While dwelling on strategies, defining the problem in more specific terms could be helpful.
IMO “My reading abilities and speaking (not conversational) skills surpass my listening abilities” is a rather vague definition of the problem. In getting more specificity, asking the question “Why?” is the thing.
“Why my reading and speaking surpass my listening abilities?”
The possible answers:
“My reading and speaking abilities surpass my listening abilities because the first two are very strong.”
or
“My reading and speaking abilities surpass my listening abilities because my listening abilities are poor.”
By proceeding with asking the question “Why?” we could rather quickly get at a more specific definition of the problem.
“Why my listening abilities are poor?”
“My listening abilities are poor because my ears can’t grasp many words whose meanings I’ve already acquired.”
or
“My listening abilities are poor because there are still too many words I haven’t acquired yet.”
The two last alternative definitions are more specific, hence they are more helpful in seeing what strategy could address the problem effectively.
Depending on what actually the problem is, the strategy of choice is quite different.
I don’t think the only way to improve your listening skills is to listen. Listening is essential, but I think reading and learning more words is more important.
Is the language you are having trouble understanding Russian? I currently have a bit more than 6000 known words in Russian and I still don’t know enough words to understand more than very basic content when I listen to it. When I listen to something more difficult (i.e. anything beyond easy beginner material), it doesn’t matter how many times I listen to it, or what techniques I use, I won’t understand it well because I don’t know the meanings of enough of the words that they are using. This problem won’t be fixed by me doing more listening, but by me doing more reading. Of course it is essential to do a lot of listening at the same time.
I find my mind wonders regardless of what I am doing and I usually hear less than half of what I am trying to listen to. My mind wonders less if I am doing other tasks. The best I found was ironing and I have even started ironing all my clothes just to get an extra hour of good listening time in per week. When I sit and try to concentrate on the audio, I get bored in seconds. Instead, I watch a lot of TV shows and films in German because I don’t get bored as easily.
A few months ago I read – probably on a Lingq forum – a recommendation to regularly listen attentively, eyes closed, relaxed, concentrating on hearing and discerning each word without trying to understand. The theory is that once your brain starts working on the vocabulary, you loose the attention necessary to hear the words. The hoped-for effect would be to find eventually that without trying your mind starts fusing sound and meaning, which is exactly what you’re after.
I tried it once or twice, not enough to be able to comment on its effectiveness. But it seems like it could be a valid approach when combined with other activities to build vocabulary. The person who offered the technique vouches for it, of course.
I do that for a few minutes at night. Just lie in bed, eyes closed, listening… I think it has a lot of merit as a technique.
Although I do it while trying to understand. I dont dwell on any word but I am intently listening trying to hear words/phrases I do know. Even for things I don’t know I try to at least identify grammar like: “well whatever that was, he did it in the past tense”
One of the tough things about trying learning techniques is that you can’t really do a proper comparison to see if they are actually working well. So I can only really go by my own subjective feeling but I find listening from most effective to least effective for me seems to go in this order:
eyes closed, listening (most effective)
walking at a good pace while listening (all my best realizations around computer programming came from doing walking and thinking. so im stealing this time for language learning!)
doing mundane tasks while listening (tasks for which my hands/body can go on autopilot)
background listening (least effective because im mostly focusing attention on other things)
The downside of listening while seated or lying with eyes closed is that it only works (for me) for maybe 15 - 20 minutes. After this time it becomes a lullaby and sleep is inevitable.
I feel your pain, listening as been very hard for me too. As you listen and go through content, it does get better. I think with Russian, we are looking at having around 20k for having not too much trouble understanding most things. One motivating thing i found, is that sometimes I go back to older material and find that I understand it no problem, whereas before it may have been a struggle. I also find that I randomly understand words that I may have gone over months ago. I’m still struggling with the right strategy, but I have, and maybe you too, come a long way from where we began. Keep reading, listen when you are on the train/plane/bus/walking/dishes etc, but I would devote more time to reading and flash cards to words that simple wont stick in a lesson. This is my current tactic.
I think it is a matter of combining listening, reading and LingQing. It just turns out that listening is the activity that is easiest to arrange since it does not require our undivided attention. However, until I am at least a good intermediate I read ALL texts that I listen to. For beginner material I read and listen to the lessons more than once.
How quickly we start to understand depends on many factors including how close the new language is to languages we already know.Russian took a long time, Czech a little less long, then Ukrainian went faster and Polish the fastest of all the Slavic languages, as far as comprehension is concerned. Romanian went fast because of Italian, but despite all the time I have spent on Korean, it remains very difficult for me to understand my two favourite podcasts, even after reading the text. But I know from experience that I just have to continue listening, reading and LingQing, eventually it will all come together for me, before I even realize it.
20,000 known words is currently my target in Russian. After that, I plan to make output activities much more important. I will still do output activities before, but not as a priority. When I learned German, I think I found that at around 10k I was starting to comprehend quite a lot, and this translates probably into something like 20k in Russian.
I find Russian is taking me a lot longer to to understand than German. I don’t know if it is about the alphabet, or the vocabulary that is less close to the English vocabulary, or just the strangeness of the language, but I find learning Russian vocabulary very challenging. In Russian, I go through texts, reading and looking up words and saving LingQs, but I don’t absorb the words in the same way that I did in German. In German, I have marked a bit more than half of the blue words I have seen as known, giving me a known word to LingQ ratio of about 1.1. In Russian, for each word I save as known, I LingQ about four words, giving me a known word to LingQ ratio of about 0.27.
I have found the same thing as you. I am at lesson 112 in First Steps. I “recognise” 1900 words and the last few days I have re-listened to lessons 1-20 and I now understand 95% or more. So my comprehension has grown by using the Multiple Choice FlashCards facilty. I agree with you and Colin below that a target of 20,000 words recognised in Russian should be our minimum requirement to have a good understanding. I expect to get to this mainly by reading and flash cards. Of course, I will listen as I go and I will speak a little when my wife forces me to communicate with her and my mother-in-law! In Russian, I mean!
+ColinJohnstone
I’ve got the same experience as you with Russian. Russian words are very hard to remember in the first learning stages. I think it’s a combination of:
Unfamiliar vocabulary, both in roots and in the “structure” of words, endings, …
plus
Russian words are phonetically complex, with lots of consonant clusters, many syllables, …
The good news is that it gets easier as you become familiar with the language. Now that I’m ending the “Intermediate II” level I find that words stick much faster than before.
I think it’s about the vocabulary. I’ve had the same problems memorizing Russian vocabulary, problems that I don’t have to the same degree now with Serbian because the words are similar. Also the grammar is similar.
Also is a very good exercise to force your speaking abilities. it is a second very important step, to create an active vocabulary. But is a psychological step. It is very difficult. You are luck, your wife is Russian.
Yes, that’s exactly my plan. I’m not far from the 20000-word mark now. I’ll be talking more after I reach it and I’ll tackle more demanding listening content but I’ll also keep on reading every day at Lingq in order to improve my vocabulary!
As you get closer to the 20000 minimum, you realize that, on the one hand, you become much more confident but, on the other, increasing vocabulary is still a priority.
The difficulty with forcing yourself to speak, is that you can’t force yourself to understand. If you can’t understand, it is difficult to have meaningful adult conversations. So I don’t recommend forcing yourself to speak but rather speaking when you have the opportunity or the need, while continuing to work on your comprehension and vocabulary.