domokun1134 Wrote:It's time consuming but it's the only way I've found that lets me examine every piece of dialogue while watching.

Hmm... making me wonder how hard it would be to make a video app that played with JP subs, but at the touch of a button, would replay a scene with EN subs.

That already exists, its called having multiple subtitle streams.

Zarxrax Wrote:That already exists, its called having multiple subtitle streams.

‘having multiple subtitle streams’ ≠ ‘a video app that played with JP subs, but at the touch of a button, would replay a scene with EN subs’

nest0r Wrote:

Zarxrax Wrote:That already exists, its called having multiple subtitle streams.

‘having multiple subtitle streams’ ≠ ‘a video app that played with JP subs, but at the touch of a button, would replay a scene with EN subs’

Ok, so... its like 3 buttons.

subs2srs's Dueling Subtitles feature might be of help to someone. It allows you to create a subtitle file that will simultaneously display both the Japanese and the English. You can position the English at the opposite end of the screen and make it a smaller font so you don't accidentally read it on the first pass. It also has a quick reference feature that will create a .txt file with both the Japanese and English next to each other for easy browsing in Firefox. You can also tell it to only display the English every X number of lines to give you hints without giving everything away.

First off, while listening to raw Japanese can be helpful, don't expect instant payoff, far from it. It's going to take hundreds and hundreds of hours to get anywhere.

Here is a good example of what can be achieved with audio only.

If your really worried about not understanding what is going on, then go read an episode synopsis on Wikipedia after watching an episode. This is how I watched all of Kobato, among a few other shows.

Also, shows like DBK are all available with Japanese subs, make use of those. Learn to sync subtitles to your source, it's not too hard and way worth the effort. This way you can use your reading skills to help you out where your listening skills are failing.

If you don't mind girly stuff, I'd recommend watching shoujo anime like Pretty Cure or Shugo Chara. You can pretty much follow along if the shows were on mute, but have a ton more dialog than a show like Dragonball would have.

Daichi Wrote:If your really worried about not understanding what is going on, then go read an episode synopsis on Wikipedia after watching an episode. This is how I watched all of Kobato, among a few other shows.

That's one of those things that seems SO obvious in retrospect, but I never thought of that myself. Cripes. I might even take it a step further and watch the show, read an article about the episode, then watch the show again.

Watch any current Idol based drama, you can get Accurate JP subs and a good quality fansubs usually within a few days. I'm Learning lots of vocab this way and increasing listening comp. I watch first with nothing, because my reading ar outstrips my listening so i'd end up just reading instead of watching. Then I watch with JP subs a couple times, first time I just watch, 2nd time I take down key words I don't know.. look em up etc etc. Then in a couple days the fansub appears (sometimes this can be a few weeks, depends on the popularity of said idol..) and I check the Translation against what I thought it said.

I've found for the most part after looking up the keywords my listening comp is up to 75-80% easily.. only tripping me up on grammar I haven't come across yet. So next time I can watch with nothing and understand the whole thing nearly perfectly.

No better way to boost comprehension than production.

Listening isn't hard but like any skill, it just takes time to get better. What once was so hard will become so easy.

I thought it was interesting that so many people said just listening won't do much for you. My mom just took Anatomy and Physiology 2 in college and has been affirming the exact opposite. That you can learn stuff from listening. We talked about this when they were studying the brain. When you learn something (or hear something or whatever) you build a neural pathway. BUT, it's not a strong one unless you do it several times. You could think of it like walking through a field. The first time through you might flatten the grass, but that's not a trail. But the more times you go through the same place the more you wear it down until it's a trail. The same thing happens in your brain.
That's why tying your shoes and riding a bike are a real pain at first, but come as second nature once you've learned them well, the pathways are built. The same with art, your building neural pathways every time you draw (or paint or whatever) and that's why you get better. So the more you listen to Japanese the better you will become at listening to Japanese. I think the key though is to listen to the same things over and over. Every time I listen to a song (or Halo Legends in Japanese w00t!) I pick up something else.
Oh wow I just had a thought... my mom told me that I used to watch certain cartoons over and over and over again until she wanted to run screaming out of the house. And the reason kids do this is because every time they watch it they see something new (i.e. watch a different character, see something in the background, etc.). So in a way listening to a certain song or whatever over and over again except this time your hearing something new ever time.
So I would say it is useful and important. Even if you don't understand it because you're building neural pathways. Frankly, when I listen to things it's not completely passive. I'm usually repeating things to myself or writing down words I want to know or just pausing it to look up the word. But then I'm kind of anal like that. lol
Good luck with improving your listening!!

What does something for your is reinforcement of what you learned, not just listening to random Japanese.

For example, let's say you learned a new grammar phrase in a textbook. The grammar is used in the dialogue of the text, which you have audio for. As part of your learning, it's useful to listen to that dialogue many times until you understand it well. It's especially useful because it's appropriate to your level. It's a little bit harder than the last chapter, but not that much more difficult. All the new grammar and vocabulary you've just read about in the new chapter.

Now, listening to other materials that use the grammar and vocab you know can definitely help to reinforce your knowledge of that vocabulary.

The problem is that as part of AJATT, listening is recommended in a way that is completely not helpful. A beginner listening to a Japanese movie meant for native adults is completely wasting his time. There is so much that is just white noise between the one or two things that he will understand. Because of that there is very very little benefit but lots of time is wasted.

Now, once you're something like N2 or N1 level is gets a lot easier to pick up things as you're going, so you can actually learn new vocab from time to time just by listening. You have enough Japanese ability to understand the context and then guess the meanings of words you don't know. Or, more likely, there are many words that you have studied but you don't have a very active knowledge of, and listening can improve that knowledge. But it just doesn't work that way for beginners who are listening to advanced level stuff.

Angeldust Wrote:My mom just took Anatomy and Physiology 2 in college and has been affirming the exact opposite. That you can learn stuff from listening.

Has she been talking about learning another language, or about learning things in a language you already know?

Because it's vastly different.

Apart from reading, yes.

Tzadeck Wrote:The problem is that as part of AJATT, listening is recommended in a way that is completely not helpful. A beginner listening to a Japanese movie meant for native adults is completely wasting his time. There is so much that is just white noise between the one or two things that he will understand. Because of that there is very very little benefit but lots of time is wasted.

Ok, here's my opinion.

Look, I've taken 4 years of Japanese. Ok, I didn't really study very hard cuz it was very very boring. To the point I was just dissapointed at how Japanese is. I was pretty much the anti-AJATT guy at the time. Everything was textbook, grammar book, textbook...whatever. So pretty much, my 4th year level Japanese was pretty much not much different from my 1st year, because I barely made any improvements. It was barely visible.

So I remember I would try to listen to some variety shows without subs.......at even at 4th year level, I understood next to NOTHING. Because NOTHING they said sounded like anything I learned in class. I thought that it was all slang or some crazy incorrect Japanese, because I couldn't understood much of anything they said. I was extremely confused, but I told myself "whatever, they're probably saying things I'll never need to learn anyways, or my class will teach me that stuff"

Well, that never happened. The classes continued to be boring. So that was when I stopped and gave up.

See, this is the reason why I think you have to listen to real Japanese at the early stages, because if I did that....I'd be so fluent now I wouldn't even need to be on this website.

One of the biggest reasons is pronounciation, in class the teacher will speak slowly or clearly. A word like 下請け , every syllable would be emphasized by the teacher, shi-ta-u-ke....

Now in real Japanese, that's not how they will say that word. They will say it like shityuke, much much faster. So you have to get used to the sound of them saying words like these at normal or fast speed. Or else you will be so behind and just shocked when you get exposed to Japanese spoken by natives.

Realism Wrote:

Tzadeck Wrote:The problem is that as part of AJATT, listening is recommended in a way that is completely not helpful. A beginner listening to a Japanese movie meant for native adults is completely wasting his time. There is so much that is just white noise between the one or two things that he will understand. Because of that there is very very little benefit but lots of time is wasted.

Ok, here's my opinion.

...

I have a big problem with this sort of advice. You're essentially saying "I learned japanese formally for 4 years, and my listening was crap until i started doing serious listening practice. Now it's improving." That's a statement of fact, no problem with that. Going from that to "You should listen to stuff you have no possibility of understanding right from the start" is a leap that isn't terribly justified. Way too many people on these forums give advice to do stuff they *didn't* do but now think would be a good idea. This kind of advice should always be taken with a grain of salt.

I did AJATT for a little while when i was a beginner (maybe 6 months), watching movies etc, often without subtitles. In the end, the only parts i understood were the parts that contained only the grammar and vocab i already knew. I was nowhere near the threshold of being able to infer the meaning of words because, as Tzadeck said, it was just white noise. I struggled to even pick out individual words that i could look up, it just all blurred together into an indecipherable mass. Now, i can't claim that it did no good, because i can't repeat the experiment with me skipping that stuff. For all i know, it did help my recognition of phonemes etc to some extent even if i couldn't make sense of what was said.

What did make my japanese ability improve was rapidly learning a large (for a beginner) vocabulary and getting grammar knowledge up to around the N2 level. *Now* i'm at the point where listening to real stuff is actually clearly doing good because i'm actually recognising most of the words they say and am learning typical phrasing etc. If i hadn't already tried and failed at this earlier, i too would be tempted to recommend it from the start.

I guess my advice is that you should listen to material that you do not easily understand (ie concentration is required) but has enough familiarity to it to be comprehensible, at least in part. Doing no listening outside of class until the 4 year point is a mistake, as you note, but unless you're listening to level appropriate stuff, you're probably just wasting your time. You'd be better off spending that time learning the japanese that is required to make the material comprehensible.

My rule of thumb is: if you don't understand something you're listening to, get the script. If you can read it, you need more listening practice. If you can't read more than a fraction of it, you need to learn more japanese. The material is simply too hard. Either find something easier, or if it's something you *really* want to understand, make a point of learning the vocab and grammar present.

Disclaimer: I have never lived in japan, but i work for a japanese company, so i am exposed to real japanese conversion on more or less a daily basis. If your only exposure is exposure you seek out yourself, YMMV.

Angeldust Wrote:My mom just took Anatomy and Physiology 2 in college and has been affirming the exact opposite. That you can learn stuff from listening.

No offence, but undergraduate level anatomy classes don't qualify someone to recommend learning strategies any more than having an understanding of how computer hardware works on a transistor level makes someone a good programmer. Or knowledge of particle physics makes someone a good industrial chemist. That the brain learns from sensory input is well known. That children learn a language without any other language to build upon is also well known. Although it is worth pointing out that children are usually spoken to simply, ie. they are not expected to learn the language by listening to the news.

What we on this forum are interested in is a method of learning a 2nd language like japanese, as an adult, that is sufficiently efficient to allow it to be done in a practical timeframe.

zigmonty Wrote:

Realism Wrote:

Tzadeck Wrote:The problem is that as part of AJATT, listening is recommended in a way that is completely not helpful. A beginner listening to a Japanese movie meant for native adults is completely wasting his time. There is so much that is just white noise between the one or two things that he will understand. Because of that there is very very little benefit but lots of time is wasted.

Ok, here's my opinion.

...

I have a big problem with this sort of advice. You're essentially saying "I learned japanese formally for 4 years, and my listening was crap until i started doing serious listening practice. Now it's improving." That's a statement of fact, no problem with that. Going from that to "You should listen to stuff you have no possibility of understanding right from the start" is a leap that isn't terribly justified. Way too many people on these forums give advice to do stuff they *didn't* do but now think would be a good idea. This kind of advice should always be taken with a grain of salt.

Well...when I first seriously started listening to Japanese I thought I had no possibility of understanding anything. But I believed in that AJATT guy. And that was my mindset, I'm just gonna listen. At first, it was a bunch of white noise. I never used subs, or Japanese subs. I just listened a lot and a lot. And sooner or later, I picked out individual words, even words I never learned in class, I would look them up in the dictionary. And my vocab started improving (although I read a lot as well).

Because after listening to a lot of Japanese....I found out that there were A LOT of words that they repeated very often. It was the repetition that allowed me to pick those words out.

And I never listened to level-appropriate stuff because a lot of that stuff is just boring. I want to listen to stuff that holds my interest.

If this doesn't work for you....then I don't know what other advice I can give you because I never tried anything else. But this worked for me.

If you don't think it can help you...at least try for a while....since it can't hurt you.

And as far as comprehensible listening, that's why there's anime and TV shows and drama. You watch that stuff...even if you don't understand the dialogue much...you still have a gist of what they're doing through their actions.

Realism Wrote:Well...when I first seriously started listening to Japanese I thought I had no possibility of understanding anything. But I believed in that AJATT guy. And that was my mindset, I'm just gonna listen. At first, it was a bunch of white noise. I never used subs, or Japanese subs. I just listened a lot and a lot. And sooner or later, I picked out individual words, even words I never learned in class, I would look them up in the dictionary. And my vocab started improving (although I read a lot as well).

Because after listening to a lot of Japanese....I found out that there were A LOT of words that they repeated very often. It was the repetition that allowed me to pick those words out.

And I never listened to level-appropriate stuff because a lot of that stuff is just boring. I want to listen to stuff that holds my interest.

If this doesn't work for you....then I don't know what other advice I can give you because I never tried anything else. But this worked for me.

If you don't think it can help you...at least try for a while....since it can't hurt you.

And as far as comprehensible listening, that's why there's anime and TV shows and drama. You watch that stuff...even if you don't understand the dialogue much...you still have a gist of what they're doing through their actions.

Ok, maybe it wasn't fair to expect you to have read that monster of a post but i thought i made it clear that my listening now is actually pretty good. I *do* listen to native stuff now successfully.

My point is, unless you listened to native material when you were at the ”これはXです” stage and had success, don't recommend others do it. It's dishonest and leads to disillusionment. It does hurt because it wasted a ton of my time, which is scarce because i have a full time job. It was only when i gave up on that and went back to learning japanese formally from textbooks that i made any progress.

You may have understood next to nothing after 4 years of japanese, but when you finally started listening, it was not the same as a beginner doing so. You had a body of japanese knowledge, no matter how unconscious and inaccessible, which allowed you to make quick progress when you started doing real listening. Someone fresh out of learning RTK will be wasting their time if they attempt to do the same.

zigmonty Wrote:

Angeldust Wrote:My mom just took Anatomy and Physiology 2 in college and has been affirming the exact opposite. That you can learn stuff from listening.

No offence, but undergraduate level anatomy classes don't qualify someone to recommend learning strategies any more than having an understanding of how computer hardware works on a transistor level makes someone a good programmer. Or knowledge of particle physics makes someone a good industrial chemist. That the brain learns from sensory input is well known.

You're very right. Consider me rebuked. And I take no offense.
I apologize if it came off as being completely certain. (Which I think it did, my apologies.) I would in no way claim certainty in that. (And neither would my mother.)

zigmonty Wrote:That children learn a language without any other language to build upon is also well known. Although it is worth pointing out that children are usually spoken to simply, ie. they are not expected to learn the language by listening to the news.

And see, I disagree with speaking to children "simply." That is not how my mother spoke to me. By the time I was 2 I knew what the word "ovoid" meant and how to use it in a sentence. I don't credit this to any "super" intelligence in me, but to a mom who talked to me like I was an adult. (Wording, not necessarily content. XD) And while I didn't learn English from watching the news, the news was often playing in the background. But then again, most children could give a crap about the news. If you're an adult that loves news, then perhaps that is how you will learn your L2. Because you're going to be willing to take the words you don't know and ask what they mean. Granted you may not have a person there to ask (or you might) but you have other resources as an adult that aren't available to a child (i.e. dictionary, internet, etc.).

zigmonty Wrote:What we on this forum are interested in is a method of learning a 2nd language like japanese, as an adult, that is sufficiently efficient to allow it to be done in a practical timeframe.

Well, considering that I was fluent in my native language by the time I was 2 and 1/2 (in speaking and listening, not reading) I'd say that's a practical time frame and in a way that isn't necessarily "adult" like. Perhaps the problem is that as adults we don't ask "what is that?" as often as we did as a kid. I believe that's another reason I learned to speak so quickly, because I had in inquisitive mind that was always asking "what's that?" so I was constantly learning new words. So no it's not ALL passive listening, but that plays a part.

And with that, I would like to share this article with everyone: http://www.victoria.ac.nz/home/about/new...wslabel=hn

This is also quite interesting: http://www.apronus.com/norsk/

Angeldust Wrote:Perhaps the problem is that as adults we don't ask "what is that?" as often as we did as a kid. I believe that's another reason I learned to speak so quickly, because I had in inquisitive mind that was always asking "what's that?" so I was constantly learning new words.

Apparently we don't all stop asking "what's that?"
http://www.nihongojouzu.com/2007/02/good...er_ba.html

Credit goes to Oniichan from a few weeks ago:http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=7719

Heres a guy who tried to learn only from listening, and ended with FAILURE:

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=7248

Lesson - its got to be comprehensible in some way..

Asriel Wrote:

Angeldust Wrote:Perhaps the problem is that as adults we don't ask "what is that?" as often as we did as a kid. I believe that's another reason I learned to speak so quickly, because I had in inquisitive mind that was always asking "what's that?" so I was constantly learning new words.

Apparently we don't all stop asking "what's that?"
http://www.nihongojouzu.com/2007/02/good...er_ba.html

Credit goes to Oniichan from a few weeks ago:http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=7719

Asriel, that was an awesome video! Motivational, at least for me.
I wonder if it's not that we stop asking, as much as maybe we become afraid to look like we don't know what we're talking about. Or that we'll be annoying. Obviously that's not true of everyone. But it does seem to be a problem.

Haha. I think that guy would (could, rather) get annoying real quick, like a salesman who can't turn off his pitch and starts seeing/using everyone as a commodity (in this case, language-learning resources rather than or more than individuals). Also, is he SRSing in that video?

aphasiac Wrote:Heres a guy who tried to learn only from listening, and ended with FAILURE:

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=7248

Lesson - its got to be comprehensible in some way..

I wouldn't say it's a complete failure, it just shows shows how extremely slow this method is. Apparently this guy is even covering up the Chinese subtitles that are on just about every single Chinese drama out there. Which is plain stupid if you ask me.

But I do think the "TV method" has some merit as a supplement to learning. By itself, it's way to extreme if you want to learn at a decent rate. You just can't ignore other methods of learning a language. Vocab lists, sentence method, MCDs, almost anything else would move your learning along so much quicker.

Personally I love it when I learn a new vocab word and start seeing/hearing it all over the place. I don't think I could reasonably pick up all these words from TV alone. I think a lot of people focus way too much on a single method, mix and match a little and keep it fun. Might just pick up your language learning pace.