in fours, you now only have two more verses to go.

At training speed the whole Amenbo takes not too much over a minute and at full speed under a minute.

One can practice a block of four verses several times in a few minutes, and if you want to do it that is what I'd recommend. Don't worry too much how it went, just do it again the next day. You'll get to the full Amenbo at training speed in around two weeks even taking it really easy. Then stay with that until you are really confident before you move on to full speed.

Sorry. I don't mean to sound as if I'm saying "You don't have time but you should do this anyway". I am not saying that. I know only too well how one has to prioritize what one fits into the day, and I am not trying to dictate your priorities.

Just mentioning, in case it interests anyone, a method that does help get Japanese rhythm into one's blood (over time) without very much investment of time. I do rather more than I am suggesting here myself, but I do believe even no more than daily 5 minute (or even less) Amenbo sessions would help.

Hi there, it's been a while! I just saw this thread linked to and thought I might dust it off a bit. Besides, with all the advice the community was kind enough to offer me here some time ago, I guess I owe it to you to report back on my efforts and conclusions since then, which now make up a slightly better informed opinion, or so I'd like to think!

gaiaslastlaugh Wrote:I think you will find that most of us on this forum are of the "try various things and see what works for you" school of thought. It doesn't matter how good a piece of advice or a learning technique *sounds* - if it frustrates you and burns you out on the language, you should try something else and see if it's a better fit.

Since I pretty much need to arrive at all my conclusions on my own, be it in listening comprehension or in anything else, I confess I was and am, ironically, even skeptical of this whatever-works-for-you approach. As I see it, and this might seem blindingly obvious, there are two halves to it: "whatever works," i.e. whatever enables you to progress, and "for you," i.e. without frustrating you into quitting. But why do we concentrate so much on this second half and toss out the first? From what I've read here and elsewhere, I get the impression that "whatever works" deserves little attention as long as we find a way to keep trying without quitting. But I've come to the opposite conclusion. To me, the second half ought to be the tweaking that we do only after we've grasped how the first half actually works, which is of much bigger importance. Naturally, almost anything works if you do it long enough. But that would seem to be the facile, super-duh conclusion that we get precisely because we're unwilling to think about what it is that actually enables us to progress. So I guess what I'm rhetorically asking is: Have we gained much from this approach? Ultimately, I think that there are enriching discussions about learning how to listen, about how to use resources rather than just sharing them, that aren't being had because it's just easier to say that everyone's way is the best way and anything that makes you happy is good. I understand the sentiment, but I also feel it's an excuse to avoid thinking about the problem that inspires it.

So that's where I'm coming from! As an intermediate reader with her head extensively bruised from bashing it against the wall of listening comprehension, I find it more sensible to think of it this way. Of course, how each of us prefers to learn will vary according to our skills, interests and even personality, but I think we all stand to gain from discussing the mechanics, the gritty details of listening comprehension without getting into that old tug of war between fun and efficiency. (I wish the rope would just snap so we could go play a more cooperative game!) So with this in mind, I've tried to be a bit more deliberate about my efforts…

tokyostyle Wrote:First realize that every suggestion in this thread is a variation on the same theme and then figure out which version of "listen to a lot of audio that you have a transcript for" is most appealing for you.

I hear you! I'm positive that progress in listening comprehension is inextricably bound with the use of transcripts. But stating dryly what the state of the art is, as in any thesis, is only the starting point. How exactly do we use transcripts? Listen then read? Read then listen? Do both? Do neither? Decide what to do according to which way the wind is blowing? Listening to something multiple times takes a toll on your concentration; listening to something once, as with the L-R method, doesn't really enable you (read: me) to follow an audiobook with audio alone afterwards, not even roughly. In my case, what was and still is short-circuiting, specifically, and this is my big finding, is my recognition of onyomi-based nouns in spoken language. While in most cases I do recognize and mentally visualize their constituent kana, I have a hard time mentally putting kanji to them, let alone meaning. It's always a humbling experience to realize that a word I've SRSed into oblivion isn't part of my vocabulary when it's in an mp3 rather than in an epub. My tentative solution is therefore to recreate the words I know by sight into words I know by ear. Not with Anki again this time around, but with fresh material and deliberate practice. So I've been listening with an ear to onyomi-based nouns, which I know are very likely to trip me up, and even concentrating on them to the detriment of almost anything else. My reasoning is that intermediate readers, being learners who are able to make sense of even spoken grammatical constructs on autopilot, or at least most of them, can certainly afford to redistribute their attention this way. In musical terms, it's like a mediocre piano player who practices her whole piece over and over, and a good player who practices mostly the hardest passages until they've become second nature. Admittedly, there might be the occasional grammatical construct or entire sentence or kunyomi-based word that leaves you blinking, but for a good reader and poor listener, these seem to make up only a silly minority of cases in the grand scheme of things. You'd be better off turning to them, I think, once you've arrived at that sweet sweet day when most onyomi-based nouns make sense without deliberately thinking about them! Right now, following this idea, and following gaiaslastlaugh's cue, I've divided my listening material into scripted and unscripted stuff. For scripted stuff, since I know how much my will to practice depends on ease of access, I use mostly Yahoo! News as well as the Jehovah's Witnesses website, which are constantly updating with new content and place the hurdle of preparation at the bare minimum. For unscripted stuff, I've been using Meitantei Conan episodes, which contain a nice mix of plot predictability and richness of dialogue. I settled on this after trying things like Fate/Zero, which I found impossibly hard even with a script, and generic high-school romcoms, which I found trivially easy and thus not really worth it. Detective shows for kids seem to be where it's at!

So that's my take on the problem so far. Hope is not a strategy! My listening comprehension may not have skyrocketed yet, or perhaps even materially progressed, but I can with absolute certainty say that I've gotten much better at a specific aspect of it. Now I'm at a point when onyomi-based homophones are driving me up (or rather down) the wall, but some of them usefully turn up again and again to keep me from forgetting them. And there's always that sense of satisfaction when I recognize an uncommon noun without even thinking about it. Eventually, I guess there'll be a stage where I mostly keep stumbling upon a long tail of never-before-seen onyomi-based nouns, but when I do, then I'll have concrete proof that progress has been made!

Thanks for the followup. I am in a similar position of being able to read really well but not listen.

Another thing to consider is the factor of time. Even if you find the most effective method to increase listening comprehension, you must put time in it. This is especially true, imho, if we talk about listening comprehension. The written word is allways the same, so that if you understand a word in your Anki reps, you'll almost ever recognize and understand that same word, if you encounter it on written material.

But speaking is different, I am sure it's not even necessary for me to explain why

This is why transcripts are useful. Because you have a tool to verify that what you're listening to is comprehensible to begin with.
Without transcript you don't even know if your listening material is at your level. So you keep asking youreslf "don't I understand because my listening sucks, or don't I understand because I don't know most of the words they're using?"

(Not specifically to you )

Listen to the first two minutes of this WITHOUT reading the english subtitles:

AKB48 SHOW

then check the transcript.

then listen to the original content another time (without reading the transcripts) and see if you understand it better now.

PS: I posted this because it has almost only very common words

Are you doing the Japanese?