I'm trying to train my listening. You know in the podcast thread how there are podcasts rated really easy? Even those are hard for me. I just can't keep up. My main problem with listening is that I have to focus incredibly hard to actively attempt understanding, I don't just pick-up the comprehension. Even then, my listening is so bad that my mind has to try and unscramble the meanings in the case that it does recognize a word. I know there are a couple methods such as shadowing, just reading a book while listening to narration, paying attention to TV shows... I think maybe I get too distracted by images though?

Do you think it'd be a feasible strategy to just kinda blankly stare at nothing while listening to a podcast and focusing as hard as possible? I know it sounds silly, but I tried it for 10 minutes and at least my mind is TRYING to figure out what is being said, instead of it going in one ear and out the other. I'm going to Japan in just under 11 weeks... I really need to increase my listening comprehension more!

How are you at other aspects of the Japanese language? How long have you studied and what have you done? It's hard to tell you anything if I don't know your general ability.

I would say just to keep listening When i first started to listening to podcast I got very discouraged because I thought they were speaking so fast and there was more than one speaker and I never knew when one of them started and when one of them stopped. you need to get your brain and mind use to just hearing japanese you main focus should just be listening and accepting it. Just listen to japanese as my as you can like: a work, surfing the web or taking a shower. Find some japanese music that you like and listen to that as well. I know that podcast can be kind of boring at times if you don't fully understand. Lastly find some anime or dramas and watch them without subs or just cover them up. Even though you said u get distracted by there pictures you are still listening to japanese and in the end that's the goal.

Sounds to me like you just haven't listened to enough, although increasing your vocabulary and grammar understanding is also important. The Japanese can speak -very- fast when they want to, making conversations incredibly hard to follow at times; it's a long, ongoing process, picking out words, picking out phrases, catching simple sentences, catching two or three phrases in a large sentence, and eventually catching all the joining grammar of large sentences spoken at full tilt. Even then, one barely-known vocabulary word can throw you off - once you get distracted by recalling a slightly-known word, the conversation is three sentences on. The only answer to that is more practice until the word comes fast enough to fit into the sentence.


You might try this podcast that is really meant for Japanese people learning English. I like it for practice and vocabulary pick-up because the hosts chatter is lively, and the English sentence that -they- are trying to understand by ear gives you a clue on what's going on and what to listen for. Fortunately for those of us studying Japanese, there's very little English in it. I find the English topic focuses my mind and makes it easier to sort out sound-alike words (and then later I'm more likely to recognize them properly in other contexts).

http://www.tbsradio.jp/eiken/index.xml

(There's also ECC Eikaiwa, but they have way too much English to be valuable, IMO, and where TBS is very natural discussion, ECC was painful artificial and formulaic.)

It may also be valuable to watch drama/movies/anime with Japanese subtitles, and/or drill the vocabulary taken from a subtitle or script for a particular show before watching it. Choose something you can watch many times over and you'll get more out of it every time. You can also try news with subtitles or news with nearby scripts of the dialogue, there's links for that kind of thing in Learning Resources already. I like the TBS website news too. They have a bunch of single-article videos with printed articles as well that very nearly match the dialogue.

To answer your question at the end though, yes, sort of. Stare blankly and let it wash over you. Straining to understand only makes it harder, makes you more likely to mishear words you don't know as if they were words you do know as you try to force it to make sense. I don't particularly endorse 'passive listening' (just having it on in the background while you do other stuff) although that probably helps a little, but I do endorse -relaxed- listening. (Of course, listen -actively-, try to follow and not get too lost in stray thoughts.)

Staring blankly and thinking of nothing while listening is actually a great idea. The brain is most active while doing it. (According to recent discoveries. And if you ask me it is logic, since the brain is also most active, while we are sleeping.) Anyway, here is my advice.

Listen, listen, listen, and don't force yourself to understand. In the early stages of learning, the input is incomprehensible, because the vocabulary and grammar knowledge is missing. By the time you have the necessary knowledge to understand everything, your ears are well trained from listening to hours upon hours of it. This is why I consider it as the best advice anyone can give to a newbie: Listen to this damn incomprehensible input.

If you don't do it, you can hear a sentence, and even if you have all the vocabulary and grammar knowledge there is, the sentence still does not make sense. This is because you aren't able to single out each word in the flow of the sentences. You are clearly no newbie, but you still have to train your ear, to really "hear" everything. This needs lots of training. It is just like listening to an orchestra with 10 or more instruments. With an untrained ear, you can't tell apart which instruments are playing, but once you have the skill you can tell it is the: Bassoon, Xylophone, Vibraphone, Flute, Oboe, Piccolo etc. Even if you don't know the name of the instruments, you can "tune in" to one particular instrument, and listen to that one in particular among all the others. Or when you are listening to a sentence, you can easily make out those words and sentences you know, which is what you want.

When you are sitting at your computer, use movies, videos and music as passive input, and try to "hear" as many words or sentences as you can. Get Living Japanese 生きた日本語 Listen to it, watch closely how the people are speaking, how their lips move, how they look and act. But don't read the subtitles! And don't force yourself to actively understand what they are saying. Listen, watch and learn. I hope this will help you overcome your listening problem.

Shadowing is a technique that trains a different skill: speaking. You should do it to get the pronunciation, rhythm, and intonation to match as closely as possilbe to the source you are listening to. So, not sure what Shadowing would do for your listening, nothing I guess.

I wouldn't say that shadowing does nothing for listening.

In order to shadow something, be it an audio book or a conversation, or whatever, you have to be able to pick out every single syllable or you wouldn't be able to shadow it. Trying to shadow audio material forces to you actively listen to every piece and keeps you focused and helps prevent your mind from wandering off.

Even shadowing the words you don't understand helps you move from:

Words you don't know = noise
to
Words you don't know = Words you don't know

which, sounds silly to say but is a big deal.

@OP

You're doing everything correctly, don't worry. Had the same problems and now I'm slowly going forward, not thanks to some miracle method but rather pure perseverance. Just increase your quantities (for example have Japanese radio on constantly, except for really hard study) and alternate between intensive listening (trying to understand as much as possible) and passive listening (occasional word/phrase you'll recognize because you know it really well).

I use a regular radio and have Tokyo FM on constantly (perk of actually being in Japan), american movies in Japanese dubbing (good for intensive listening since you know the plot already, you can find them in a separate thread here) and lots of stupid youtube movies Just yesterday before going to bed this movie was recommended to me by tube, managed to understand a lot from it but also learned crucial vocab 特技, after watching THAT you don't need SRS to remember it.

Fun fact, when I first came here I completely couldn't understand the train announcer on JR lines when she was pronouncing お出口, it was really frustrating because I knew she was talking about the exit but just couldn't imagine it was any word I knew, I thought its too fast and mispronounced. Now I really don't get how I couldn't understand that.

Also important is to keep up with normal study, like reading, checking up on grammar etc. while still listening. Make a schedule, one american movie in Japanese a day, listening to radio all the time and normal study along with it.

Past november I started listening to podcasts. I understood zero back then. Continued listening, and after around 4 months I started understanding little by little what was being said. I never paid attention to podcasts before, I just listened to them. Now I still can't understand everything (vocab) but for example, I can understand tokyo local almost 100%

In the summer vacations I didn't listened to podcasts as much as I do during school time, but classes are just about to start and I'll start listening to them again.

Just listen, you don't need to pay attention.

jhenson Wrote:I wouldn't say that shadowing does nothing for listening.

In order to shadow something, be it an audio book or a conversation, or whatever, you have to be able to pick out every single syllable or you wouldn't be able to shadow it. Trying to shadow audio material forces to you actively listen to every piece and keeps you focused and helps prevent your mind from wandering off.

When looking at it that way, you are right, it does something for listening as well. However, I had absolutely no problems singing along, when I didn't understand what I was actually singing. For instance, at the very beginning, I found some fast songs on youtube. I think it was called 子供の時間 Intro, and 桜サック, both pretty fast. And had no problem shadowing in real-time. I did this mainly because the material I was working with at that time, required to loosen my tongue a bit, to get around shadowing AIAIJ material ... And this was native speed, which I clearly was not used to. My point is that even without being able to recognize any words, by which I mean understanding, you could still shadow.

jhenson Wrote:Even shadowing the words you don't understand helps you move from:

Words you don't know = noise
to
Words you don't know = Words you don't know

which, sounds silly to say but is a big deal.

No, this is doesn't sound silly at all. Because this is exactly the problem the OP has to overcome. And without listening, AND shadowing - the OP will be able to solve his problem. On a side-note, even going back to some simple textbook-dialogue audio, can help. I'm thinking of 日本語できます which is free. Or the material you can find for 飛躍 An Intermediate Japanese Course This going back to basics can be equally irksome as breath training when learning to sing. But, anything that helps, I guess.

Podcasts can be very hard to follow, it's hard to pick up the general context of what is going on. And I think brute forcing the understanding of a podcast is a terrible waste of time. Come back to podcasts when you have a better grasp on the language.

Instead, I highly suggest watching raw (or better yet J-Subbed) anime/drama. It's easier to follow, and you don't have to worry about missing something because the context is visual. It's easier and funner to follow even if you can't understand what is being said. After you finish an episode, if you really need to know what is going on, go read a plot summery somewhere (Wikipedia has episode summaries for a ton of shows).

In addition to this, if your watching something with Japanese subs, you can Subs2SRS the show and use Anki with the Morphology plugin to study what is within your vocab level.

Nagareboshi Wrote:When looking at it that way, you are right, it does something for listening as well. However, I had absolutely no problems singing along, when I didn't understand what I was actually singing

This is a vocab/grammar problem rather than a listening problem tho.

@TheVinster For me passive listening doesn't really work much, like you said it's in one ear out the other. So different forms of active listening are good like:
-Listening/Reading (you have to listen well to the audio to keep your place in the book)
-Dictation (good for finding what's tripping you up)
-Drama's without subs (pausing and rewinding if needed, Japanese subs for ref)
-Talking to people - this is the best if you can find someone to talk to.

I still do passive listening (just in case it does do something), I just don't really count it as studying.

Tzadeck Wrote:How are you at other aspects of the Japanese language? How long have you studied and what have you done? It's hard to tell you anything if I don't know your general ability.

Listening and speaking is incredibly poor. Writing is slightly less poor. Reading is poor.
I've technically been studying for about 2 years now, but I've obviously had a lot of starts and stops and all that. I don't think I ever took the studying process seriously, maybe?
I watch a fair amount of shows and the like, but... yeah.

My suggestion: listen to the same content repeatedly until you understand most of it (look up words and grammar you don't understand). Only then do you move on to new content. Listening to an endless stream of new content is not the most efficient method, as far as my experience goes.

I'm so glad you started this topic, theVinster. I'm in pretty much the same boat. I have about a year of study, spread out over the past 3 years. Whenever I listen to normal-speed Japanese, I find myself getting lost. I'll recognize a word or even a phrase but by the time I process it, they (the speakers) are two or three sentences further ahead, leaving me even further behind.

For me, movies are better than podcasts for normal-speed listening. I also use TUFS, Erin's Challenge and Let's Learn Japanese (it's soooo cheesy! but in a good way). Visuals and/or storylines help me.

I recently re-started iKnow and have found dictation to be a bigger help than I thought it would be. Granted, I may have to listen to a sentence 7 or 8 times before I get it 100% correct but I think it does help. If only I could get movie actors to repeat their lines 7 or 8 times before moving on!

Anyway, I just wanted you to know you're not alone. And it's comforting to me to know I'm not alone, either.

I guess I have the same problem was TheVinster. I know pretty much all of the JLPT2 grammar, when I read articles and books. Also I know the required vocabularies. But when it comes to listening I simply cannot follow what is being said/what is talked about. Perhaps it is just my impression Japanese talk too fast. (For your notice, I'm listening the HOTCAST podcast since the sound quality is fine and one can hear the voices clearly, I find.)
The vicious circle starts exactly here, when I think, why am I listening to stuff you don't understand? I understand most dialogues without transcripts from Genki 2, too.. (also did the workbooks) But now I wanted to shift to "real" and native Japanese as it's spoken and used every day and still fail. I wonder in how far "passive listening" (The 10,000 hours listening AJATT concept) does really work-.-

Tori-kun Wrote:I guess I have the same problem was TheVinster. I know pretty much all of the JLPT2 grammar, when I read articles and books. Also I know the required vocabularies. But when it comes to listening I simply cannot follow what is being said/what is talked about. Perhaps it is just my impression Japanese talk too fast. (For your notice, I'm listening the HOTCAST podcast since the sound quality is fine and one can hear the voices clearly, I find.)
The vicious circle starts exactly here, when I think, why am I listening to stuff you don't understand? I understand most dialogues without transcripts from Genki 2, too.. (also did the workbooks) But now I wanted to shift to "real" and native Japanese as it's spoken and used every day and still fail. I wonder in how far "passive listening" (The 10,000 hours listening AJATT concept) does really work-.-

It worked for me, but when I think about it, it did take a long time. It's hard to explain at times, I listened like there was no time and still kinda do, expect now it all makes sense. Maybe I'm giving bad advice when I say this but: keep going, even if you don't understand it. You might say you know other languages and that's why you picked up this one but that's not true. The other language I know isn't even related to Japanese at all.

I did listen to things both actively and passively and linked it to it's text, so maybe that's what helped me a lot. Plus I kept going into unkown areas. But one thing I know that stands out to me: I had a habit of re-listening/watching things I enjoyed, not too sure if that did help but it must have.

Thanks guys. Well my current mode of listening is I watch TV shows or listen to podcasts when I'm not at a computer. At a computer I typically go to FNN and do two or more articles and trying to understand them. News is more formulaic but also relatively fast (at least I feel), so if I can grasp the speed of understanding news, other things might become easier. I'm trying to watch dramas again, but I haven't found anything worth watching recently. When AKB48 members start going into dramas, you know there's a problem...

Tori-kun Wrote:I guess I have the same problem was TheVinster. I know pretty much all of the JLPT2 grammar, when I read articles and books. Also I know the required vocabularies. But when it comes to listening I simply cannot follow what is being said/what is talked about. Perhaps it is just my impression Japanese talk too fast. (For your notice, I'm listening the HOTCAST podcast since the sound quality is fine and one can hear the voices clearly, I find.)
The vicious circle starts exactly here, when I think, why am I listening to stuff you don't understand? I understand most dialogues without transcripts from Genki 2, too.. (also did the workbooks) But now I wanted to shift to "real" and native Japanese as it's spoken and used every day and still fail. I wonder in how far "passive listening" (The 10,000 hours listening AJATT concept) does really work-.-

N2 is far from the the end of the line when it comes to vocab. First step, do you actually know the words they're saying? If there's no transcript, try to pick out words and look them up. If you know all the words and it's just too fast, just listen more. Over the past year or so (from when i learned all the N2 grammar to now), my listening has improved dramatically. It's amazing how people's speech just slows down... When i listen to conversations between natives now they don't seem particularly fast and anything that's designed for learners (N3 or lower) just sounds crazy slow. But i remember my impression being very different last year!

Although I don't think there are transcripts anywhere on the site, if you need slow listening practice for the news then set NHK radio news to ゆっくり and you'll get real news at an easy to understand pace.
http://www.nhk.or.jp/r-news/

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:Although I don't think there are transcripts anywhere on the site, if you need slow listening practice for the news then set NHK radio news to ゆっくり and you'll get real news at an easy to understand pace.
http://www.nhk.or.jp/r-news/

Woah... how did i not know about this before.

Thank you SomeCallMeChris.

What a great site! Now, if only it worked on the iPad.
I had a look but it doesn't seem to be listed in the WIki. Could somebody put it there?

Harpagornes Wrote:I had a look but it doesn't seem to be listed in the WIki. Could somebody put it there?

Done, added to the Japanese Radio page.

Listening is also difficult for me. I am making progress though. I think a great resource, almost a must before further practice with news is:

coscom Nihon no dekigoto:
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...#pid143540

coscom Column 2008-2010:
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...#pid143844

I listen in my car and then at home I review the parallel text, extracting some words to anki.

EXCELLENT RESOURCE FOR INTERMEDIATE LEVEL with LISTENING PROBLEMS.