That sounds like something I might try thanks. Do you do this will all of you audio sources?

I play for passive-listening stories from hukumusume, songs, and audio tracks from anime or dorama. Pretty much every thing I play for passive listening is something that I've been through before ... generally I've read the story/lyrics/L2 subtitles at some point. Playing the same short clip over and over would drive me insane and potentially result in the destruction of the audio device.

tokyostyle wrote:

This advice is most likely trying to keep your input as close to N+1 as possible especially while you are in the beginner phases.

My problem is it's hard to find things to listen to that is at a beginner level.

I got the first two Harry Potter books as audio books in Japanese and listen to those. They work awesomely well. And I'm lucky, too, since they're pretty much the only Japanese audio books out there, because the genre doesn't really exist in Japan.

Last edited by Zlarp (2013 January 21, 3:38 am)

Zgarbas wrote:

And of course, you can be skeptical about language learning advice from people who make mistakes in English(their native language, I think?). It's funny because both extracts have mistakes.

What extracts are we talking about exactly? Native speakers make typos too...  eg. "Its ---> It's".

Zgarbas wrote:

Yeah but when you claim to be a language learning expert it's a bit silly to be making mistakes in your own tongue. If they can't master their own native language (it's not like they're hastily posting on Twitter, they are supposedly well-thought of and proofread posts), how can you take their word on language mastery?

English isn't his native language, it's some weird tonal language.

I loop the audio from these shadowing books along with podcasts.

http://shop.whiterabbitjapan.com/shadow … P2BKicuLEk

I can upload these cd's and post a link on here if anyone is interested. As long as fabrice and the mods don't mind.

I try to make sure I know exactly what's going on in every piece of audio I rip from media, before it goes up on my mp3 player, by watching it a few times with subs, and then watching it without subs (but with video) as well. With songs, I go through them a few times, with a translation (they're all over youtube and other sites as well). All this, preferably over the course of a few days or even weeks. I don't watch something twice in a row, that would be work. When I wanna work, I use SRS, because that's the most efficient way to learn. This is for fun.

For me, this only works for comedy (and only comedy that I find funny), because funny stuff gets boring a lot slower than serious stuff. I couldn't watch and listen to most dramas over and over again.

For passive listening, maybe the level doesn't matter. As your Japanese gets better, you'll gradually just understand more and more of what you hear. Also, when I listen passively, I tend to "tune in" only on the parts that I understand. It's like I suddenly wake up and hear a conversation I can understand.

So just play whatever in the background.

To be honest, an online radio station is nicer because you don't have to manage a playlist. Just leave it on and listen. Manually downloading, sorting, and scheduling audio clips can suck up a lot more time that you'd expect.

Last edited by chamcham (2013 January 21, 10:12 pm)

egoplant wrote:

Why does listening to the same things over and over again help as opposed to listening to new things?

Only because you can follow along more easily, if you know what's going on. If you can't follow along with something, you tune it out.

But if you know enough to be able to follow along with audio you never heard before, then there's no benefit to listening over and over again.

egoplant wrote:

Do you think it would be beneficial to listen to like a 2 minute clip over and over again until I knew it backwards and forwards? My listening is really bad.

I think it would be beneficial. But it's not gonna be any more beneficial than spending the same time listening to a 30 minute clip that you have a general idea about, but fewer times.

And the second approach is gonna be more enjoyable. And it will also lead to learning some of the full sentences in it, just not all. If you listen to something several times, it's unavoidable.

Since we are talking about doing things besides actively studying, it's important to make sure it's enjoyable. Otherwise, you might as well spend that time actively studying. That's why I only have longer clips, and plenty of them so that I only get to listen to them once in a while instead of over and over again. The one I added yesterday is actually almost an hour long. Probably won't find the time to listen to it more than four or five times total.

One exception I made was with a few songs that I learned by heart. The benefits of doing that are there, but, to be honest, they're not worth the effort. I definitely couldn't recognize every word and expression in those songs, when I heard them later in different contexts, even though I can probably recite the full songs by heart and know the meaning of each word. I would've been better off spending my time doing something else, I just wanted something tangible, and understanding a full song in Japanese seemed like it.

Finally: I guess, if you wanna see what it's like, you should do it once. Pick one song or short piece of audio, learn it by heart. Sit on it for a couple of weeks, see how the knowledge you got from it works for you, then decide if you wanna do it again. You probably won't.

Last edited by Stansfield123 (2013 January 22, 1:36 am)

egoplant wrote:

Well I wasn't talking about a song really, since those aren't very natural. I was talking about a short theater skit from one of those hello morning things you mentioned. I cropped out a 3 minute bit and put it on my mp3 player. I will listen to it in bed a few times right now and see if anything happens.

You're right, songs are not the best audio for learning. I just liked the specific songs.

Here's an example of an audio I would use from Hello Morning, as a beginner, and the reason why: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZBpoqHQnfQ

The reason is that they use the word 助番 about 25 times, the word for order another 15, the words for guilt and innocence 7-8 times each, t裁判長 (judge) and お目出度う another 10, 誕生日 (birthday) another 10 (the Kanji shows up on the screen most of the time, but I wouldn't bother with paying attention to it, I'm just showing off). As you may have guessed it, it's a mock trial, done over and over again with different "defendants". So the structure repeats, the content varies. If you also learn 7-8 names, you're up to 120 occurrences of words you know off the bat, in 20 minutes of audio. Add some of the common words a show like this would use (私, cool, scary, girl, it hurts, etc.), and you're pushing 150 words, without any real Japanese knowledge. Add the English words they sprinkle in, it's 180. They also like to drive jokes into the ground, which means more repetition. The rest falls into place after a couple of light viewings, and you're ready to listen to it knowing exactly what's going on at all times.

That, by the way, is the same reason why a more advanced student would avoid this audio like the plague (that, and because it's not exactly high brow humor). But, for a beginner, that's the kind of thing you want.

Last edited by Stansfield123 (2013 January 22, 2:12 am)