Hello! I'm trying to improve my listening comprehension in Japanese, but for far too long now, I've been hitting an impossible wall, one that's making me wonder if I'm somehow especially handicapped when it comes to listening comprehension. I've been thinking about this for the past week and I'd like to ask the community for help!

I've been learning Japanese for 2.5 years now; my aim is to reach passive fluency, i.e. to be able to understand most of what I read and listen to without too much effort. (I don't care about production.) As for reading, I've studied grammar from a number of textbooks, I've accumulated a vocab of 20k words in Anki, and I've read exactly 60 light novels, with a comprehension that probably goes from 95% for the easiest ones to 60-70% for the hardest ones I've read. My reading comprehension is by no means perfect, but I feel as if I'm progressing at an acceptable rate, and it's probably a matter of time to get to where I want to be. As for listening comprehension, however, I'm at a loss. I've been practicing it along with reading comprehension but, to be honest, I have very little to show for it. After all this time, I think I still haven't found a proper method to practice listening comprehension.

Here's what I've tried:

- I've tried NHK News Easy on a daily basis, only to fall of the wagon after 2-3 days at a time, as that robotic voice puts me to sleep, not to mention I don't seem to be interested in the topics they cover. I'm not sure if it's a listening comprehension problem, or just one of attention... (I've also tried normal news on the Japanese version of Yahoo, but its specific vocab tells me I should be trying with something easier first.)

- I've tried the Jehovah's Witnesses website, which seems to improve on NHK Easy, but only a bit, as I find myself often drifting off after 5-6 minutes of concentration. (The text is a translation and thus not natural Japanese, which might be also a bit worrying, but at this point I'd be happy with just understanding it.)

- I've tried some of the various audiobooks floating around, but like the proper news, they seem to be at an excessively high level for me at the moment.

- I've tried leaving on iTunes with podcasts in the background while I do other stuff, and I've realized that, the way I'm wired, if I'm doing something else, I pay no attention to this audio whatsoever.

- I've tried anime, mostly slice of life, with mixed results. If I watch without subtitles first, and then with subtitles to see what I missed, and then without subtitles to sort of "reinforce" what I've learned, I tend to give up, as I find I cannot watch the same stuff that many times. (When I watch with subtitles, I simply use English ones, as they provide the cue that lets me look up the word or phrase I wasn't getting. It's usually a word I'd recognize in writing, but I wouldn't be able to recognize it by ear even if someone had put a gun to my head!) Other times, to prevent the boredom of watching the same thing so many times, I watch only once with subtitles on, but concentrating on what's being said and jumping back 5 seconds to re-check and re-listen whenever I miss something big, which is annoyingly often. (It's also not unusual that I drift off and just watch while "subconsciously" reading the subtitles...) And yet other times, I watch only once without subtitles, but my comprehension when doing this is so abysmally low that I wonder whether it's really helping.

Maybe I'm just discouraged that I don't find listening as easy as reading. (I've seriously contemplated focusing on reading and after that's "done" then just moving on to another hobby!) I'm an English speaker and I've learned German before, and for listening comprehension I used a mountain of interesting general knowledge articles with audio, and that turned out great. But when it comes to listening in Japanese, I got (practically) nothin'. I know I have to find something of moderate difficulty (I'd say I got that covered in the sense that I know how to judge this) that is also somewhere acceptable in the boring-fascinating continuum (not that easy, but also doable) and that lends itself to daily practice (something that doesn't involve much preparation or even involvement, but that just allows you to "flow" when practicing as when you're reading an interesting novel.)

Thus, some questions: Is there any other audio source I can try? Is there another method you'd personally recommend? Do I need an attitude adjustment and stop being so critical about all these free audio sources that I seem to be completely unable to make use of? Anything helps! Thanks in advance!

1. The method:

I listen to a lot of music, radio, and audio I rip from videos (from videos I watched before - with or without subs). Often repeatedly. I listen while I cook, play videogames, exercise, travel, etc. It adds up to several hours every day. These days it's less of a problem, but in the past I've made it a point to at least know what's going on in everything I listen to, including the music (even if the songs were not fully comprehensible, I'd make sure to know what the song titles mean, what the general theme is, know some things about the bands that sing them, etc.).

I feel like my listening comprehension is progressing nicely, even though I don't read a lot and stopped studying altogether (got busy with other things).

2. As for what it is I listen to:

I like comedy, variety shows, idol related stuff (not all idols are the same, btw. - just because you don't like AKB or Arashi, doesn't mean all idols suck), baseball, etc. It's almost never scripted shows, news or documentaries. They don't have a good re-listenability factor, and, besides, I get bored with them. Especially the news. Believe it or not, most news isn't targeted at an intelligent audience.

The key is to be interested in what you're watching. If you like an athlete, comedian or idol, you can keep up with their career, releases, blog, news about them, etc., and it adds up to a lot of material that actually interests you. And, since you already know the person, that material is far easier to comprehend than something about a subject you're not familiar with.

When it comes to listening twice, or more, I find that stuff that has a lot of comedy and/or music in it works great.

As an example, lately I've been into Momoiro Clover Z. They actually have interesting music for an idol band (because they work with a lot of very good musicians and songwriters). Initially, I learned a lot about them by watching subtitled videos, then I moved on to some of the shows they're in that aren't subtitled (if you're into older Japanese music, there's a monthly cover show they do for FujiTV called Sakazaki Kounosuke no Momoiro Folk Mura, for instance), and eventually I've been able to listen to their weekly radio show, radio appearances, read blogs, message boards and news about them. Not because my Japanese is so great, but because if you know a lot about a subject going in , it's easier to follow along with otherwise difficult materials.

3. And, finally, I find that Japanese entertainers (not unlike people in general, but for some reason it works especially well for Japanese entertainment) become funnier and easier to like after I had a few beers. Alcohol, in moderation, is good for the heart too. They should make a commercial about this. Bud Light: better than Rosetta Stone. Cheaper, too.

If you want to feel good about your listening ability I'd suggest things like 実況プレイ videos on YouTube (I'd personally recommend: https://www.youtube.com/user/norunine ). It's almost always one person talking as they play, reacting to what's going on in the game or whatever. I'd say my listening comprehension for content like this is around 95%, yet I turn on the news/radio and that % drops precipitously; I can no longer follow what's being said unless I listen with the intent to understand, which I don't need to do when it's one person talking alone. For some reason the language used is much simpler and easier to follow.

As for things like music, I'm not a big music person an can barely follow what's being said in songs in my own language (for years I was convinced he was saying "It's a fire mountain," rather than "It's the final countdown,") so I've pretty much resigned myself to never being able to easily follow everything I hear in Japanese songs. I do however wish to attain good to excellent listening comprehension in all other areas.

If you'd like to always just have live Japanese available to listen to (I find this to be a necessity at times) I recommend using the Hola Unblocker addon (if you're not in Japan) for either Firefox or Chrome and accessing radiko.jp, where you can listen to people talking almost 24/7 depending on the station. For some reason the idea of just having live radio playing appeals to me so much more than pre-recorded shows or movies/anime.

I too would love for there to be a silver bullet that dramatically increased listening comprehension, but I think it's just like a lot of other things in that it's a problem that resolves itself over time and with exposure. Having Japanese subtitles alone boosts my comprehension by a ridiculous rate, so I know the issue isn't my lack of understanding, just comprehending at speed. This makes me believe that only time/exposure will make much of a difference.

subs2srs!

I don't know why you don't use J-subs ListenUp, especially since you're a good reader (for anime/dorama/films). See there is this method called LR,
http://learnanylanguage.wikia.com/wiki/L...ing_Method
and exercice 3 is listening to L2 (here Japanese) while reading L2, making your listening speed match your reading speed (or vice versa when a strong listenner).

Of course in addition to just listen-read anime/dorama/movies you can use subs2srs like Aikynaro said, but you may also do some LR with audiobooks and parallel text. Buonaparte had a thread about that:
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=6840

Thank you for all your help! It's interesting to see all the wildly different strategies people are using. I seem to have been leaning a bit too much towards "formal" stuff as opposed to variety shows, let's play videos, talk radio, music, etc.

It appears to me that some of you enjoy just listening to whatever you like and letting your comprehension slowly build up like that, while others prefer a more methodical approach, i.e. building up your comprehension with this or that method and then practicing it with whatever might strike your fancy. I certainly belong to this second camp, but it strikes me that I haven't really done it one way or the other; I've just been flailing around with material that can't hold my attention and failing hard because of that. (I'd probably have stumbled on the same problem with reading novels if they had me daydreaming every two sentences!)

That's probably why I'm drawn to the LR method the most. I'll try it first and report back! So far I've been either (1) listening and then checking what I understood, or (2) reading and then listening and then checking what I understood. Honestly, I find it a bit weird that reading and listening simultaneously can improve your listening comprehension. In other words, I find it a bit weird than you can improve your listening comprehension if you use (what seems to me to be) such a big crutch whenever you're practicing listening comprehension. But if it works, I'll be the last one to complain! It'd be nice to know if there's anyone here (ideally, a good reader and poor listener) who managed to bridge the gap using this method.

I'm in the same boat as you. I am fairly good at reading. I have a vocabulary studied through anki of about 29k words and have read about 50 light novels. I really enjoy reading so I focused on that first. But listening is hard. Especially catching every word the first time you hear it. I've gone from using JLPT N1 listening learning materials to listening to animes and dramas (and then checking with japanese subs) to listening to the news. It is difficult. I went for it a number of times and then always fell back to reading some books. Right now I am giving it a go again and using some N1 resources first, though N1 stuff could be harder than regular dialog since there are twists and turns and you have to answer questions.

I am not sure how reading while listening will help when we are already good at reading. We will fall back to what we are good at and just read the script. I think it can help at the earlier stages of learning to listen but at the stage I am at now, I think it would be counter productive. Though I may be mistaken in how ti works.

ListenUp Wrote:I find it a bit weird than you can improve your listening comprehension if you use (what seems to me to be) such a big crutch whenever you're practicing listening comprehension.

The way I see it (and I'm going to talk about my experience with English as a non native speaker now because in Japanese I'm a stronger listenner than a reader), it's not so much reading while listenning but focusing on the listenning and whenever you slow down or are confused, the text is here to be read and help you keep up with the flow of speech.

In a way it's a sort of "aural understandable input". When listening without subs is too hard, you tire easily and the smallest thing trips you down and you it's hard to catch up, probably because you're in the i+n zone. With subs in the same language as what you hear, even if you rely heavily on them at first, after the some time you get the phonatory idiosyncrasies of the speakers you are listening to and you start reading without seeing, the text becomes just an aid to tell your brain how to interpret ambiguous noises (it's hard to explain). And I think your brain remembers all this parsing and decision process (that can be re-used in the wild), which is why it can progressively tackle harder content with relying less on the subs*.

And you know with subs it feels safe, so you're relaxed, it's important like Stansfield mentionned above. And like you I dislike anything that has to do with going through the same content more than once, and LR has a nice simultaneous feel to it. I also don't like slow motion though I understand why it might be helpful to some.

*That's for the theory but like Buonaparte also implied there might be a quantity parameter at work, ie the more you listen the better you will be, then your main problem like you said is to find attractive content that might not dishearten you even if they're slightly too hard (cue from what interests you in your native tongue).

One suggestion for the news (this goes for anyone, not just OP): listen to NHK World news in English (or whatever your native language is), then listen to NHK Radio Japan in Japanese right afterwards (10-15 minute news version). The EN version won't necessarily cover everything in the NHK Radio Japan news, but there's about 60-70% coverage, so you at least get an idea of what's going on.

Also, if you use a podcatcher, make sure you use the playback speed function to SLOW DOWN the speech. Set it to 0.8 or 0.7x, and you may understand things better. (Doggcatcher for Android has this. Handy also for speeding things up!)

If you want REALLY easy stuff to listen to, go to Japanesepod101.com. Strip out the EN bits and listen to the opening dialogue only if you find the EN bits annoying. It's not free, but it's not expensive, either. I think they have a special ending tonight. (They run a lot of specials.) Sometimes the dialogues are a little silly, but there's a lot of useful stuff in there.

Finally, audio >>> video, IMO. The problem with video is the same problem with reading manga-- too many visual cues. When I'm watching がってん！, even though I may not get some of the medical terminology, I can grok most of the show because they use a lot of visuals. (Like giant puppets vomiting ping-pong balls. It's awesome.) Same goes for the news-- TV news shows then tells. But with radio/audio, there's no show, only tell. So it's harder to understand if your vocab is lacking. (And conversely, you may mistakenly think you're doing better than you are by watching a lot of video.)

rich_f Wrote:Finally, audio >>> video, IMO. The problem with video is the same problem with reading manga-- too many visual cues. When I'm watching がってん！, even though I may not get some of the medical terminology, I can grok most of the show because they use a lot of visuals. (Like giant puppets vomiting ping-pong balls. It's awesome.) Same goes for the news-- TV news shows then tells. But with radio/audio, there's no show, only tell. So it's harder to understand if your vocab is lacking. (And conversely, you may mistakenly think you're doing better than you are by watching a lot of video.)

You're probably right about this. On the TV news, they also display a lot of the info on the screen. Less stressful to listen to but you are also getting less benefit.

Wow, good timing I guess. I have spent the last few days writing up some stuff about JapanesePod101.com, so I decided to go ahead and finish it up.

I highly recommend JapanesePod101.com for listening practice. It sounds like at your level, all you might need is the dialogs, and don't even worry about most of the lesson tracks.
I think you ideally want to choose material that you can mostly understand (70% or more) the first time through, and then fully understand either after a few more listens or after reading the transcript. Then keep listening to it every few days to reinforce your listening ability further, and move on to more material.
There are probably more than a thousand short dialogues that you can listen to, with many of them forming larger overall stories. I think it goes up to about N2 level in difficulty.

My critical review of JapanesePod101.com: http://www.nihongonobaka.com/japanesepod101-com-review/
My review of individual seasons: http://www.nihongonobaka.com/japanesepod...n-reviews/
And some tips for sorting the files: http://www.nihongonobaka.com/how-to-rena...od101-com/

If you sign up, I would recommend using the affiliate link here on the koohii forums to help support this site!

@EratiK

Ah, I kind of see what you're driving at. It's like you're simply listening and using a transcript as a backup, but then again not quite! I'll read up a bit more before trying it.


@rich_f

I liked your suggestions, especially the one about slowing down podcast speed. Imagine if we had to learn without all the technology that we have! To know what's going on in the news, I sometimes use the videos in Yahoo! Japan. I read the transcript first and then listen to the story. And sometimes I do it the other way round. I'm still undecided as to which way is actually more helpful...

As for the video issue you bring up, I have to disagree! I don't really find the visual cues all that revealing. For example, when I'm watching a slice-of-life anime where club members are discussing something about elections ("What exactly are they saying?"), any gestures they make or objects they point to do not allow me to really understand what they're getting at. Or when I'm watching a news story where we're shown e.g. a Middle Eastern background, a helicopter and some serious-looking men in suits, I don't really find myself relying on those visual cues. Mind you, this is when I'm watching/listening with the intent of understanding as much as possible, not just getting the gist of it. Also, at least for someone like me who has the attention span of a goldfish, all audio and no video make for a very dull practice session. But it does happen that I sometimes just sit there entranced by the images and "forget" to listen. Think of a toddler enjoying herself in front of a TV without really understanding a thing!


@Zarxrax

Thank you! I had this (unfounded) idea that JapanesePod101 was aimed at beginners only. I'll check your review and the trial and see what they offer!

---

Given all these ideas, I'm slowly starting to entertain the possibility that we should have some kind of routine, some kind of methodical way of improving listening comprehension. When it comes to reading, the consensus here seems to be (I might be wrong!) to do Heisig, study two or three textbooks, learn and review a big vocabulary list, and then go read until the cows come home. And somehow it works! But with listening, there isn't really a progression, right? Many many sources, sure, but I don't feel there is a progression for listening that prevents the annoyances that we're preventing when we're learning how to read. You might, say, jump from fairy tales to simplified news to talk shows to full-blown audiobooks, but most of them seem (to me) either terminally boring or frustratingly difficult. I know that it's all about exposure-exposure-exposure, but after coming this far in the language, I think I was getting a bit reluctant to keep my nose to the grindstone. (As with reading, there must be some way to interact with audio that's more methodical than just throwing stuff at your brain and hoping it sticks!) I'll slowly start going through all the sources you've all mentioned and see if I can put together some kind of plan, if only to cut down on the sheer randomness of my listening efforts so far!

Hmm... there really isn't any kind of progression. I used a lot of JPod to help me get used to listening when I got started out, but I also watched a lot of subtitled TV.

Now, I listen to a lot of podcasts in Japanese (lots of news and I just started listening to 爆笑問題's podcast, and it's funny as hell.) TV-wise, I watch a lot of NHK (and more 爆笑問題 on TV).

I think vocab-building is essential, so is grammar study. Pair that with a TON of listening, to hear those new words and grammar points you're learning, so you can grok how they're used by natives. Textbooks are useful to a point, but after that, it's mostly repetition-- running into the same words over and over again.

I've said this many times, but no matter how much you may think you suck, as long as you don't quit, you're still learning the language. Even if it's at a snail's pace, you're still moving forward. Keep trying stuff, see what works, and change out the things that don't.

For me, the key to keeping me motivated has been to keep a balance between scripted and unscripted listening.

Scripted listening = L/R, i.e., things I have transcripts for. This includes anime and drama with Japanese subtitles, most NHK news clips, 昔話 from http://hukumusume.com/douwa/, the READ REAL JAPANESE series, and random stuff available on this forum such as THE LAST WAVE.

Unscripted listening = everything else. Podcasts, shows w/o subtitles, whatever the hell is on TV Japan right now.

These days I do most of my scripted listening via subs2srs, and watch things like 名探偵コナン, TV Japan, and NHK News for my unscripted enjoyment. I do my best to pick stuff that's right about my level, or a little above, so that I can at least get the gist of what's being communicated.

Too much scripted listening feels like too much studying. On the flip side, too much unstructured listening eventually leaves me feeling lost in a sea of words. Ergo, I aim for balance.

A few tips for listening:

(1) For unscripted listening, listen to things *at least* twice. Most times, I find I pick up a lot more on the second go-round than I did the first time through. This effect has increased as my general language ability has increased.

(2) I've also found it really, REALLY helps when I'm listening to something unscripted that I can't quite understand to hit the Web after I watch it, search a few key terms I did comprehend, and do some reading up on the subject. NHK News podcasts are great for this, since the content of their podcasts map pretty well to the corresponding articles. But you can also do this with anime podcasts, lifestyle shows, YouTube clips about Kamakura-era basket weaving*** - whatever. I find that reading articles related to the subject gives me a sense for the vocabulary being used, and for the colocations that are often employed in discussing the subject. That helps me pick up more from my next round of listening.

(3) If it's too boring to listen to something even twice, listen to it once, set it aside for a couple of months, and then come back to it. Each time you do that, you'll pick up a little bit more on each subsequent listen.

That's about it. I also second rich_f on building a huge vocab, and encourage you to spend a goodly chunk of time studying grammar as well. Filling in the general gaps in your langauge knowledge will help drive your listening forward.

(***I don't know if Kamakura basket-weaving is actually a thing.)

Talk to people.
Seriously. I know you want "passive fluency" (is there even such a thing?), but all you do now is staying passive.
If you talk to people, you have to stay ACTIVE, because people, unlike books and TV, actually expect you to understand what they say. My listening comprehension went through the roof when I got Japanese friends and hung out with them regularly. Plus - it's so much more FUN that way

I've been doing some N1 listening practice using past tests and workbooks like the Kanzen Master N1 listening workbook and the like. It can be tricky since you really have to listen attentively to be able to answer the questions correctly. And on the test they only play the passage once so it is even more difficult.

If you want to learn in stages, there are also N3 and N2 Kanzen Master listening workbooks. Besides example problems, there is a lot of info on colloquial contractions and the like.

At this point I am trying to mix the N1 training with listening to the news. It has been slow going. As I stated before I already know a good amount of vocabulary (~29k words) and read a lot of books. Catching the words on the first time through is the hardest part.

@Zorlee

Oh you! I refuse to believe people are actually necessary, let alone fun, capitals or no capitals! Using books and videos is the only way I can get human contact without interacting with actual people on my own. Why would you take that away from me?

Seriously though, as much as I know that you're absolutely right in that speaking helps to reinforce listening, with my very particular set of needs and wants, I see it as a bit excessive to bother with learning pronunciation and recalling my vocabulary the other way round when all I need and want to do is just to understand what people are saying. And I know, insisting on passive fluency and calling anything beyond that "excessive" might sound odd to you (and many other people!) but, cliché incoming, there are always different strokes for different folks. I love and admire people who tough it out and end up interpreting for corporate executives, but some of us see this simply as a hobby to indulge in every other day, and perhaps even as a little something to boast about to our thoroughly monolingual friends!

And for the record, I swear, passive fluency does exist! I have it in German. It's funny, really, I can follow political talk shows as if they were in English, but I dread the effort of composing a short e-mail, which anyway I never do. One day I may want to start practicing being more active, but I haven't felt the need just yet.


@gaiaslastlaugh

I really like the scripted/unscripted system you've got going. In fact, I think it's the first thing I'll keep in mind when sifting through all the material the community has been putting forward. For incorrigible readers like PotbellyPig and me, it'd be a shame not to harness our reading comprehension with scripted stuff first. JPod, Kanzen Master workbooks, news transcripts, and maybe the LR method seem best suited for following some sort of progression, at least for those of us who are so methodically inclined. And as you say, it's always easier to let just go with unscripted stuff when you feel you've already "paid your dues" for the day.


@PotbellyPig

You seem to be studying quite intensively. Why do you think it's slow going? Is there no noticeable change in your percentage of correct answers over time? Unless you're taking the JLPT, I personally wouldn't get too wrapped up in the questions that are needlessly intricate, as we're only starting to try to get the hang of this...

ListenUp Wrote:Thank you for all your help! It's interesting to see all the wildly different strategies people are using. I seem to have been leaning a bit too much towards "formal" stuff as opposed to variety shows, let's play videos, talk radio, music, etc.

It appears to me that some of you enjoy just listening to whatever you like and letting your comprehension slowly build up like that, while others prefer a more methodical approach, i.e. building up your comprehension with this or that method and then practicing it with whatever might strike your fancy. I certainly belong to this second camp, but it strikes me that I haven't really done it one way or the other; I've just been flailing around with material that can't hold my attention and failing hard because of that. (I'd probably have stumbled on the same problem with reading novels if they had me daydreaming every two sentences!)

That's probably why I'm drawn to the LR method the most. I'll try it first and report back! So far I've been either (1) listening and then checking what I understood, or (2) reading and then listening and then checking what I understood. Honestly, I find it a bit weird that reading and listening simultaneously can improve your listening comprehension. In other words, I find it a bit weird than you can improve your listening comprehension if you use (what seems to me to be) such a big crutch whenever you're practicing listening comprehension. But if it works, I'll be the last one to complain! It'd be nice to know if there's anyone here (ideally, a good reader and poor listener) who managed to bridge the gap using this method.

Here's the thing: I understand that people can have different approaches to language learning. I really do. But one of those approaches, the methodical, let's study in an organized way approach, will only get you so far. If you want to get really good at it, eventually you're going to have to fall in love with Japan, or at least parts of Japan, and become immersed in the language for a period of time so long (many thousand of hours, probably over ten thousand), that you can only do it because you love doing it.

I'm telling you this from experience. This is how I learned the language I'm telling it to you in.

But your point is valid. Being methodical, and studying hard, is a perfectly legitimate way to advance, and get yourself into a position where you understand enough that you can fall in love with something 100% Japanese (and inaccessible to English speakers). It's just that you shouldn't give up on trying to find that something, along the way.

ListenUp Wrote:@PotbellyPig

You seem to be studying quite intensively. Why do you think it's slow going? Is there no noticeable change in your percentage of correct answers over time? Unless you're taking the JLPT, I personally wouldn't get too wrapped up in the questions that are needlessly intricate, as we're only starting to try to get the hang of this...

I may eventually want to take the JLPT N1. My other facets of Japanese are up to par for it. The listening part seems difficult. From what I've seen from the scores posted here, it is usually people's weakest link. Some of the problems jump into the dialog without any forewarning about what it is about and I find myself struggling to take it in on the first listen. A lot of times, I can get the answer on the first listen so that is good, but I am missing parts of the dialog which I want to get better at. My goal is to take in most of it in one pass.

I've only been studying Japanese for about a year, but I'd have to agree that listening is the hardest part; even more so than Kanji, which I originally anticipated would give me the most trouble. My strategy has been to use the core 10K i+i deck as a listening sentences deck. It has improved my listening comprehension by leaps and bounds. Of course, i still can't understand the vast majority of what I see on TV, and even at the end of the deck I'll still only have 10,000 words under my belt, which still isn't enough. It's definitely a long road to true mastery of listening comprehension. That is, mastery comparable to a native speaker.

My advice: You'll find that you're biggest snagging point will always be vocabulary so nip this in the bud right away. It's important to find a strategy that will bring your vocabulary comprehension skills up to par. Consider carefully what the objective is. You must learn to recognize tens of thousands of words via listening (I recommend liberal use of Anki towards this goal). And learn to comprehend them quickly enough to follow the pace of a normal dialogue or conversation. That's even before considering things like dialectical variation, background noise interfering with clear comprehension (you'll have to learn to "fill in gaps" when you miss a word because of this), and other countless obstacles we're sure to encounter along the way. Be ready for all of it.

I know that I am especially handicapped when it comes to listening. I often have trouble in English when people are talking on a level I am unfamiliar with (and I tend to be unfamiliar with a lot of ordinary everyday things).

So listening comprehension is a huge hurdle to me. I have done a lot of my Japanese study by watching anime with (Japanese) subtitles. Yes I do study grammar too, but I would say anime has been my primary teacher as I find systematic study near impossible (I can't even cook from a cookbook, though I can cook). Mostly I have used grammar books at various levels (currently N2) more as checklists and gap-fillers than primary learning tools.

Learning Japanese through Japanese-subtitled anime is a big subject so I won't get into that (I have blogged about it extensively). It isn't primarily aimed at listening, though it certainly helps to associate sound with words as well as learning vocabulary, grammar and structure.

Like the OP I find it hard to listen to things twice with the exception of fairy tales (I have listened to a recording of 白雪姫 a million times I think). One thing that I find very useful in what I call "the assault on Mount Kikitori" (and it really is a big job) is watching anime at the right level.

Now if you watch subtitled anime you can gauge this pretty easily. If you can watch a particular (kind of) anime with subtitles pretty fast - you aren't looking up much, you aren't having a lot of trouble - but listening is really hard, then you know that the problem is aural recognition, not the actual language.

I then watch anime at this level, extensively. I don't personally think visual cues are a problem. There are people who say "just watch, kick back, someday you'll understand". I don't know. I don't feel at all confident of that. But If you already do understand so long as you can see it written, that changes the ball game entirely. I think the aim here is to stop thinking about language. Stop thinking about what bits you are and aren't getting. Do some really passive watching and just enjoy the story. Let your brain forget the notion of "Japanese" altogether and just grab what it can, like a small child.

You are getting some words, you are seeing some things in action. Your focus is on the story, not the language. I think this is the way one absorbs heard language (not the only method, of course). Listening is a very different skill from the others. It involves more "magic" I would say, that is, it is necessary for the brain to work in ways that are less easily identifiable.

What is happening here I would say is that your brain at certain points stops thinking about Japanese as "a language" and starts thinking of it as Language. This is the key to listening comprehension, I believe. Of course you have to have enough grammar and vocabulary to understand in the first place (actually, you don't have to but it is a shortcut that takes years off the process!)

Some of this may be particular to me (I couldn't watch a news show even in English), but I hope it is a little helpful.

NOTE: even though you intend to use Japanese passively, some shadowing is helpful I think. This is because the brain tries post-process sounds back into ones that "make sense" to it (that is how we hear English in strange accents, for example). This is a big barrier to hearing Japanese. Shadowing forces the mind to recognize, in order to reproduce, the sounds it is actually hearing. Another big subject, but worth considering, I think.

Note on note: I don't mean that the brain tries to process Japanese into English. I mean that it hears Japanese sounds and rhythms as English-like ones. For example it hears あい as the single syllable "I" rather than as the two morae it actually is.

@ListenUp: It sounds to me that your problem stems more from having difficulty engaging with the audio than from lacking an effective way to practice and I wonder if you might be better off focusing less on long term goals, and how much you're learning, and instead treating each show as an end in itself. I.e.

- Pick listening material based on how easy it will be to reach an enjoyable level of comprehension. Factor in things like language level and availability of a script or subtitles, but also consider looking specifically for things that will be interesting despite what might be a very low level of understanding. I cut my audio teeth on action anime and often didn't even know what was going on, but I was constantly engaged trying to work that out and that inevitably led to progress. Slice of life might not be the best choice of genre even if the language is simple since unless you understand what's being said it's often just a bunch of people standing around.

- Only look things up or repeat sections/episodes because you want to know what was said. If it's not inherently interesting and doesn't seem so significant that you need to understand it to understand what comes next, then let it go. Even if you're not learning new things you're still practicing what you do know (which is important!) and to be brutally honest, there will probably be plenty more opportunities to look things up so there's no need to worry about each one.

I know you said you lean more towards systematic study but I think you would benefit a lot from at least mixing in this kind of approach especially as you said Japanese is something you just do for fun.

P.s. Rather than have subtitles on the screen I convert them to HTML and use them with Firefox & rikaisama to make lookups quick and easy.

I found this interesting paper which makes a convincing argument that watching material with captions improves listening comprehension: http://www.erudit.org/revue/meta/2004/v4...9021ar.pdf

Zarxrax Wrote:I found this interesting paper which makes a convincing argument that watching material with captions improves listening comprehension: http://www.erudit.org/revue/meta/2004/v4...9021ar.pdf

That was a nice overview, thanks for sharing.

I found L1 subtitles (English) for L2 speech to be a complete waste of time unfortunately.

L2 subtitles are becoming increasingly useful as my Japanese improves. Of course there are benefits to listening without subtitles.

That said, my polyglot friends prefer radio as: word density (words per minute) is higher, vocabulary and grammar may be more advanced, and there are no visual cues. All of these factors force more intensive listening sessions. For beginners, radio is probably too difficult but there are other audio only sources.

I still like TV and movies but recognize the learning is slower than via other forms.