Comments for Language Geek

Comment on Success with Foreign Languages: Seven who achieved it and what worked for them by Lisa Tucci

Lisa Tucci — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:50:17 +0000

I’d like to hear your hilarious mistakes while on the way to getting where you’ve gotten…!
We’ve started a blog collecting foreign language mistakes, so, please post & you might get into the published book!
upyourbottom.com

Comment on How much listening do you do? by Aidan

Aidan — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 12:02:12 +0000

I agree with many of the other commenters that listening with a transcript is the most effective while you are still actively learning a language. I get nothing out of listening to random Japanese a I have no clue what it is about.
However once you are at intermediate level or above in a language I think that it is a really effective way of learning new words and reinforcing your existing vocabulary. If I make the effort to listen to any of the languages I know well then I always get a nice boost from the activity.
Having said that I personally think that reading as much as possible in the target language is even more important.

Comment on Yabla – Foreign Language Videos With Subtitles and Translations by Godwin

Godwin — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 07:40:41 +0000

I think the it should be able to do it for free for English. Since most of the TV shows already have captions, all they have to do just extract the captions and convert them into subtitles. I believe the TV stations will be happy to let Yabla play their videos as long as their commercials are included.
Many immigrants, including myself would love to use Yabla to improve their English if it is free. If Yabla could do it now, it would be hotter that Youtube. Otherwise, sooner or later, Google will do it.

I just looked at the English.yabla.com. It has much less videos than other languages. I don’t think anyone would like to pay for it.

Nicolas, thanks a lot for the information.

Comment on How much listening do you do? by stermi

stermi — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 13:05:52 +0000

Hello, firstly let me tell you that I like your website

I think listening to foreign material with no written transcription is not meant to teach you new vocabulary but new sentences, new ways of saying things. You need to have the vocabulary, anki is your friend (but I know I’m not teaching you anything here lol). Listening is good for ear training and for real sentences from real world to go in your brain, if you already have the needed vocabulary.

Comment on How much listening do you do? by John B

John B — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 11:45:55 +0000

I would agree that listening to lots and lots of stuff that you don’t understand won’t help you learn all that much in and of itself, but (in my experience at least) it really does help to prime your ears so that when you actively set about to learn it just clicks. Also, when you get to a higher level (when you’re just missing a word or two every once in a while), you’ll pick up those words unconsciously out of context.

I think a lot of people just give up on it before it has a chance to work. This sort of learning is insidious — it doesn’t feel like it’s doing anything and then *bam* you realize how much it has added.

Comment on How much listening do you do? by Paul

Paul — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 04:17:04 +0000

Interesting thoughts Josh. At first I too felt I wasn’t learning anything new just by listening. However now that I am almost three years into German learning at a slow and casual pace I believe that, for me, it is a worthwhile activity where I do very subtly learn.

I regularly listen to the daily news, spoken slowly, from Deutche Welle “Langsam gesprochene Nachrichten”
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/0,,8030,00.html and the DW-World TV news as well. I also listen to a variety of other content irregularly. I would say my periods of listening are generally short; never more than 30 minutes.

The main benefits to me of this are expansion of vocabulary by deducing the meaning of words in context and an opportunity to listen closely to pronunciation (which I can always improve on). I also found, particularly in the early days, it really helped me get a feeling for the “rhythm”, and learn the unique sounds, of the language.

Aside from the learning something new I also find it invaluable for forcing my mind to “click” into German every day and importantly as a measure for self-encouragement. For example with the daily news, I remember when I began I understood absolutely nothing. Now I understand a lot but still with some way to go. The day I can understand the whole news bulletin I will know I have achieved something. Although at this rate it probably not going to happen in my lifetime

Comment on How much listening do you do? by Jeff

Jeff — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:47:15 +0000

I aim for 1 hour German, 1 hour Russian and 1,5 hour Chinese everyday. Sometimes I listen to the same content I’m studying, sometimes it’s just random news/TV.

Comment on How much listening do you do? by Ramses

Ramses — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 21:17:00 +0000

I was also commenting on WC.

Josh: did you ever try to get some serious audio-based input, like several hours per day and that for several months in a row? I agree that just listening is less effective, but in combination with a TV it’s great. Look how far Keith got. Also, I became fluent because I watched well over 5000 hours of television in Spanish.

Comment on How much listening do you do? by Josh

Josh — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:41:11 +0000

Just to make it clear (as I clearly didn’t!), I’m not saying listening isn’t important. It’s not as if I think you can just read and learn vocabulary, and then expect to be able to understand the spoken language. That’s nonsense, and I recognize that.

What I was aiming at is the fact that, for me, I tend to not pick up much that’s new while listening. If I hear something I’ve learned elsewhere, sure, it clicks more firmly into my mind. But listening for hours and hours doesn’t seem to change the fact that, if I didn’t know a word on the first pass, I won’t know it on the 20th pass.

Comment on How much listening do you do? by Ramses

Ramses — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:26:42 +0000

Listening is extremely important in language learning. People who say it doesn’t help clearly didn’t study this topic and thus have no idea what they’re talking about.

I get about 10 hours of input per day. In my target language, of course. It helped me with my pronunciation, with my grammar, with picking up words, etc. That doesn’t mean I don’t look up things, because I do. I use an SRS to get comprehensible input. Still, as Keith proved with his Mandarin project, it isn’t necessary at all to ’study’ to become good at a language; listening is enough.

Just read this article, it clears up a lot. In short: it tells that by just listening you’ll get used to the sound of the language and also absorb the patterns it uses.