Hey guys, I believe i’ve mentioned this point in a post before but have never actually made it the main point of a forum post, so it will be interesting to hear what you guys have to say.
Obviously here at Lingq after ofcourse, lingquing words, there seems to be a big focus on listening. listen, listen until you “feel” you understand it! My question is, if I’ve listened to the same audio from a transcript say nearly 15-20 times, what exactly should my clues be that I understand it enough to “feel” like I understand it. Because I will have worked with the same audio and text for song long I’m going to know what the passage is about so well that when listening to it I may only understand it because I already know what it’s about and have done for so long.
Should one really try to focus and hear every word before then quickly running over in ones head what that word means, quickly enough as to be ready for the next word?
This sort of delves into the much brought up topic of what does it mean to “know” a word etc but I’d rather it didn’t. If you can understand the vague explanation of my query then please respond with some insightful knowledge
"Because I will have worked with the same audio and text for song long I’m going to know what the passage is about so well that when listening to it I may only understand it because I already know what it’s about and have done for so long. "
I have asked the same question before. The answer I came up with is that you cannot expect the listening to be fluent by just knowing all the words, the translation and then listening many times. You could listen 100’s of times and it won’t feel the same as natural listening. Natural listening. depending on the material, will come on its own in months, not weeks.
As Steve said, it is the exposure that counts. I will add that I have learned to to conceive of listening as a kind of rapid-fire flash-carding. It allows me to tolerate the floundering feeling… i.e. lack of natural, synthetic understanding.
The point is not only listening, but trying to identify words and structures that you have been exposed to before and get acquainted with the ones that are new to you. Each time you listen and read, you check the words that you don’t know yet (or can’t recall) until at one point you’ll listen and not feel the need to check any words in the dictionary.
