When I was just reading here on Lingq without paying a lot of attention to my listening I was learning about 1000 words a week ( from 2 hours per day of constant exposure to words and a lot of reading ) but now I’m not even doing half of that as I’m trying to include my listening within that 2 hours of study by reading the audio of each page and then relistening.
If I was to just focus on reading (apart from using the text to speach ) here on Lingq then use YouTube and Netflix audio with Spanish subtitles more or less constantly to build up my listening skills would this be a good idea?
Minimum 1 hour a day of pure listening and reading from other sources.
I don’t understand why you wouldn’t just listen and read at the same time ? Every LingQ lesson i’ve ever seen has accompanying audio and so you can do both.
If your listening is lagging listening whilst reading will be good for you. Once this catches up you can go it alone with just listening.
Yeah that is what I have been doing but my point is I’m only listening and reading for about 30 minutes day because I have to clear my words from the lessons then of course complete the lessons
It depends on your current level. If you can “kind of” understand them, I’d advise you to watch youtube videos, choosing those that provide a lot of context, such as tutorials, particularly about activities that involve physical movement and, of course, that you enjoy. I don’t think series with subtitles are so effective at improving comprehension unless your level’s pretty high. In general, I do think it is a good idea to “split” your learning after you achieve an intermediate leel, that is, to read some material and listen to something different, provided that is real, interesting and that you can understand it to some level. Such material will provide “comprehensible input”, which is the best way to improve understanding.
Besides, you’ll be training yourself to understand speech without using transcripts or subtitles, which is exactly the skill you’re trying to acquire. I find that I tend to over-rely on the transcripts when they’re available, which just holds me back.
Just watching one 10-minute video everyday should improve your listening comprehension in a relatively short period. Again the prerequisite is that you can understand the gist of it to some level (never mind if many details remain obscure) through a combination of sentences that you can pick up plus the visual context provided by the images.
It depends on your current level. If you can “kind of” understand them, I’d advise you to watch youtube videos, choosing those that provide a lot of context, such as tutorials, particularly about activities that involve physical movement and, of course, that you enjoy. I don’t think series with subtitles are so effective at improving comprehension unless your level’s pretty high. In general, I do think it is a good idea to “split” your learning after you achieve an intermediate leel, that is, to read some material and listen to something different, provided that is real, interesting and that you can understand it to some level. Such material will provide “comprehensible input”, which is the best way to improve understanding.
Besides, you’ll be training yourself to understand speech without using transcripts or subtitles, which is exactly the skill you’re trying to acquire. I find that I tend to over-rely on the transcripts when they’re available, which just holds me back.
Just watching one 10-minute video everyday should improve your listening comprehension in a relatively short period. Again the prerequisite is that you can understand the gist of it to some level (never mind if many details remain obscure) through a combination of sentences that you can pick up plus the visual context provided by the images.
Hey thanks for the feedback I’m just getting frustrated as I’m trying to figure out the perfect way for me to improve my listening comprehension!! I know how to learn more words ( just masses upon masses of reading ) but the whole listening thing is a whole or ball game!
I highly recommend fluentu, or Yabla if you have the money to shell out. Contrary to another poster, I don’t think it’s conductive to learn listening skills from the accompanying audio. It’s not how natural speech flows.
If you can, try to find some podcasts for the language you’re interested in. I’m not sure about Spanish, but for German at least there exist some podcasts called “Slow German” or “Coffee Break German” which are specifically aimed at learners. Podcasts like that seem to be careful about annunciating things carefully so someone who is learning the language can keep up.
Good luck, and tell me if you come up with some other ideas/resources. I’m curious to know too!
Like @ftornay I watch a lot of YouTube videos of things that interest me. Some I can understand perfectly without effort (nirvana), whereas with others they might as well be speaking Klingon. It’s frustrating until I pause to realize that not so long ago I couldn’t understand much of anything spoken.
On Lingq I’ve mostly been reading books that I import the text of without audio. Audio books are usually available for what I read, but I think it would be harder to manage when the audio length doesn’t match the lesson length. Reading a book that I enjoy provides me the motivation to keep reading it, and getting slowed down by anything, like dealing with audio, /might/ be a hindrance. I’d be interested in others’ opinions on their experience with book-length text & audio.