This year I've been trying to watch more doramas and get my listening comprehension to a higher level. My main problem, though, is the background music.

Even in English, I have a hard time processing speech when there's a lot of background noise and I often have to ask people to repeat themselves at work, for example. (I work in a public library. Which is not as quiet as one might imagine.)

So, for dramas, I'll be doing fine until I get the emotional swell of music and I stop being able to understand what people are saying! I know that this will get better as my listening comprehension gets better, but I'm curious if anyone has any equalizer tricks for making the speech sounds stand out more. Or, failing that, if you could recommend TV to watch where there isn't so much a constant barrage of background noise.

i recommend not equalising or doing anything like that. You really need to train your brain to be able to pick out the important sounds in this case... it's not that your Japanese level isn't good enough. Also, listening in a real life situation is much harder than listening to a drama, which is actually pretty clinical, so it's better to train it as properly as possible from the beginning as you can. (i know some beginners like to slow down Japanese speech as well, but honestly i can't see it being helpful long term.)

It's basically a problem with attention in your brain. Under normal circumstances, your brain will apportion attention to the thing that requires it most. Obviously that's not happening though.

I think that repeating lines when you don't hear them is more likely to be useful in the long term, though it's more annoying to do in the short term. If you still don't hear it, use the subs to read along. If there's still lines even then that you can't make out properly, use subs2srs and put them in Anki (along with subs on the back). After a few weeks - a month or so, it should become much clearer.

Actually, when I was living in Japan I almost never had problems hearing what people were saying to me. No more than in English, anyway.

that's interesting, i wonder why not?

Maybe your problem is solely attention between speech + other noises and not different levels of speech then.

i had a terrible time trying to listen to conversations in a bar, or in a lunchroom with the television blaring behind me, etc. i wish there was an easy way to train that... maybe i should play two dramas simultaneously lol.

IceCream Wrote:i recommend not equalising or doing anything like that. You really need to train your brain to be able to pick out the important sounds in this case...

I do recommend it (Sorry for contradicting)
I'm pretty well known for my defect-hearing in Japanese. I have no such problems when it comes down to russian, german or english, at any speed, no matter what kind of talk (ok, nothing that is extremely special or so. I could understand news/ため口 flawlessly). Not so, however, with Japanese. Why? Not enough exposure to natives? Well, started off classically with listening to the textbook CDs of genki 1 and 2, understood everything -- fine. Went on with listening podcasts (passively only while reviewing). I was doing so for exactly 5 months, every day an hour listening (because that's how long I work for revising), but no effect. I could pick up like 2% of the words, forget about grammar (I read tae kim on top of genki 1 and 2, more than once, went through DoBJG, exercise daily Lang8).
Then I read about this equalising and thought, why not trying it. First, I didn't recognise any difference. But after a week of trying now (!) and reading along the text while listening to audio from TBS News online f.e., I feel more like I understand "on-the-fly" what the meaning/sense of each sentence is. I'm not sure if that's thanks to the equalising, but I strongly SUGGEST you at least try it. It's helpful. It's encouraging to continue if you feel like your listening is crap and you HAVE already listened a lot. Give it a try.
I agree to IceCream, however, too, in sense of stopping this 'trick' when you feel better and more confident. Suppose that will have a better effect than on your progress..

[Edit] Concerning subs2SRS
It was promised to me to "heal" my listening, but there were many factors that killed the fun beforehand already like searching (1) a show that looks fun, (2) finding eng/jp subs for it: Difficult. I stopped it after 2 months and it had no effect on me, but I at least tried.

Well, Fillanzea's case is a little different to yours Tori, because she's been learning Japanese for years, already has a pretty massive vocabulary level, and can read fluently. She's also said that she can listen until the music kicks in.

What she's talking about with "equalising" is changing the sound volume of the music in comparison to the words.

I think in your case Tori, you really just need to work at it. Obviously it's your least strong skill, and it's not going to improve by you passively listening to stuff. I think i've given you this advice before, but try watching programs with the script by the side, and pausing and repeating until you can hear and understand each line. If you still can't hear it, put the audio + japanese sub in your anki deck. You don't have to bother with english scripts or being picky with which lines you choose, because you can delete them from your deck once you can hear the line and replace it with a new one. Also try using english subs and actively listening for words and sentences so you make stronger meaning connections, and watching with Japanese subs doing the same.
You say that subs2srs didn't help you, but what does that mean? Were the lines you put in Anki still not clear to you after 2 months of reps? If so, maybe you were picking too long and complicated lines...? Again, unlike Fillanzea, you need to start understanding from simple and clearly spoken lines, not ones where the sound quality is low or they're doing some massive speech. But i still don't recommend slowing down the speech, because you'll only have to relearn to listen again at normal speed. Rather than increase your confidence, it'll probably harm it more.
Eventually, something will tip the balance, and you'll be able to hear sentences in real time. You just need to keep working at it until that happens.

For Fillanzea, anki'ing lines would really be a worst case scenario, because she should be able to get it just by repeating it in the video player. I wouldn't even recommend she uses japanese subs continually because her reading ability is so strong that it will give her brain too much of a chance to relax and not listen enough. (i even found this was the case for me with english... i used to watch english movies with english subs on all the time, and it ended up decreasing my comprehension when they weren't there.)

Tori-kun Wrote:It was promised to me to "heal" my listening, but there were many factors that killed the fun beforehand already like searching (1) a show that looks fun, (2) finding eng/jp subs for it: Difficult. I stopped it after 2 months and it had no effect on me, but I at least tried.

Well 2 months is a very little timeframe for feeling an effect.

I did subs2srs for 3 months and I can say that I felt only very very slight improvement, almost didn't feel it.

You just have to keep at it
and when the time comes you'll start noticing things.

It took about 9 months, i think, from beginning to learn japanese to my brain catching up with the sounds and not translating the grammar structure.

Subs2srs was one thing out of a few different things that helped tip the balance. I found it was really helpful for being able to make out the individual mora that make up sentences and words, as well as familiarise myself with different sentence patterns and gradually be able to build up the length of sentences i could listen to.

***

hmm, i wonder if it would help Fillanzea to practise focusing attention in English as well? Because it really seems like a more general problem than a problem with Japanese... maybe search for a book at your library to do with "cognitive neuroscience" and "top down attention" vs. "bottom up attention", and it might have some helpful examples of training it.
e.g. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=XywWK...&q&f=false ?

Fillanzea Wrote:This year I've been trying to watch more doramas and get my listening comprehension to a higher level. My main problem, though, is the background music.

Even in English, I have a hard time processing speech when there's a lot of background noise and I often have to ask people to repeat themselves at work, for example. (I work in a public library. Which is not as quiet as one might imagine.)

Since this problem occurs across languages for you, you might want to have your ears checked. It could be that you have a hearing impairment for high-frequency sounds. If so, that would explain why your listening comprehension suffers in the presence of noise.

I can still hear the really high-pitched ringtones that only young people are supposed to be able to hear.

I had a lot of problems as a child with listening to directions and that kind of thing and I had my ears tested, but they were fine. If anything, I think it's more likely that I have some mild difficulties not with my ears, but with the way my brain processes sounds.

If it's not a medical problem, you could try using good headphones or higher quality audio/video files. Headphones make it really easier for me to hear all sorts of nuances whether in music or movies. But if you have problems even in English, I feel like it might be a hearing problem.

Here they call it the CPS for Cocktail Party Syndrome. If you have this problem in a library, I can't imagine how it is in a club, bar, pub, etc. http://www.soundtherapyinternational.com...noise.html

IceCream Wrote:Also, listening in a real life situation is much harder than listening to a drama, which is actually pretty clinical, so it's better to train it as properly as possible from the beginning as you can.

I know the OP said they didn't have an issuewith this, but I'll just say this for anyone who might be having this kind of problem:

One thing I can recommend for this is watching 実況プレイ videos with two or more people speaking. Podcasts are more natural sounding than drama, but even then people are usually paying enough attention to their speech that it differs from day to day conversation. When they're talking to each other while focused on a video game, however, you get lots of mumbling, slurring, super fast speaking etc., all the good stuff you usually have trouble finding outside of everyday life.

贖罪, a currently airing WOWOW drama does have some background music but I find the voices much clearer compared to other dramas.

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美少女殺害事件に遭遇した少女たちが15年の時を経て運命を狂わせていく…

「贖罪」はデビュー作「告白」文庫版が200万部を突破し、映画も大ヒットを記録した湊かなえの3作目の小説。連鎖する悲劇を5人の女性の視点で描き、人間誰もが隠し持つ毒や心の闇を描ききった作品は、またも世に衝撃を与えた。
小泉が演じるのは、小学生の娘を殺された母・麻子。15年の時をまたいだ悲劇の中心で、周囲に激情をぶつけ、やがて運命に翻弄されていくひとりの女性を鮮烈に演じる。また、小学生のときに事件を目撃し、「償い」の思いを抱えたまま成長した4人を演じるのは、蒼井優、小池栄子、安藤サクラ、池脇千鶴という演技派女優たち。4人がそれぞれの心の闇に翻弄され、悲劇を引き起こすまでを、どう演じていくかが大きなみどころ。そのほかにも、豪華キャストが集結し、迫真のミステリーを彩る。作品の演出を手がけるのは、『トウキョウソナタ』（2008年）他、数々の作品で世界的に高い評価を得ている黒沢清監督。女性たちはなぜ悲劇を連鎖させてしまうのか、「贖罪」とは何か、作品が投げかけるテーマに挑む。