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Open Forum
21

@RockinRoo / @nfera

A few more points to consider:

  1. It is usually a good practice to combine “reading while listening” with listening to the same text without reading it (several times).

If you do this over an extended period of time (esp. switching to "ultra"reading while listening on an intermediate level), the transition to completely free, i.e. unassisted listening should be smooth.

In general, the claim that reading while listening (RWL) doesn’t improve your listening skill is too extreme because important spillover effects are:

  • an increased vocabulary (because reading / RWL act as “natural spaced repetition systems”) - and vocabulary (esp. a myriad of collocations that native speakers use) is the “decisive” bottleneck in all second language acquisition processes
  • relating the oral and written dimensions, wich is crucial esp. in languages such as French where there is a huge gap between scripturality and orality (my favorite example in this context is: “Je ne sais pas” = “I don’t know” in the written dimension but “Sch’n’ se pa” or “Sch(e)pa” in speech).
  • the increased speed in the ultra-variant makes listening at a regular speed much (!) easier.
    That said, reading while listening is still a multitasking activity so it can affect the degree of “focused attention” negatively compared to “fully focused listening” alone. However, that shouldn’t be a problem if RWL (in the slow or ultra-variant) is combined with exclusive listening of the same text afterwards.

Besides, adding other activities such als LingQ-to-Anki, self talk, etc. helps as well in this context.

  1. “after 10,000 hours of listening while reading, being able to understand mini stories is an extremely low bar” (@RockinRoo)
    I agree.
    After a few hundred hours (= ca. 300 - 400 h in a year, which means ca. 2.5 - 3 million words read and listened to in the ultra variant and for not too distant L2s), listening to Mini Stories à la LingQ should be child’s play.

After this period of time, language learners should be able to tackle many factual texts, i.e., news and Wikipedia articles, popular non fiction texts, etc., and not too complicated contemporary popular fiction (crime novels, etc.) without having too much trouble.

Of course, it also helps to have domain-specific background knowledge or know some of the texts in advance (see my comments below to Harari’s trilogy or Stephen King’s “It”).

  1. “I’m not sure the reader would be to follow a conversation with someone met on the street.” (@RockinRoo)
    This depends largely (!) on the material you select for the “(ultra-)reading while listening” approach.

If you exclusively choose audiobooks with only one (professional) narrator who has a very clear and slow pronunciation, there is a high probability that you will collapse within a few minutes in a conversation with native speakers. And in talk shows, on podcasts, in the news or in TV series, you will have great difficulty following the conversations of different native speakers as well.

In short, you have to choose the appropriate material for the subskill you want to develop.
If you want to become good at evervday conversations, you have to select everyday conversations (and this means: a fast pace, a plethora of frequent collocations, sloppy pronunciation, many contractions, slang/informal expressions, etc.) for your reading while listening approach.

Netflix used with LingQ or Migaku plus Anki is a good strategy in this context.

An even better strategy are podcasts similar to “ESLPod” where language is not only used in everyday dialogues, but also explained…

  1. “If your listening comprehension isn’t lagging behind your reading skills, then you should be able to watch a YouTube video or Netflix video in a domain that you have been working on, and it be easier for you than reading due to lower vocabulary in the video content.” (@RockinRoo)
    Yes, “word density” is an important difference , but that’s not the only or even decisive factor here. Rather, if you choose the wrong material for the reading while listening approach, you will struggle a lot with everyday dialogues (see point 3)).

To give you a concrete example:
If you read and listen to Grangé’s “Les Rivières Pourpres” (The Crimson Rivers) on LingQ and / or Audible, this doesn’t mean that watching the movie version will be a breeze:

In short:
Choosing the wrong (training) material has nothing to do with your claim that RWL does nothing for your listening comprehension.

The lesson is rather: you develop the skill, you train for!
So, if language learners want to become good at fast-paced everyday dialogues, they should select exactly those!

However, if they want to become good at long (audio)books…

22

“The reason that YouTube and Netflix are suggested is so that you can learn every day speech.”
I completely agree.
However, I don’t see that Netflix and Co beat podcasts (A2-B1, B1 and upwards) similar to ESLPod where you get more background info on the language usage in everyday dialogues .
BTW, Mercedes Leon does the same thing in her Spanish podcast from Barcelona…

So the ideal combo when it comes to everyday speech is at the moment probably

  • such language podcasts
  • fast-paced dialogues from YT, Netflix, etc.

But why on Earth would you start with Netflix as an “absolute beginner”?
There’s a “reason” why there is

  • Michel Thomas or Language Transfer to give you a grasp of important syntactic / grammar structures
  • Pronunciation training à la Idahosa Ness
  • Pimsleur as a speak early and grammar light approach
  • Mini Stories (à la Assimil or LingQ)
  • Skritter for learning Japanese / Chinese writing systems
  • Memrise decks for learning the most frequent expressions
    etc.

Just starting with Netflix, especially with difficult (from an Indo-European speaker point of view!) languages like Japanese or tonal languages like Mandarin, is simply “bad” advice - whether it comes from Refold or not - if you have no clue about the basic syntactic / grammar structures, tones (see Michilini’s posts on the LingQ forum and his blog), etc.

23

Hi RockinRoo,
Thanks for your reply too!

I don’t count reading while listening as listening. That doesn’t mean that the activity of reading while listening should never be done. That said, reading while listening helps improve your reading ability and vocabulary way more than listening, so your listening ability will still lag behind.

Honestly, I pay little attention to the learning activity records that we would measure our progress against some preset frameworks or compare with others. For example, known word count and total words read on linqg can be good indicators of reading comprehension. However, comparing your abilities in different language skills throughout different timeframes will be more significant than matching up with others because language learning is a personal and objective journey.

You made an analogy between reading and listening regarding the more diverse vocabulary involved in a book. Comparing both activities for comprehension in the same context will be more appropriate. Sometimes my listening comprehension works better for some sentences in a Korean lesson. There is no difference between reading while listening and listening while reading the caption using the same source.

I’ll go back to something basic. When you are learning a new language, you should not use your Native Language (NL) on subtitles, but your Target Language (TL). If you use your NL, your brain will ignore the words spoken in your TL and it will slow the learning process down. When you read subtitles in your TL, it also slows down the gains you make in listening comprehension. Instead, what you are strengthening is primarily your reading comprehension.

I agree that watching a series on Netflix with subtitles in TL would be a recommendable step in acquiring the language. It all comes down to goal-setting and feedback verifying your objective has been met. I did watch a Korean series on Netflix with subtitles in my NL just to relax my mind from my daily routine. I would study the text by looking up unknown words first, watching the series with subtitles in TL, and the last pass without subtitles.

One good way to check whether watching the series with subtitles in TL helps more with listening comprehension or vocabulary acquisition is to skip this step and replace it with the last pass without subtitles. We expect to see some difference in listening comprehension for both approaches in the 4th pass.

Anyways, there is nothing wrong with more emphasis on one core skill area to be developed at one time as long as we set up reasonable goals and a way or feedback to check on the effectiveness and efficiency of our method.

24

Hi, llearner!

“For the reading-while-listening technique to be more efficient”
I’m not a “there’s one best approach to language learning” guy (that’s maybe the core problem of the Refold philosophy, but I may be wrong here).

In other words, I always tend to mix approaches depending on the

  • language goals
  • language levels
  • distance of the new L2 to my L1 / the L2s I’ve already mastered
  • the specific subskills to be acquired
    etc.

In short: “Be water, my friend!” (Bruce Lee).

“Therefore, I concentrate on pronunciation practice, sentence mining to absorb the grammar, and extensive reading while listening to easy materials to become more familiar with the language.”
Excellent.
Use what you need at the moment - discard the rest :slight_smile:

25

Owing to my knowledge of Spanish, I watched my first Netflix series in Catalan at a pretty early stage of learning the language. I would not expect to do the same for my Korean because I lack the fundamental ability to parse and absorb enormous new vocabulary and grammar efficiently. I think it’s important to identify what language skills or subskills need to be developed to consume and learn from any resources. I would probably have to go through two more courses and a few more podcasts to watch and learn comfortably with a Netflix series.

26

@RockinRoo

“With regards to your thought experiment, after 10,000 hours of listening while reading, being able to understand mini stories is an extremely low bar.”

It is indeed a low bar. I guess the idea was just to point out that there is some benefit from reading while listening from an aural perspective. However, probably the real answer is: it depends. It depends on several factors, primarily on your attention. If you completely zone out the audio you will achieve less benefits than if you focus on both it and reading. It’s like how you are not going to become fluent by playing the radio in the background or listening as you sleep. On the other hand, if you focus on listening and merely skim the writing, you get the opposite effect - more listening benefits than reading benefits. Generally, though, if you actively pay attention to both, 10,000 hours is more time than you need to reach fluency in both written and aural comprehension.

As @PeterBormann mentioned, if you are selective in your choice of material, you should also be able to understand everyday, colloquial conversation. Traditionally, language learners have been limited to only books and audiobooks, but these days it’s very easy to just get podcast transcripts, interview transcripts, or just study conversations from other sources. This is where you will you pick up the vocabulary, turns of phrase, and colloquial pronunciation for meeting someone on the street.

I think it’s important to mention that reading while listening is not the only thing you do. I mentioned in a comment below about how I differentiate between the three styles/variants of reading while listening. In the most common variant for me, studying a lesson consists of the following:

  1. intensive reading
  2. reading while listening
  3. reading while listening
  4. listening
  5. listening
  6. listening
  7. listening
  8. listening (sometimes more, sometimes less)
    As you can see, the listening actually takes up a sizable portion (sometimes the majority) of the time, spread out over weeks or months. I prefer to include those two repetitions as reading while listening instead of solely reading for several reasons:
  9. as we agreed, there is some additional aural benefit to it over solely reading
  10. it better helps me understand the pronounciation (that is, concretise the connection between the written and oral language)
  11. it keeps me focused, as re-reading the same material can be a bit boring, but with the audio playing you cannot afford to be distracted
  12. it really forces into my memory the story/ideas/new words of the lesson, so that I’m prepared to be able to listen to audio without any further consultations of the dictionary
    All these things added together make the two additions of reading while listening over solely reading worthwhile to add into the workflow. That’s my experience anyways. If I only do one addition of reading while listening, I find, as per point (4), I don’t remember the story/ideas/new words enough, so when I relisten to the audio many times over, there are sections I continuously miss, because I don’t have the opportunity to consult a dictionary again. That’s my experience anyways.

@PeterBormann What is the workflow you are describing? Is it similar to above?

27

@miriml5 “they are always telling you to watch YouTube and Netflix. I find both fairly boring.”

As you mentioned, I think you just need to find interesting material. These days, there’s sometimes no distinction between a podcast and a YouTube video. A lot of the YouTube videos I’ve imported, I’ve never actually watched the video, only read the transcript and listened to the audio many times over. This makes them effectively podcasts.

@RockinRoo “there are tens of thousands of A1/A2 people out there watching Netflix and YouTube and it can be done.”

It can be done, sure. I wouldn’t call it efficient though. You are better off using graded readers, which have much higher repetitions of common words than encountering so many infrequent ones.

@RockinRoo “The reason that YouTube and Netflix are suggested is so that you can learn every day speech. Documentaries, audiobooks, and podcasts for beginners are intentionally spoken with clarity to help the listener obtain information. However, many YouTube videos and Netflix series show case accents that are thicker, more difficult to understand. They show us speech as it is most closely used on the streets.”

Definitely. It’s more efficient to work through educational material at the beginner stage though. You want to, as @xxdb calls it, ‘ladder up’ in difficulty. But after a while, you definitely want to ease away from didactical material into native material. Personally, I’ve been using specks of native material since about Beginner 2 and slowly increasing it. At Intermediate 1, it’s maybe at least half to three quarters native material these days. @PeterBormann provides a good template for this increase of difficulty of material, changing things around a little bit to suit your preferences.

I don’t think @Jenny2020 has much to worry about though. If you look at her statistics, she’s been very busy since she posted here a week and a half ago.

28

Hi, Rockin,

Thank you very much for your advice. I would say 30%-40% of my listening time contributes to the category of listening while reading, other 60% contributes to listening while doing household. You are right listening while reading should not be counted in the listening hours, or at least should be discounted calculated. I have never thought of that, thanks for pointing it out.

Now, I am at the level to be able to listen to and understand Steve’s French videos and podcasts by Inner French by only listening. I guess I am at level B1 for the listening part. I will continue to find good and interesting materials to listen to and try to listen to them while doing other manual work at least 2-3 times per audio.

Plus, Netflix videos are the way to advanced for me to understand, I guess for now I will stick to LingQ as there are plenty of French materials for me to learn till I reach C1, then I will turn to Netflix to enjoy those fancy shows!

29

Hi Jenny,

@RockinRoo definitely has a point that you don’t have to wait until you reach an advanced listening (+ reading) comprehension level before you can enjoy Netflix.

Once LingQ has fixed the Netflix bug, you can import the Netflix transcripts into LingQ, apply the reading-while-listening approach (as always) and then just enjoy the Netflix show (you can even skip the video and just focus on the audio part - while doing other things).

If you use Language Reactor or Tamper Monkey. you don’t even have to wait for LingQ’s bug fixing…

However, it’s not a must. It’s a matter of personal preference.
That is: In the long run, it shouldn’t matter if language learners first use audiobooks / news, etc. and then switch to fast-paced everyday dialogues on Netflix, YT, etc. - or vice versa.

30

@nfera
"[…] studying a lesson consists of the following:

  1. intensive reading
  2. reading while listening
  3. reading while listening
  4. listening
  5. listening
  6. listening
  7. listening
  8. listening (sometimes more, sometimes less)
    […] What is the workflow you are describing? Is it similar
    to above?"

Yes, it is.

  • At a language level A1, A1-A2, A2 or (depending on the distance of the L2) even B1, I would choose a similar study routine using the “reading-while-listening approach” (however, I wouldn’t necessarily start with this approach, but use other methods such as Michel Thomas / Language transfer, explicit pronunciation training, Pimsleur, Memrise decks, phrase books, etc. first to lay the foundation).
    For example like this:
  1. Intensive reading (+ LingQing)
  2. Reading while listening (audio speed: 0.9x - 1.0x)
  3. Listening several times on LingQ and / or my MP3 Player - playing around
    with different audio speeds (between 0.9x and 1.5x) and while doing other things (running, ironing the clothes, doing household chores, etc.)
  4. LingQ-to-Anki using Anki drills
  5. Maybe even self talks / written summaries
  • From a B1 / B1-B2 level upwards, I’d switch to
  1. Ultrareading while listening (audio speed 1.25 - 1.75x) using (known) non-fiction texts first and later popular contemporary fiction
  2. re-listening once or not all
  3. LingQ-to-Anki
  4. Self talk / written summaries / chats
  5. Italki and Co

And if we add Netflix, YT vids, talk shows, etc. to the mix, I would do this before or after “ultrareading-while-listening” (to longer texts):

  1. Intensive reading + LingQing / creating Anki cards first
  2. Reading while listening or just listening (a few times)
  3. Anki drills
31

@PeterBormann, llearner, nfera,

Thank you all for your most recent thoughts on the subject. I agree with most of what you’ve said.

I also want to restate that I don’t think listening while reading does nothing for your listening. I never stated that. My only assertion has been that RWL favors reading comprehension over listening comprehension.

I think we probably agree on more than we disagree.

I still haven’t tried the ultra-listening-while-reading technique, and as the saying goes, “Don’t knock it until you try it,” so I may give it a go sometime.

@Jenny2020

Best wishes on your language journey! As long as you find an approach that works for you, that’s all that matters. Sorry my comment caused a commotion on your thread.

And to @everyone on this thread: May you have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

32

@PeterBormann

"From a B1 / B1-B2 level upwards, I’d switch to

  1. Ultrareading while listening (audio speed 1.25 - 1.75x) using (known) non-fiction texts first and later popular contemporary fiction
  2. re-listening once or not all
  3. LingQ-to-Anki
  4. Self talk / written summaries / chats
  5. Italki and Co"

If you aren’t doing any intensive reading (+ lingQing) first, are you doing this with a lower % of (New Words + lingQs)? Or is this not necessary, because you know the texts? I know that as you progress the percent of New Words, which go straight to known or ignore increases. At a beginner level, it was a few percent of proper nouns, at an Intermediate 1 level for me it’s maybe around 25-50%, depending on the text. If so, in other words, your technique/workflow has changed from what I referred to below as ‘intensive reading while listening’ to ‘extensive reading while listening to easy material’. Is this right?

33

Hi, RockinRoo!

“Sorry my comment caused a commotion on your thread.”
I’m not Jenny, but I just want to say that you don’t have to worry.

We had a great conversation on this thread - especially because of your contribution!

On the LingQ forum(s), we value diverse (and even controversial) opinions because they encourage critical thinking and creativity while undermining complacency. And we’ve had many such discussions on LingQ in the past…

Or to put it another way: we’re not like the communist party in Beijing where every public opinion has to be sanctioned that is not on the party line.
On the contrary, “there is strength in pluralism” .

BTW, we already had a lengthy discussion with @xxdb about the merits of a “listening first” approach based on Netflix, YT, and specific podcasts with a lot of everyday dialogues in spring 2022. And this is the reason why I deleted my LingQ language profiles in English, Spanish and Portuguese a few months ago and have been experimenting with such an approach since then :slight_smile:

“I think we probably agree on more than we disagree.”
There’s no doubt about it!

“And to @everyone on this thread: May you have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!”
Yes, happy Christmas holidays to all and see you again in 2023!

~Peter

34

Hi, nfera!

“Or is this not necessary, because you know the texts?”
Yes, I’d say that’s the main point.

My personal selection criteria for such texts at least at a B1 / B1-B2 level are:

  • Non-fiction
  • Known texts such as Harari’s trilogy that I like to re-read / and re-listen to in the L2s
  • Texts that are written for a general audience and not for specialists
  • Texts from domains where I’ve sufficient background knowledge
  • Texts using a contemporary vocabulary
  • Texts about subjects that I’m interested in and that also offer some new insights
  • idealiter: texts for which audio books exist, narrated by human voice artists
    And all these criteria together allow for the faster pace of ultra-reading while listening, especially for - at least in my case - “low-hanging fruit”, i.e. other Romance or Germanic languages.

For more distant L2s like Russian, Arabic, or Asian languages, I’d probably need an “intensive reading first” study routine at a B1 / B1-2 stage as well.
But I’ll test this with Japanese to see if that’s really the case…