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Passive Listening | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6491 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes  Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 17 of 32 31 March 2008 at 12:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
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You can listen for meaning if you understand enough of the language, or you can just have something running in the background, which is the truly passive kind of listening. Then there is the L-R listenning where you try to follow a translation with the help of clues in the form of international words and proper names, combined with clues in the intonation (of course you can also use a transcript, but personally I prefer using a translation in this situation).
And as the last form you can do active listening even with languages that you can't understand yet, provided that you know the written form. Here you deliberately don't care at all about the meaning, but try to parse the stream of sounds into sentences and words, following the speaker 'like a bloodhound on a trail'. As your vocabulary grows and you become adept at reading the language, you will discover that the meaning of the spoken form suddenly becomes crystal clear even though you haven't tried to understand it. When I have done this I have sometimes seen a string of grey words running across my inner field of vision, though blurred so that only the shape of the words is seen. At other times I just listen for the borderlines between words, phrases and sentences. In both cases you should focus on changes in intonation, pauses, words you have heard before and common endings and affixes, which means that all those things will seep into your mind. Then some day the meaning appears, and you will have learnt to understand that language without passing through the perilous stage of translation. Edited by Iversen on 01 April 2008 at 8:35am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| jody Senior Member United States Joined 6026 days ago 242 posts - 252 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Bulgarian | Message 18 of 32 31 March 2008 at 1:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
This is exactly what I want to try. Like I mentioed, I am still trying to find some audio. Eventually I could make it to following along with translations. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| K.C. Groupie United States ksclay.net Joined 6840 days ago 42 posts - 46 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 19 of 32 31 March 2008 at 2:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Passive listening might help you get down the rhythm of the language, and don't underestimate this. A few weeks ago I couldn't follow any Spanish language television at all. It all seemed to be spoken very fast and the words ran together. After listening to Spanish for hours a day, the too fast feel is gone and I can make out the words. I think you have to move quickly from passive to active listening, though. This doesn't mean, at least to me, that you understand it all, but that you are actively paying attention and alert for the differences between sounds, for phrases that are said over and over, for common words that are repeated. Then when you are actually studying the language and learning the meanings of words you can work to pick these ones out of whatever you are listening to (and thus begin to understand it). I'm not an expert on language learning (Spanish is my first foreign language) but this seems to be helping me.
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| tom26 Newbie Australia Joined 4923 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes | Message 20 of 32 03 November 2010 at 10:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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"As your vocabulary grows and you become adept at reading the language, you will discover that the meaning of the spoken form suddenly becomes crystal clear even though you haven't tried to understand it. " Hello new to the forum here, just wondering if this refers to L2 reading with L2 listening at the same time...or just L2 reading without listening...or the whole listening reading method. Thanks 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5086 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 21 of 32 06 November 2010 at 12:22am | IP Logged | |||||
It refers to listening, nothing else. In simple words: When you know enough about the language (words, grammar) and can read it, then listening will follow quite easily after a certain time of getting used to the sound and flow. This works for people only who have invested time and effort in learning the language, but have not yet worked on getting real listening skills. They go through a phase where they understand little or nothing at first, but after a relatively short time (a month, a week or some hours, depending on language, ability, material and who knows what ...) there is a sudden jump in comprehension and it just works. (But there is no magic, of course, you won't suddenly understand unknown words or structures you have never seen, this should go without saying.) 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6463 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 22 of 32 06 November 2010 at 10:22am | IP Logged | |||||
That's my experience. Maybe a good method is doing two steps: -First, mainly focus in learning to read with a little attention to grammar. -Second, when you read quite well, start with massive listening, paying attention with or without transcripts (active) or without paying attention (passive) I think this is a good approach with western languages. I don't have any experience with Asian languages. Edited by slucido on 06 November 2010 at 10:24am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| superette Diglot Newbie France Joined 5460 days ago 7 posts - 13 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Japanese, Italian | Message 23 of 32 15 November 2010 at 6:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm not very sure about the usefulness of a passive method consisting of just having the sounds go on while doing something else, except perhaps when speaking of an immersion method such as Kazhumoto's but I don't think this is what jody had in mind when starting off this thread.
However, I do believe that passive listening can prove very useful if it comes for example to watching subtiled movies, TV shows, sitcoms, etc. I use it a lot for Japanese and, apart from being quite a lot of fun, it is usefull too. Repeatedly seing a word in your own language (the subtitle) coupled with certain words or expressions in the target language (the movie or whatever video you are watching) drastically helps increasing your vocabulary and overall understanding of the language. From my opinion though, it is a method that would suit best someone who already has a certain understanding of the basics of the target language's grammar and can at least separate one word from the other even if the meaning is not known, so as not to feel overwhelmed but instead to immediately begin picking up new words and expressions. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Maroun Newbie Lebanon Joined 4977 days ago 5 posts - 7 votes | Message 24 of 32 20 November 2010 at 5:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Passive listening is useful, but it should be supplemented by active listening. This is what I mean:
1) Listen to L2 passively . It will get you used to the sounds and the pronunciation, and you'll probably understand something. 2) Listen to L2 actively. This means taht you should understand each word being said. You can do this by reading the transcription and its translation (in case they're available.) 3) Keep listening to the audio *passively* during the day. You can even watch TV or read a novel while doing it. You'll pick up a word now and then, and by the end of day, you'll have picked up every word, and it will likely be in your longterm memory. This is more or less how I use Assimil. :) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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