there is a lot of good advice here, but I think I can offer a simple suggestion - listen to the material again (after making some kind of attempt to read it/ look something up). Not the same day, another day

if you give yourself some time to digest it and then listen again, you'll find that you catch more and more of it. Don't focus on 100% comprehension, just try to catch certain words or phrases. As that gets easier you'll naturally start to focus on progressively harder parts. At some point you'll understand enough of it to get satisfaction.

Do the same for your listening comprehension what you did for vocabulary and sentences. Begin with the basics! Erin's Challenge 日本語できます！ This website offers 25 lessons, with videos, and transcripts. Listen and watch to any of those videos without the transcripts, and see, how much you can understand of what's being talked about. If you are able to understand everything in most of those 25 videos, you can just move on, and try to find something a little more challenging.

Try not to use any transcripts, while listening to native media, to understand what is being talked about. The reason is that reading is not your problem. You said it yourself:

Tori-kun Wrote:With the transcript (intermediate) it's really easy to follow ('easy' compared to FNN news).

Being able to read to understand something, doesn't necessarily follow that you can understand even a simple dialogue, without them. You could just mute the audio, read the transcript, and you would understand a sentence in written form. But your problem still persists, that you can't, without them.

So, again, start with basics. Use easy dialogues without transcripts and work from there. Don't start with Anime to increase your vocabulary, forget the SRS, just listen and don't read. As soon as your understanding of Audio only increases, use your SRS for Anime, Drama, and News as much as you can, to increase your understanding of more advanced spoken dialogues.

When you start singing you have to learn how to breath in a certain way. If you work with metal, you have to learn how to rasp and shape basic work pieces, before you can create something, that is more advanced. Even though it might seem boring to go over some basics, before moving on to really interesting stuff, the basics are there to build on.

Tori-kun, you read this thread?

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=3666&page=1

I'm in the same boat, but I assumed subs2srs would help me with listening comprehension, same as it helped nukemarine. I was waiting to increase my vocabulary a little before starting, but now i've started watching a fun new drama (Nihonjin no Shiranai Nihongo) so think i will give it a try asap.

To OP:
One thing immediately struck me when reading your post. You said you're doing core2k, I'm going to take that as an indication that you have have some familiarity with less than 2000 words. That is nowhere near enough to have good comprehension across a range of native materials. Don't expect to have good listening comprehension until you increase your vocab well beyond that. That said try listening to other learners' videos on youtube and you may be surprised how much more you understand. The reason being of course that other beginners use much more limited vocabulary, speak slower and in shorter sentences. Perhaps doing this will make you realise the importance of vocabulary. If you're reading, that's great. Keep doing it. It's a great way to familiarise yourself with more vocabulary quickly. Make sure you have a quick way to look up new words (good electronic dictionary, rikaichan) or have translations handy (parallel texts, translated example sentences etc). You want to read quickly and learn as many new words as fast as possible, so strike a balance between content that is interesting and comprehensible (by using translations/dictionaries when necessary). Don't bother trying to slowly fight your way through overly difficult content using a paper dictionary. Don't get bogged down on grammar. If you're missing some nuance it likely doesn't matter. write down the unknown words. This will reinforce them in your mind and make you notice them more when they reoccur later. Also you can efficiently add these words to anki later as simple vocab cards, using rikaichan's 's' hot-key. This is optional. The important thing is to try and familiarise yourself with as high a volume of vocabulary as quickly as possible, whether this goes into your long term memory or short term memory is unimportant. If you keep doing this, you'll start noticing patterns and connections and the most important vocabulary will start entering your long term memory whether you're srsing it or not. Even if you think you're forgetting things I assure you it's all going somewhere in the back of your mind.

Now to address your main point, listening comprehension. As I said above, at your level of vocabulary, it is totally to be expected that you're not understanding much. If your vocab is too low everything is going to sound like quantum physics, no-matter what your level of grammar comprehension. None the less, it is still very important that you keep listening to real japanese content whether your level of comprehension is high or not. The more you listen, the better you'll get at turning the rapid stream of incomprehensible syllables into something your brain understands. You need to train your brain and ear to start recognising word boundaries and start hearing the vocabulary you're feeding into your brain via your reading. Your ability to intuitively process the grammar will also gradually improve because you brain is forced to think much faster which will in turn increase your reading speed. Listening and reading complement each other extremely well in this way.
The next point to consider is what to listen to. One strategy is to focus on listening to things you've already read or can get transcripts for, as then you'll be hearing and reinforcing the vocabulary you've been learning. Things like audiobooks or anything you can get transcripts for are great for this. One potential problem in going through material in this way is that it may feel to much like studying, and you may get bored of the material.
Another strategy is to just listen to content that you can enjoy for whatever reason, a tv series, documentary, podcast or whatever. As long as you keep listening, and you keep learning new vocabulary your level of comprehension will improve. There have been a few criticisms of anime in this thread but I don't really think they are valid. Anime can be great because presumedly you choose a series that you like, have already watched and have some understanding or have some other interest in. Background music and sound effects can also act as anchors that remind you what scene is what, and series tend to repeat a lot of thematic vocabulary helping you follow the gist. Anime is particularly good for beginners especially if you've already watched it. As you reach a higher level, you should probably switch to content with a higher density of words per minute and a a higher variety of vocabulary though. Documentaries, podcasts, radio, lectures etc.

As a final note, i'd just say avoid forms of study that are overly complicated or difficult to implement, and just focus on reading, listening and growing your vocabulary. These are the things that will make the biggest difference. Time is limited and you don't want to waste it by spending a lot of time on searching for content, tending to your srs decks, splicing audio, trying to exactly mimic someone else's overly complicated study regime or searching for the silver bullet on japanese learning forums.

Tori-kun Wrote:Well, concerning music, I hate basically all the jpop, so no chance.

Yeah, I said that, too, but I found a bunch of stuff that I liked anyway:


Rock:
RADWIMS,The Pillows, Bump of Chicken, HY, Aqua Timez, ELLEGARDEN

Hiphop:
KREVA, Rip Slyme, SHAKKAZOMBIE, Michita.....

JPopish hiphop:
Soulja, ケツメイシ

Reggae:
湘南乃風, MEGARYU

annnnnd a shitload of other stuff, but no one's interested enough for me to post my entire music library, so I'll leave it at that.

All of you thanks for the long advices and replies! (this will be my official "Tori's Listening Comprehension Progress thread" from now on)

I must say I don't like the idea of not using transcripts, because after a few minutes or so, I really get bored, because I simply don't understand anything. Afterwards my head starts aching and I damn the whole thing and can't see kanji and kana on that day any more, which is unfortunate. I came across Erin's challenge and will work my way up through it on Saturday, thanks for the repost! Same will be done to your link, aphasiac; thanks for posting it. Ressources are always great (huh, currently writing my first thesis, ugh)

Currently I'm reading the Little Prince in Japanese (parallel English text) with corresponding audio, adding unknown words - after marking them in purple - into a separate Anki deck, where I learn them after I read a chapter. The speaker has a clear voice and the audio quality is rather good (enough breaks between sentences for me at least).

Generally my taste of music is quite special and to be honest I get annoyed by any other type of sound in the background while concentrating and learning.. Like making music on my own more than listening to somebody else's. (No, I'm no narcist.)

Perhaps I will start embarrassing myself by starting talking like crazy in Japanese with my girlfriend while doing some sushi tomorrow in the evening XD

I've found that srs common phrases/vocab/having audio will work on increasing your comphresenion.
it took me some time to get good listening skills. Probably 1 year to get to a level of which I could understand all/almost all of what I hear. So take your time/enjoy what your listening to.

I thought I could not understand anything in Japanese until I tried Precure. It is aimed at 8-year old girls. I find I can understand 50-70% of it. The voice producer does various things, like inserting unnatural pauses and insisting actors speak at least somewhat slowly, that help make it more understandable.

This advice (listen to something easier) may not apply in your case, but you could always give it a try.

There are loads of great suggestions already in this thread, but one thing I did that really improved my listening was just to find material that I could listen to on my ipod that also had transcripts; then I just mined those transcripts and added every sentence that I didn't understand to my Anki deck; and then I listened to the material whenever I got a chance.

For example, I really like the movie Omohide Poro Poro, so I found the Japanese and English subs (both official and fan subs) online, cut and pasted the Japanese into Anki and used the English subs to check the translation. Then I ripped the movie to produce an audio file, copied it to my ipod, and just listened to it over and over again. Like, I'd mine one chapter and add the sentences to Anki; and at the same time, every time I walked to work I'd listen to that chapter on repeat; and every time I went for a jog I'd listen to the movie from the start (and on those occasions I'd sometimes end up listening to chapters that I really didn't understand that well, but it would prepare me for when I'd get round to mining them). I also did the same thing with various other audiobooks, movies, podcasts etc.

And I've found it's improved my listening skills enormously.

aphasiac Wrote:Tori-kun, you read this thread?

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=3666&page=1

I'm in the same boat, but I assumed subs2srs would help me with listening comprehension, same as it helped nukemarine. I was waiting to increase my vocabulary a little before starting, but now i've started watching a fun new drama (Nihonjin no Shiranai Nihongo) so think i will give it a try asap.

I can confirm it is working for me. So far from doing this (versus other methods) I have picked up more swear words (gotta love anime) and more grammar structures than I ever learned doing things other ways. I would recommend it for anyone who can get the materials needed for it.

nadiatims Wrote:Time is limited and you don't want to waste it by spending a lot of time on searching for content, tending to your srs decks, splicing audio, trying to exactly mimic someone else's overly complicated study regime or searching for the silver bullet on japanese learning forums.

Solid advice.

what I usual did and still do is. I would srs common stuff from what I listen to.Anime,tv-shows,dramas,songs,etc and put them into my vocab deck/sentence deck if necessary and everyday I would listen to the same thing or new things that came up. It worked well as you know what they are saying without having jp subs or any other subs

Another thing that I've found helps is, knowing roughly what people are going to say before they say it. I listen to a podcast which has show notes which retroactively lists the topics they randomly meandered between on each episode, and there have been times where I'd be listening to a section and have no idea what they were talking about. Then I'd look at the show notes, listen again and suddenly, magically, I understand everything.

So that could be, reading drama episode synopses before watching them, listening to news about things you already know about, etc.

fakewookie Wrote:Another thing that I've found helps is, knowing roughly what people are going to say before they say it. I listen to a podcast which has show notes which retroactively lists the topics they randomly meandered between on each episode, and there have been times where I'd be listening to a section and have no idea what they were talking about. Then I'd look at the show notes, listen again and suddenly, magically, I understand everything.

So that could be, reading drama episode synopses before watching them, listening to news about things you already know about, etc.

I find this is true for me in real conversation too. If I know the context or the topic, I understand a whole heap more. This is probably quite important in improving listening skills.

Just my two cents' worth: open a pocket Japanese-English dictionary. Do you recognize 95% of the words? If not, why do you think that you should be able to understand spoken Japanese? Focus on learning vocabulary. Learn at the very least 20 000 words.

louischa Wrote:Just my two cents' worth: open a pocket Japanese-English dictionary. Do you recognize 95% of the words? If not, why do you think that you should be able to understand spoken Japanese? Focus on learning vocabulary. Learn at the very least 20 000 words.

20,000 is pretty much one would need to become fluent in japanese in terms of speaking/listening/reading and probably writing as well. I think a good way to increase your listening is to your increase your vocab. So slowly add vocab cards into your vocab deck and go at a slow place. 20 per day. And your listening will boost up a lot from this. Plus keep listening even if you don't get it. It's only when you listen a lot that you will eventually understand it

Tori-kun Wrote:disappointing I dunno what to try else (guys, I tried EVERYTHING. Slowing down audio, inserting silence, tried to learn stuff by heart - which appeared senseless after a time - listening to the Little Prince, shadowing etc.)

Really? It sounds like you've tried everything but the best option: subs2srs

My listing was extremely terrible and until I did a couple of subs2srs decks. I would also strongly recommend that you only watch Japanese shows that have Japanese subtitles. That allows you to leverage your knowledge from core2000 and other srs stuff. It makes it so much easier.

2 things, ok 3.

1. I don't mean to be mean, really.
2. SERIOUSLY????? The only music Japan produces is Jpop? Seriously??? That is the worst generalization I think I have ever seen. That's like saying that Americans only listen to Britney Spears. What the deuce man. I listen to Japanese electronica and techno. I don't care if you don't like Japanese music, just don't make stupid generalizations.
3. Although this article is addressing understanding written things, it also applies to listening. http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blo...top-having
Ok 4 things.
4. Why are you being so hard on the Japanese baby in you? If you had a one year old baby would be like, "Stupid baby! You've been doing English for a year! And you don't know squat! You suck!" (Even though a baby's probably listened to 5,000 hours of audio or more in that year. Have YOU listened to 4-5,000 hours of audio yet? No? Then do it. Or if you have, listen to 5,000 more!) Calm down man and stop killing babies. http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blo...ing-babies

louischa Wrote:Just my two cents' worth: open a pocket Japanese-English dictionary. Do you recognize 95% of the words? If not, why do you think that you should be able to understand spoken Japanese? Focus on learning vocabulary. Learn at the very least 20 000 words.

Vocabulary size and listening comprehension are two separate problems.

This issue is addressed in the thread I linked above. Nukemarine makeｄ the point of "why should i expand my vocabulary even further, when I can't understand audio containing vocabulary I do know". I was confused and replied, saying "I didn't get how you can know every word in a sentence, but still not comprehend that sentence".

Now I understand, because I'm in the same boat. Recently I decided to try listening to my Japanese Pimsuleur CDs again, as they were my first steps into learning Japanese and I remember them getting hard quick. From the end of Course 1 onwards, I know every word in the dialogue, but they talk so fast I still can't follow the conversations. Also many words, I know what it means in English, but I can't directly go from japanese -> concept in my head. I'm doing inner-translation of Japanese->English, which makes listing impossible.

Anyway i have just started subs2srs, and i think this method will be key..

@Angeldust
sorry, didn't mean to generalise. Although.. hm, I don't like music that's being song in japanese

@aphasiac
Yeah, I am thinking the same way. You can know 20.000 vocabularies, which will make you read newspapers eventually (perhaps?), but that does not evoke the automatism that you will magically understand what's being said, even IF the vocabs you know is used..

Lots of good advice, the gist of which is hopefully 'listen to something easier for a while'. If you can understand "xyz ha xyz desu" just work up from there in manageable steps, progressing as fast as is comfortable for you. If you want your audio presented in an organised way, with gradually increasing vocab and complexity laid out before you (by an experienced japanese teacher) you could try a textbook. The dialogues for listening practice are the main reason I like them, and it saves you the (time-consuming) work of seeking out your own stuff.
I also think thurds JP101 advice, in particular, would be very helpful, but did you start with beginner dialogues or go straight the audioblogs?
Do you have audio in your vocabulary deck? I imagine you do. Repeat it as you go?
Just be patient and you'll get there.

Hmmm.. I just saw your other post - do you understand all the Genki 2 audio at this stage?

Well, I crammed out my Genki 1 book again and I recognised that I couldn't find the CDs that were attached to the book. It took me quite a while to rediscover them under my deck under a huge pile of other unimportant stuff lieing having a sticky note with 'who needs bloody audio cds?' written on it. Probably this was the biggest mistake I've ever made throughout my Japanese studies. I mean, my kanji skills are 'ok' and reading is, compared to listening comprehension, done fairly easy and it is simply fun.

In short: I started listening to that bloody audio again, even if it said 'Unit 1'. I didn't mind and listened through the whole Lessons of Genki 1 and managed to comprehend everything without reading along/having a look at the transcription given in the dialog section of the book, which made me confident and proud at the same time.
Right now I want to say thank you to Nagareboshi, who suggested this, simple and down-to-earth, idea, just listening to textbook, easy and simple dialogs. Now I can allocate my level of listening comprehension better, as I understand obviously the very basics and can move on in the series with Genki 2 and "Erin's challenge".

Yet I have no idea/plan how to do the tasks in Genki 1 on my own. They look boring. Darn, I'm lazy as hell. Perhaps even, after one year of 'up and down' Japanese studies and finally starting learning regularly with Heisig, I can't see those easy tasks for writing own sentences. I suppose I just move on. I will just briefly post the grammar questions remaining from Genki 1 that I have in here soon to be answered briefly and compactly.

I suggest one goes for easy things. Like anime,easy songs,etc. I remember that my listening progressed well as I kept listening/srsing and reading daily. I just kept plugging in. Sure there will be a lot of words you don't know but it get's easier as you keep learning and immersing a lot

Tori-kun Wrote:Yet I have no idea/plan how to do the tasks in Genki 1 on my own. They look boring. Darn, I'm lazy as hell. Perhaps even, after one year of 'up and down' Japanese studies and finally starting learning regularly with Heisig, I can't see those easy tasks for writing own sentences. I suppose I just move on. I will just briefly post the grammar questions remaining from Genki 1 that I have in here soon to be answered briefly and compactly.

I suppose it's the group-exercises you are talking about? If so, my suggestion is to skip them, and work on those exercises that offer audio. And if you think you can't be bothered with doing the exercises that involve writing sentences, that test your understanding of grammar points, this is up to you as well. You will have plenty of time doing such things in the near future. That is once you start studying at a university.

Interesting read that could be related to listening problems.

http://www.yearlyglot.com/2011/04/learni...fferently/

Tori-kun Wrote:Reading some shoujo manga is quite amusing; I have to look up some words but all in all it's understandable, whereas spoken Japanese just cannot be understood ;(((

Are there anime versions of the shoujo manga you've read? Have you tried watching them? It goes along with what a lot of other people have said - listening to something that you're already familiar with is easier. If you understood most of the vocab from the manga, you'll probably know most of it in the anime, and you'll have context to help. By a few episodes in there would probably be words and phrases popping out at you.

If it makes you feel any better, my listening comprehension is still fairly crappy, and this is after 3 years of college Japanese classes, over 4 months total of lessons at a Japanese school in Japan, and countless hours of watching anime/dramas/plays and listening to music. At the school in Japan, my distaste for the classes when we listened to dialogues/audio readings from the textbook led one of my teachers to start calling it my "好きな聞く練習" as a joke But there are two important caveats to this:

1) I have listening problems in English a lot, too, and that's my native language. My mind wanders way too easily, so focusing on an entire boring audio snippet is really difficult, especially if there are words I don't recognize right away. When I watch things in English I usually have to rewind parts to catch things I didn't hear or wasn't paying attention to, and it's the same in Japanese. During those 聞く練習 classes the teacher figured out that if she only played little parts of the audio at a time, and if I knew what I was listening for, then I could understand it just fine. I just needed to hear it more than once, and at my own pace.

2) It probably sounds like I've done a lot of studying without much to show for it, and that's not entirely true One of the main reasons I have trouble with listening is my vocab is still too limited, mainly because I think vocab is pretty boring. Given something that I'm interested in, and the ability to replay audio if I don't catch it the first time, I'm usually pretty good at hearing a sentence, even if I can't quite understand it. I've looked up tons of words just from hearing them.

My main points in relating all of this are: Don't be too hard on yourself. Listen more, listen to things that are interesting, listen to something as many times as it takes to hear it, and increase your vocab, because the more words you know the more you'll be able to hear even when you don't know them. It's too bad you don't like Japanese music, because that could be incredibly helpful, I think.

And to end this overly long post, here are some links that may or may not be helpful:

http://www.voiceblog.jp/japaneselistening/ -- Two guys having normal conversations in Japanese. They cover some pretty varied topics.
http://japaneselistening.blogspot.com/ -- The transcripts/translations to some of the audio.

These are just regular conversations, so they're unstructured and the vocab is all over the place. But they're kinda fun to listen to.

Good luck!