I was wondering if people found listening and reading together better than just reading or just listening to their target language. What mixture would you suggest? My situation is that I could do reading and listening together for most of my study time and I was wondering about your opinions on this approach.
Hey bakaboy, if you or anyone else on Lingq is interested in how to divide your time, there is a language teacher/researcher named Paul Nation that spent years working on this material. I believe his work was mostly intended for language instructors, primarily English instructors, but you could easily apply his ideas of the 4 strands to your own learning. I think the 4 categories are meaning focused input, meaning focused output, language focused learning, and fluency development. The idea is to try to distribute roughly 25% to each type of learning. If you’re interested in this kind of thing, definitely check it out.
Personally, I don’t have any ideal mixture, but I think reading on Lingq is a very good use of time. I do get exhausted of looking up words though. Even though it’s infinitely less tedious than other ways, I still can’t do it all day long. It takes a lot more energy to read through content slowly and really understand the meaning, but it seems to helps loads with future comprehension
Reading and listening at the same time is fantastic. I think it’s a great way to help associate the script of your target language with the sounds of it. At the very beginning, it may be too difficult to follow a new script though, especially if you’re struggling to distinguish between words in your new language. Overall, I think it’s working your brain a different way than reading on Lingq.
I mostly used to do listening in the form that many learners describe as passive listening. I just listen while exercising, commuting, doing house chores … I also went through a phase of having target language music on all the time, which had the added fun of discovering new music. Currently, I don’t worry as much about passive listening, but honestly I just enjoy listening to my target language now as I do other things. I also enjoy the entertainment programs I watch and the conversations I have with people. During the beginning and long intermediate periods of the learning process, I think that making use of your “dead time” is the best way to do it. Throw in some listening and reading too though. I wish I had done it more at the beginning! There are definitely other listening methods you could do as well.
Overall, do what gets you the most interested in your content. Find things that draw you to the content because it’s interesting not because they’re just in your target language and available. If you’re looking other strategies/exercises, I definitely recommend checking out some of Paul Nation’s works.
Personally, I don’t like it. For me it’s actually distracting. If I read, I want to concentrate on reading and if I listen, I want to concentrate on listening. Doing both at the same time divides the attention.
Maybe, if someone is so fluent in a language that they can read at the same speed as the speaker is speaking, it might work? I’m not sure. I’m not at that level yet.
It’s a bit like watching a movie or TV with subtitles. Sometimes instead of actually watching the movie you end up reading subtitles (instead of following what is going on).
I think however it is helpful to have text and audio available at the same time. Let’s say I listen to something and there are parts I don’t understand. It’s nice to have the text and check up those things. Or let’s say I’m reading something and I wonder “how do you pronounce that?” than it’s nice to have the audio.
Also, you don’t always get text and audio together and I prefer to read a text I’m interested in where there is no audio available to reading a text I find boring just because there is audio available.
I do like to listen and “read” at the same time at least once. I have “read” in quotes because as yoshisbg mentioned it can be a little distracting or difficult. What I’m really trying to do is just listen and associate the sounds to the words correctly and not really trying to comprehend it. I try to do this as the first thing I do in the lesson, but if it’s not convenient to do both, I’ll read first and then try to do the combination sometime later. At this point, I may be able to “read” as well then since I’m already familiar with the story and many of the words I didn’t know beforehand.
I think it would be helpful to do more of this, but I mostly do the activities separately…listening while driving or doing chores. Reading when I can sit down.