At the moment I am listening to, amongst other things, conversations in Spanish that have one native and one non-native. I find that they’re really easy to follow and for some reason fun to listen to.
I still enjoy listening to Steve’s French conversations on LingQ from time to time. They’re just really easy to follow and fun. Maybe it’s the cross-cultural perspective, or maybe it’s inspiring hearing someone else speaking well. I don’t find it difficult to distinguish who is who, and therefore who to imitate (particularly in terms of pronunciation). Sometimes when I listen to native / native conversations all the time I get lost and it’s hard to stay tuned it.
Has anyone else had a similar experience? Or are others completely opposed to this kind of content? I wouldn’t mind hearing your views.
I don’t have a lot of experience listening to conversations featuring non-native speakers - with the exceptions of some of the japanese podcasts featuring Steve. I haven’t listened to his French conversations, but I’ve listened to his French videos. I can see how it would be easier to understand (in general) as the non-native speaker would (probably) lack some cultural background knowledge as we would, and also the native speaker would adjust their speech to the non-native speaker’s level, which might be closer to our level. But Steve’s level is so high that I’m not sure there’s a ton of difference between listening to a conversation involving him and listening to a conversation involving only native speakers.
I agree though that it’s nice to hear non-native speakers speaking well. I enjoyed the japanese podcasts with Steve in them.