I've kind of been on a little bit of a quest to achieve maximum efficiency in my listening diet. Like, I'm already paranoid that I'm not listening enough, so I try (sometimes/often unsuccessfully) to squeeze more Japanese in here and there. However, since I'm the paranoid type, I keep worrying that the listening that I am doing isn't "good enough," you know? That's why recently I've tried to do more and more active listening than passive listening.

This, of course, has led to several things. Lots of active listening means your library of listening materials starts to get really repetitive really quickly.

Also, as I think I just said earlier in the other thread about shadowing music, some music just doesn't seem worth it. There's just way too much English (and often crappy English) mixed in here and there. And some of the music just doesn't seem like it's accomplishing very much. Okay, that sounds bad, but I think you know what I mean. I mean, I think about music that I used to listen to in English, and I realize how sometimes the music itself is weird or it overpowers the actual singing. And other times I can't focus on what they're saying because I'm caught up in "the rhythm" of the music, memorizing the lyrics. Whatever, I think you know where I'm going with this. Sometimes music just doesn't seem adequate.

That's why I've tried to make a majority of my listening library from the audio of anime that I've watched, dramas, stuff where people are talking. I can actually focus on trying to understand stuff. Granted, I understand the fun principle. I do turn on something fun, like music, when it gets boring.

But now I have a different predicament. For a while, I had a hodgepodge of news podcasts, anime, drama, jpop, and some other stuff for my listening. Is that really efficient? I feel like if I would just focus on one thing for a while, I would get more done. You know?? Like now, I listen to mostly anime stuff on my iPod, and once my comprehension goes up in that category, maybe I'll move on to dramas or something. Okay, that was really long, so I'm sorry. But, what do you think?

First, try to stop worrying. It sounds like you're doing a lot of great things to improve your listening. Maybe for efficiency, it might help to think about your goals and try to pick audio samples that are as close as possible to the conversations and situations you most want to understand. Dramas and talk shows might be closer to ordinary Japanese than anime, jpop or news broadcasts. Anime and news broadcasts might be more useful than jpop.

I enjoy listening to the radio in the mornings here. The music isn't always Japanese, but the DJs chat, talk about current events or holidays, read out emails from listeners, etc. Maybe some radio stations have online versions?

In your case, you might also want to look for audio from Japanese churches. I did a quick search on Google and found a bilingual podcast from Yokohama Grace Bible Church. There's English followed immediately by Japanese -- both full speed: http://feeds.feedburner.jp/ygbc-podcast A lot of other things came up, too, this just happened to be the first one I saw with decent sound quality. Edit: I'm listening now, and it's interesting. My favorite part is when the Japanese interpreter starts laughing because she's desperately trying to keep up with the English. It feels very "live."

whoa! wicked! Thank you so much!

Have you considered extracting vocabulary from your listening sources? Right now, I'm attempting to grab all the vocab from an episode of a show, and make an iKnow list with it.

The first minute of the show had more than 40 words I didn't know; 40+ words I added. Granted, it's a show about law, but that's still a lot of stuff that flew right below the radar. Save for one long word (that I found out was actually many) I was able to hear the individual syllables, they just didn't make any sense. When I was done adding these few words, I re-watched that single minute. I can't really describe the feeling, but syllabic nonsense became half phrases and partially understood meanings.

I recommend you give it a try. It might remove a lot of the monotony that comes with watching episode 10 of もう見たよ for the umpteenth time. Umpteenth, I like that word...sounds German...

lol. I would definitely be grabbing vocabulary and making sentences from my sources right now, but I can't really start that since I'm still trying to finish RTK. However, since I'm getting better and better at picking out the nonsense syllables and even words and phrases, sometimes I'll randomly look something up. Or...I'll rewind and turn the subs on for a bit. That sort of thing. But still, since I can't start sentence mining just yet, this is just another reason for me wanting to maximize the efficiency of my environment. And I understand the "watching episode 10 of もう見たよ for the umpteenth time" thing. I try to avoid that monotony. I never thought the Death Note movie could get this boring...

igordesu Wrote:lol. I would definitely be grabbing vocabulary and making sentences from my sources right now, but I can't really start that since I'm still trying to finish RTK.

Oh... I see. A little secret: Technically, you're never finished with RTK . Tis a life's journey.

Hmmm, efficiency in listening. I guess, then, a very efficient thing to do could be to listen to audio geared towards children for a set amount of time, then audio more towards adults for a set amount of time, and keeping rotating through out the day.

A problem I noticed I run into while listening is single word/phrase focus. There's a entire paragraph of words spoken that I don't understand and then I hear one or two familiar words and focus on those. After focusing on those words I slip back into a passive mode. This would also happen while I was sight reading music. Listening and reading are two different skills, I know. What I've tried doing to stop this is simply repeat everything said back to myself in my head for as long as possible without stopping. Its a sort of plowing much like I do with sight reading, only people are the metronome. After plowing through enough sheet music, or audio in this case, combined with common phrase/vocabulary (call it technique) I hear, I suspect the patterns will fill themselves in. This is all just theory, though; me apply what I've learned studying music to Japanese.

Damn, after typing that, now, all I want to do is practice.

*Dusts off piano*

Edit: Thinking about it now, this might be part of the reasoning behind the suggestion of shadowing. The repetition/plowing is done out load instead of in one's head.

The only real way to have perfect efficiency in listening IMO:

1. Active listening, always. (As much as possible for normal humans)
2. Material you understand but have troubles with. I want to say i+1, but I'm actually thinking really hard stuff is good too, as long as you have a basic grasp.
3. Stuff you're interested in.
4. Stuff you want to learn about.

If you can achieve perfect efficiency then you're a robot and you would be better off just installing the Japanese language chip :-)

well the only way you're gonna be able to undestand stuf better is to well acutally learn the words so just listening to stuff you don't understand over and over is like pointless unless yo'ure actively reading the thing you're heraing or reading about the thing you're hearing so you learn words that are said and when you hear them you understand them..

howtwosavealif3 Wrote:well the only way you're gonna be able to undestand stuf better is to well acutally learn the words so just listening to stuff you don't understand over and over is like pointless unless yo'ure actively reading the thing you're heraing or reading about the thing you're hearing so you learn words that are said and when you hear them you understand them..

So you learned to read before you learned to speak, did you?

It's perfectly possible to learn a language just from listening to it. There have been numerous posts here already about it.

@kaze: Hmm, well I've been thinking about starting sentences before I finish RTK and just doing basic ones where I know all the kanji. But, then again, that takes away time from where I could be working on RTK. It's an interesting predicament. Especially since I've been totally angsty about not having finished RTK yet. And I've run into the same thing with slipping into passive listening. Sometimes Japanese subs help a bit, but then I feel like I'm cheating myself, b/c, it's like you said, am I *really* working on my listening skills? I'll have to try that. Repeating everything back to myself in my head. I think I can pick up enough of the "nonsense syllables" to do that.

@Tobby: Yeah, well I guess I'd have to say that the closest thing i+1 for me right now is anime (and I enjoy it, too). I'd do dramas, but...they're expensive, I hate using post-it notes to cover up subs online, and I have a crappy internet connection. Lol. And I don't understand as much with dramas either. However, I like the idea of rotating stuff throughout the day. That's an interesting idea. Maybe some anime in the morning. Then some news in the afternoon. And then finish off the day with drama in the evening. Then again, I could just rotate on a large scale. You know, anime for a month, then drama for a month, and then news for a month. Or I could go even bigger; anime for 3-5 months, then drama, then news. Whatev.

One thing I've done recently is, after I've watched an episode of anime or something 5 million times and can practically quote all the nonsense syllables, I'll turn the english subs back on and see if I can figure out what they're saying in Japanese. I think I've picked up a few things from that.