Barely progressing with listening comprehension

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@nfera,
Thanks for the detailed contribution. I’m with you on dense listening – I rarely invest any time in movies/tv, etc. for the reason you note. Re: your suggested content, was there a list or link or??

@PeterBormanm,
I’m familiar with deliberate practice. You’ve given me some ideas for moving forward (and adjusting my expectations).

One question, when you suggest using Lingq for listening…maybe I’m missing something? Why use it when it’s so much easier/cleaner to avoid Lingq’s cluttered UI when I can go direct to YT or podcasts?

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Just checked out your updated list of content. Awesome as usual. Thank you. I’m really interested in your dialect resources. Right now I’m studying an Italian soap opera - Vivere. Very dense language. It’s a soap opera, so… but the linguistic aspect is what I’m looking for. Maybe after processing a hundred hours or so of that I will try some dialect stuff. I was just in Italy and I had the exact problem you described (re: environment, regional pronunciation) in ordinary conversation…

@tparillo There is an issue with linking out from forums to the main Lingq website. Try this:

Ahttps://www.lingq.com/en/learn/it/web/community/post/4997559

Take off the “A” on the front.

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@tparillo Here’s my specific practice routine for improving my listening comprehension:

(0) Listen without no subs and no text. This is probably unnecessary, so I only do it about 30% of the time, sort of like a progress check. It always amazes me how much my listening comprehension improves when I then have the text in front of me

(1) Listen with the text in front of me. Lingq everything I want to focus on. If there is a sentence that I cannot parse in my ear word-for-word, even with the text in front of me, back up and re-listen to that sentence over and over again. If there is a sentence that I am hearing but not understanding, pause and speak the sentence in a meaningful way multiple times.

(2) Listen with the text in front of me, but do not stop. Try to sub-vocalize along through the whole text. If there is a particular difficult sentence, I will stop and back up and try a few times, but my stopping and starting is probably 10-20% of step (1).

(3) Listen again without the text in front of me. If I notice a meaningful improvement in my word-for-word parsing, put this audio file in the less-intense-listening review pile and move on to more text.

I have a high tolerance for difficulty, so I look for initial audio that presents major challenges, like on that first listen I get the jist only 50% of the time and parse word-for-word at something like 20%.

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100% agree with this. Most people grossly underestimate just how much listening is required. I’m sure we’ve all been guilty of that, before realising (by slow/non-existent progress) that what we were doing just wasn’t enough. The way OP explained their listening hours made it sound like they thought it was sufficient - it wasn’t, not even close.

We’ve all been there, it just takes experience before you really get an idea of what’s required. I’d say a good rule is that however many hours of listening you think you need (to reach a high level of listening ability), you can probably multiply it by 10, and even then you might need more.

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@tparillo:

Bormann has some good tips here and there, but otherwise IMO he has delusions of authority.

There are plenty of teachers with 10k hours of teaching experience who are crap.

Take what you like and leave the rest.

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nfera,

Now I see the link to the resources. I expected to know about most of them but…no! Only the stuff on NFLX, etc. Thanks for that.

My favorite read so far has been the Moccia trio of near-cult novels, starting with Tre Metri Sopra il Cielo.

Among my favorite YT stuff, in addition Podcast Italiano, is the series of book summaries (at high speed) Un po’ di piu.

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@tparillo

After watching the movie Tre Metri Sopra il Cielo, I gotta say that it did not motivate me one bit to want to read the book. I’m sure the book is much better than the movie though.

I loved Podcast Italiano as a beginner and lower intermediate. I didn’t mention it in my list as it’s already on LingQ. Just like I didn’t mention the podcast Salvatore racconta, as I already shared it on LingQ (with permission from the author). But maybe you’re right that I should add them.

With regard to Un po’ di più, I just shared the two YouTube videos they have with Italian subtitles for other users. If you have other YouTube channels with subtitles, which you like and would recommend to others, you should consider volunteering as a Librarian and sharing them with other users. (YouTube videos should be shared as external lessons for copyright reasons.) We could do with some more Italian Librarians. :smiley:

P.S. As you would be aware, you probably want to start transitioning away from educational/pedagogical content, such as Podcast Italiano.

The order of listening comprehension difficulty goes something like this:

  1. Beginner educational content
  2. Intermediate educational content
  3. A tutor speaking to you (clearly and slowly with a limited vocabulary)
  4. Audiobooks / advanced educational content
  5. Having a chat with one person, who speaks clear standard Italian to you (they unconsciously slow down their speech for you because you said “huh?” so many times)
  6. Single speaker speaking into a microphone, speaking clear standard Italian, improvised or semi-improvised (eg. single speaker YouTube channels, like Dario Bressanini, etc.) / standard Italian interview podcasts with only one host and the interviewee
  7. TV series
  8. Movies (harder than TV series, because you get used to characters’ voices and the way they speak throughout the series)
  9. Chatting with one person who has a strong accent because their mother tongue is dialect (again, they will speak slower to you, because you’ve asked them to repeat themselves so many times)
  10. Old movies (as sound was recorded different back in the day, so it’s less clear)
  11. Chit-chat podcasts / unscripted podcasts with multiple speakers, who often speak over top of each other, like the Cachemire Podcast
  12. Being in a group of Italians whose mother tongues are standard Italian (it’s harder because they aren’t speaking in microphones, so the sound volume changes, when people move their head away from you)
  13. Being in a group of Italians whose mother tongues are dialect, but they are from different regions, so they speak accented standard Italian
  14. Being in a group of Italians in a loud pub with music playing in the background
  15. TV series in dialect (some dialects are easier to understand than others. I.e. Veneziano is very comprehensible, Romano is mostly comprehensible with a little bit of practice, while Napoletano is pretty much incomprehensible)
  16. Movies in dialect (dialect dependent)
  17. Being with a group of people who are speaking in dialect (dialect dependent)

You want, over time, to keep moving up in order of difficulty of listening comprehension (you can skip TV series and movies, if you want). Also, most Italians understand some dialects, but not all. For instance, the vast majority of Italians would watch Mare Fuori (half in Napoletano) with Italian subtitles on, but would probably watch Strappare lungo i bordi (in a strong Roman accent / in Romano) without subtitles.

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Perhaps it’s not necessary for you because you already read a lot of “contemporary” novels
which contain enough collocations, slang, and idioms.

I, on the other hand, need some sort of “retention system” (like ReadLang or LingQ) so I can collect this colloquial vocabulary from podcasts, YT videos, and Netflix series. Then I want to use a Reader-to-Anki function so I can do L1->L2 exercises in Anki or writing exercises with chatbots à la ChatGPT & Co.

In short, in my “media pipeline” I need this retention step:
“Beginner dialogues” (Mini Stories, Assimil, whatever) →
Intermediate dialogues (with multiple speakers) →
non fiction texts (e.g., the Harari trilogy or other stuff I’m interested in) →
podcasts / YT vids / Netflix series

After deleting my LingQ language slots for English, Spanish, and Portuguese last year, I’m currently testing this “fluency first” approach (refilling these same language slots) to see if I can achieve a B2-C1 level in the most efficient way (with a combination of reading and listening / ultra-reading and listening + Anki + chatbots + self-talk): ca. 2.5 million words read, ca. 500 h listening + active recall / writing and speaking activities.

In addition, I’ve been collecting more than 1000 intermediate dialogues in English and several hundred similar dialogues in Spanish for ca. 10 months and I want to translate them into other L2s…

The next step is to have a collocations training software for various Germanic and Romance languages, which already contains several tens of thousands of contemporary collocations / idioms.

And when do I switch to fiction?
After reaching the 2.5 million word threshold (for Germanic / Romance languages), I intend to read first popular contemporary novels ( crime novels, mystery novels, thrillers, etc.) and then more sophisticated texts (complex contemporary or pre-1950 prose, science, poetry, etc.).

(Note: That’s basically the challenge for Portuguese and Dutch right now bc. I can already do that in English, French, or Spanish).

From this point on, there’s no finish line in sight, i.e.; it never stops bc. native speakers never stop either :slight_smile:

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Agreed, TMSC is a terrible movie (the follow up, Ho Volga di Te is only slightly better). The Netflix show “based on it” is hilariously disconnected. And yes, the book is much much better, obviously very colloquial and has a more extensive vocab than I’d expect (lots of synonyms). I pulled something like 500 phrases/sentences from the trio of books via Lingq to Anki…“che, vi ci vogliano gli inviti scritti?”

In your progression of listening difficulty, I’d like to add 14b) eavesdropping in public places.

And yes, I’m aware of the need to get away from pedagogical content. I lean on it when I don’t have the energy for something harder. And when I do have the energy, I listen to things like G Meloni clips or something about science from Nova Lectio, etc., or at least an interview on one of the learning sites.

As far as librarian, I don’t even know what that means in the Lingq context!

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You just share the great content you found, pretty much.

For more details:

https://www.lingq.com/en/learn/it/web/community/contribute

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Listening and reading at the same time is probably one of the best strategies one can use. It is important that one listens and reads a particular piece over and over. Doing this, we become familiar with the sound of the different ways words can be said when next to different words in a sentence or how the sound of a particular word can change in different circumstances. We have to let our ears “get used to” the sounds. This process cannot be achieved overnight!

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I’m the same. I know each word but strung together I can’t figure it out. So now I’ve switched to reading in sentence mode. Then I Lingq whole phrases since I need to learn those.

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This is something I have been doing for my listening the last couple of months. After I realised that I did not want to increase my time staring at a screen. I was using it on a C1 graded reader audiobook that I could initially only read and understand if I used lingq.

It has definitely raised my listening level. I used it for the first half of the book and I can now understand the second half just by listening.

It uses Olly Richards theory that you don’t need to know all the words to listen or read because your brain will make sense of it through repetition.

I am rolling it out to a c2 graded reader, a real Spanish audiobook (La Sombre Del Viento) and also the lingq podcast for conversational Spanish.

Method is as follows:

(You need the text in a form that you can import into lingq)
Step 1: listen to the chapter 4 times. - I am looking for my brain to start to ask questions (eg someone shouts. Why did that happen? What caused it, what happened next, etc)
Step 2: convert the text into a word doc and copy and paste the chapter into Chatgpt.
Step 3: Ask ChatGPT to read the chapter and produce an extended summary of the chapter in both English and target language.
Step 4: Read the summary in Target language and listen to the chapter several times.
Step 5: Read the English summary and listen to the chapter several times.
Step 6: Read and listen simultaneously 1-2 times.
Step 7: Read it 1-2 times depending on how well you get it.
Step 8: Read it on lingq-then immediately read it off of lingq.
Step 9: Read and listen or just listen. Then move to next chapter.

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Wow, Damian, that is a ton of work! Is your challenge more from hearing the words or do you hear them well and struggle to get what the sentence means (I have the latter problem…I can identify the words pretty well, could write most of them down, but they’re just sounds to me, devoid of meaning sometimes).

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I had a similar experience with French, my first L2. I spent many years and could understand written text at a fairly advanced level with relative ease. But I didn’t listen… and so I struggled. I never did go back and correct it, and maybe I will one day.

Then I learned Swedish, and I learned the techniques that really unlocked it all for me (and they’re what a few people have mentioned here already). I now generally prefer Swedish audiobooks to written material as I can enjoy content while doing other things. I consider my listening ability to be at an advanced level.
Now I’m in the beginner stages of Turkish and am using this approach:

  1. Listen while reading.
    You mention that this is something you don’t enjoy doing, but I really would challenge you to start. You’re reading anyway, so why not just listen along at the same time? Depending on my comprehension level, I’ll read through the text using LingQ first, without listening. I’ll listen to sentences in sentence mode, but it’s more of an active study situation where I’m looking up words and listening to the sentence once I’ve looked up the words. Once I understand the text I’ll read it through a couple of times, listening at the same time.
    Once I’m advanced in a language I obviously don’t need to do this, but even though you might be advanced in your reading level it sounds like you need to go back to this stage just to improve your listening. So you might read and listen to a chapter of a book a few times, or read the transcript of a podcast while listening or something.
    I personally don’t recommend films or series as (like others have mentioned) you’re just not getting enough bang for your buck. You want to make sure as much time as possible is spend listening to actual speech.

  2. Passive listening
    To me it looks like you don’t do nearly enough of this. 30 minutes a day is really not very much. Passive listening, unlike the ‘active’ listen while reading above, is where you listen while you do other things. I have a set of really comfortable earphones I wear throughout the day (Shokz, so they don’t actually sit on or in your ear) and whenever I’m doing something that doesn’t require all of my attention (cleaning, cooking, walking, driving etc) I automatically press the button on my earphones and I’m listening to something in Turkish. Even if the thing I’m going to do will only take 5 minutes, I press the button and listen. You would be amazed at how much ‘dead time’ you have in a day… I can sometimes get in three hours a day of passive listening just doing this. And it’s rarely under an hour.
    Importantly, the material I listen to is material I have already read and listened to multiple times, so I know the content really well. If it’s too hard your mind will wander, and that defeats the purpose. You do need to be listening to it, not just hearing it!

  3. Vary your content.
    People speak differently in audiobooks to YouTube to podcasts. Try and include as much variety as possible.

  4. Just listen
    As you improve, you can start to listen to beginner content without reading it first. It will take a while to get to this stage though. And when you do, you probably won’t understand every word. As long as you understand the general meaning though, you will improve, You will eventually get to the level where you can just listen, but it does take a while.

Good luck!

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I find myself with somewhat different problems: after I listen to a podcast, or if I stop in the middle, I often can tell you what they said in English, but I can’t remember all or even many of the words they used, because … well, I don’t know… maybe because I wasn’t thinking about what words they were saying–I was just listening to the content. I listen to podcasts in two languages (besides English) and have the same experience in both.

I mean, I certainly remember some of the words, if they struck me for some reason, but certainly not all of them, and I notice it if 'm trying to talk about something they said with relevance to the language used, where it would be helpful to describe whether they used a certain verb form or something.

I mean, it seems the opposite from the experience some described above of knowing the words but not the meaning. I get the meaning, but am not necessarily catching or remembering the individual words.

It doesn’t bother me most of the time, but occasionally it annoys me if I’m trying to describe or repeat what I heard, and I realize I can’t remember exactly how they said it in the source language. I’d have to go find the section again to find out what words they used.

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I just had a thought. Reading is painfully slow when I’m having to sound out words to figure out what they are. Until I am recognizing the entire words as units, it is so slow. But the ones that go fast are the ones where I recognize the whole word and don’t think about its letters.

Could there be something similar with listening, where we recognize phrases more than individual words?

I just went and listened to a bit of one of Alberto’s Italiano Automatico videos to try to see if I thought so (although Italian is not a language I practice or listen to podcasts in), and … I wasn’t impressed with this hypothesis of mine so much.

Some words work together and I think I understand them as a unit, like “al giorno”, but a lot of what he is saying, I think I am processing words individually. Like when he says “e audio disponible”, well, it’s a phrase, but I’m hearing the words individually.

I guess this just means it is actually not analogous to reading, where we really do skip processing the letters at all, and instead process the whole word (I believe). So now I don’t believe that hypothesis after all.

On the other hand, Alberto talks quite slowly, and pronounces the words kind of spaced out separately, so maybe this wasn’t the best test. But I probably couldn’t understand him if he were speaking at a more conversational speed.

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Might be a dumb question, but… are you listening to the AI speaker or selecting material where there’s a real speaker and you’ve somehow put it into Lingq?

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No dumb questions here! Always choose a native speaker. The point is for you to be able to understand real spoken language, so it needs to be a real person, and, in my opinion, a native speaker.

TTS is fine for just listening to the odd word or sentence, so if you want to know how to pronounce something for example. I wouldn’t recommend it for this activity.

So look for audiobooks (obviously if there’s an audiobook there’ll be a book somewhere!), or podcasts with transcripts. I’ve recently started using the Whisper function in LingQ to give me a transcript for YouTube videos where there are no subtitles in the original video, and I must say I’m absolutely loving it.

My advice would be: find native speaker audio. Find a written text version somewhere, and if there are none, use AI to generate text. AI text with real native audio is far far far superior to native text with AI audio.

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