Travers Naran
2007-11-28 16:33:53 UTC
My listening skills are crap, so I've been working on improving my
listening skills. At first, I was just trying to listen and understand
audio, but that wasn't working. I talked with my friend in Saitama, and
he said to improve his listening skills, his teacher recommended
dictation and "shadowing". I knew about dictation (writing down what
you hear), but I knew there was no way I could keep up with a native
speaker's speed, but shadowing was a new thing I hadn't heard.
Shadowing is that old kid's game of:
$B7;!'(B"What are you doing?"
$BDo!'(B".. What are you doing?"
$B7;!'(B"Are you repeating everything I say?"
$BDo!'(B".. Are you repeating everything I say?"
$B%Q%&!<!<!<!<!*(B
He said the Interpreter's School he went to used that to get people's
listening skills at a higher level.
What the heck! I tried it.
Day 1: @_@;;;
Good grief, that's hard! I think I managed one or two words at a time.
But it was useful: I realised that there was a huge time lag between
hearing a word, recognizing it and repeating it, and during the last 2
stages, I had stopped listening. That would go a long way to explaining
things.
Day 2: @_@;;
Once I learned to stop thinking and just try to keep listening while
letting my mouth go, I was hearing more, but still only managing 2-3
words. Mostly because in the listening material I was using (Yomiuri's
Daily news podcast), there was a lot of words I didn't know.
Day 3: @_@
All I was doing was mumbling, but I did notice when I focused on
speaking, I stopped listening. So I took a deep breath and just tried
to let the phonemes flow through me, and if I recognized a word, I tried
not to get distracted into trying to mentally translate (which results
in me stop listening). Results were better.
I began trying shadowing with the anime I was watching. Still mostly
mumbling, but on the simpler sentences that I knew the vocab to, I was
beginning to shadow successfully. Hmm, progress.
Day 4: >_<;
Decided to take one story from the Yomiuri podcast for November 27th
(http://podcast.yomiuri.co.jp/podcast_yomiuri_online/files/071127.mp3)
and transcribe it (dictation practise). Well, Windows Media Player
sucked because I couldn't say "repeat this small section over and over
again". But then I remembered I had Audacity (open-source sound
editor). I could highlight sections of the podcast and play it repeatedly.
Using Audacity: Hints & Tips
1. Use a long section to repeat; short clips lead to madness
I noticed if I tried to highlight a single word and repeat-play it, I
had the hardest time parsing out the sounds. But if I chose a larger
selection (4-5 words), it was a lot easier. I realised why of course:
people subtly change their pronunciation depending on what they are
saying. So if you hear the problem word in context, it becomes easier
to pick out the individual sounds.
2. Use a complete story, but don't try to do the whole 30 minute podcast
The story was about Moriya's corruption charges. It was about 40
seconds, I think, but that took several hours to transcribe. Lots of
playing 3-4 word bursts repeatedly. It gets quite interesting actually.
I've come to realise how musical and poetic the phrase $B;v>p$r>e;J$K(B
really is. :-)
3. Audacity has "tempo slowdown"
Audacity has a filter that will take your selection, slow it down and
correct the pitch. I.e., it's as if you asked the speaker to slow down.
It's not perfect. If you do it more than 20%, you get pops and
distortions, but 10% can disambiguate a rushed over sentence.
So far, the experience has been quite rewarding. I can listen to the
podcast at work during lunch and quietly murmur to myself. Shadowing is
great because you can use it anywhere and seems to help me to stop
THINKING about Japanese and just listening to it and letting the
understanding become more automatic.
Dictation is also a very useful exercise. I knew that before, but I
don't think I truly appreciated it until I did this exercise. I also
found doing it by hand to be a bit more rewarding for some reason. I'm
not sure why though. I tried using JWPce but it felt "wrong". But when
I wrote it out in kana on paper, it felt "right" and seemed to stick
better. It also let me brush on up writing kana again.
OK, so this wasn't exactly a thrilling post, but I just needed to share
this and I don't like blogging. :-)
And hey, it's better than the spam we've been getting lately. :-)
--
-----
Travers Naran, tnaran at google's mail.com
"Welcome to RAAM. Hope you can take a beating..." -- E.L.L.
listening skills. At first, I was just trying to listen and understand
audio, but that wasn't working. I talked with my friend in Saitama, and
he said to improve his listening skills, his teacher recommended
dictation and "shadowing". I knew about dictation (writing down what
you hear), but I knew there was no way I could keep up with a native
speaker's speed, but shadowing was a new thing I hadn't heard.
Shadowing is that old kid's game of:
$B7;!'(B"What are you doing?"
$BDo!'(B".. What are you doing?"
$B7;!'(B"Are you repeating everything I say?"
$BDo!'(B".. Are you repeating everything I say?"
$B%Q%&!<!<!<!<!*(B
He said the Interpreter's School he went to used that to get people's
listening skills at a higher level.
What the heck! I tried it.
Day 1: @_@;;;
Good grief, that's hard! I think I managed one or two words at a time.
But it was useful: I realised that there was a huge time lag between
hearing a word, recognizing it and repeating it, and during the last 2
stages, I had stopped listening. That would go a long way to explaining
things.
Day 2: @_@;;
Once I learned to stop thinking and just try to keep listening while
letting my mouth go, I was hearing more, but still only managing 2-3
words. Mostly because in the listening material I was using (Yomiuri's
Daily news podcast), there was a lot of words I didn't know.
Day 3: @_@
All I was doing was mumbling, but I did notice when I focused on
speaking, I stopped listening. So I took a deep breath and just tried
to let the phonemes flow through me, and if I recognized a word, I tried
not to get distracted into trying to mentally translate (which results
in me stop listening). Results were better.
I began trying shadowing with the anime I was watching. Still mostly
mumbling, but on the simpler sentences that I knew the vocab to, I was
beginning to shadow successfully. Hmm, progress.
Day 4: >_<;
Decided to take one story from the Yomiuri podcast for November 27th
(http://podcast.yomiuri.co.jp/podcast_yomiuri_online/files/071127.mp3)
and transcribe it (dictation practise). Well, Windows Media Player
sucked because I couldn't say "repeat this small section over and over
again". But then I remembered I had Audacity (open-source sound
editor). I could highlight sections of the podcast and play it repeatedly.
Using Audacity: Hints & Tips
1. Use a long section to repeat; short clips lead to madness
I noticed if I tried to highlight a single word and repeat-play it, I
had the hardest time parsing out the sounds. But if I chose a larger
selection (4-5 words), it was a lot easier. I realised why of course:
people subtly change their pronunciation depending on what they are
saying. So if you hear the problem word in context, it becomes easier
to pick out the individual sounds.
2. Use a complete story, but don't try to do the whole 30 minute podcast
The story was about Moriya's corruption charges. It was about 40
seconds, I think, but that took several hours to transcribe. Lots of
playing 3-4 word bursts repeatedly. It gets quite interesting actually.
I've come to realise how musical and poetic the phrase $B;v>p$r>e;J$K(B
really is. :-)
3. Audacity has "tempo slowdown"
Audacity has a filter that will take your selection, slow it down and
correct the pitch. I.e., it's as if you asked the speaker to slow down.
It's not perfect. If you do it more than 20%, you get pops and
distortions, but 10% can disambiguate a rushed over sentence.
So far, the experience has been quite rewarding. I can listen to the
podcast at work during lunch and quietly murmur to myself. Shadowing is
great because you can use it anywhere and seems to help me to stop
THINKING about Japanese and just listening to it and letting the
understanding become more automatic.
Dictation is also a very useful exercise. I knew that before, but I
don't think I truly appreciated it until I did this exercise. I also
found doing it by hand to be a bit more rewarding for some reason. I'm
not sure why though. I tried using JWPce but it felt "wrong". But when
I wrote it out in kana on paper, it felt "right" and seemed to stick
better. It also let me brush on up writing kana again.
OK, so this wasn't exactly a thrilling post, but I just needed to share
this and I don't like blogging. :-)
And hey, it's better than the spam we've been getting lately. :-)
--
-----
Travers Naran, tnaran at google's mail.com
"Welcome to RAAM. Hope you can take a beating..." -- E.L.L.