My first week studying Italian on LingQ, and I’m enjoying it. I notice from the statistics that I’m reading a lot (this I knew), but, since the first lessons are under 20 seconds each, even after dozens of listens, I’m only up to like 30 minutes of listening (with a target of over 5 hours!). What am I doing wrong? I tend to listen and read each lesson at least a couple of dozen times. Why? Because I try to listen for meaning (much is still a jumble to my ears), but I’m also listening to it like music, just for the sound.
Anyway, any tips, corrections would be appreciated.
Most of my listening is done on my iPod. I would collect a few of these easy lessons and line them up on the iPod. I you do not understand it all that is a good thing. It keeps your brain stimulated. Go back over the reading and review your words now and again, but take advantage of all the “dead” time you can to listen. In a while the earlier lessons will become clearer. What is more, when, months from now you go back to these texts, the sounds of the audio will still ring in your ears. You are laying the foundation for going back to mine this content later on.
You are just doing fine. Keep it up and good luck.
Steve makes a really good point. There is content I have for Chinese that I consider to have studied, even though there are still bits and pieces that elude me. I get at least the gist of it and know that if I keep listening to more and stuff, amassing a greater library of content, in 6 months, perhaps far sooner, these little murky areas in the content I’ve been listening to will have cleared themselves up and I’ll be wondering what the problem was.
I m finding now that I enjoy going back to Russian content that I studied 3 years ago. The phrases are still ringing in my ears when I read some of the texts because I listened so often. Now I am working on my cases and other points of grammar that simply overwhelmed me what I first went through these texts.
I remember starting with Le Pouvoir du Linguiste way back on the very first day LingQ came out in Beta. I also still have various phrases ringing in my mind from that. Man, I’ve come so far since that day.
I listen to the podcasts almost always on my mobile phone with integrated MP3/WMA player and only rarely on my computer.
Listening must be understandable for me; I couldn’t get out much of advantage of incomprehensible listening which is recommended in some learning methods. Has someone another experience?
Thanks for the replies, all. I’ve just “recruited” a cubicle-neighbor at work, who wants to learn Italian as well. He’s signed up, too. I’ve got the lessons on my iPhone now. I do attempt to listen for understanding; however, I do not try to “translate into English” in my head. I try to understand what is meant by the sounds, words, phrases.
I listen to the language like music as well, since Italian rhythms and sounds are different than English ones (d’oh!). I find that I’m beginning to recognize “chunks” out of the torrent–individual words.
Also, reading the blog, the wiki, and the forums, I’m lightening up on myself. I’m going to enjoy this (work doesn’t seem like work when you let go and just enjoy what you’re doing).
I agree that listening to incomprehensible content is not very effective. However, there is a range and anything that is at least 40 % comprehensible is bearable if it is short enough, and if we can read and look up words, and listen again and again. When it reaches 70% comprehensible I move on to the next.Some things will remain unclear for a while and there is not point beating your head against a brick wall, as they say.
