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Benvenuti, Bienvenue, Croeso and Welcome.
Hi, I’m Juliet. Join me on my language learning journey and discover my thoughts on different aspects of language learning with the A Language Learning Tale Podcast. Today, the subject is …
Multi-tasking is Better
Or
Listening vs Listening and Doing
Last time, I did a mammoth podcast on reading, but I didn’t expand on my thoughts on audiobooks, or listening to audio, in general. That would have been a tad too much of me speaking. So, today, I want to discuss how to listen to books, or any other content. What is the best way?
Let’s start with listening and reading at the same time.
The simplest version of this is watching a film, TV programme or a YouTube video with subtitles, or closed captions, in the language. This, obviously, helps you to understand what you’re watching and, once you get used to it, doesn’t detract too much from the visuals. Somehow, you manage to read and see the images at the same time. Brains are wonderful things. This is definitely a good way to go if you’re struggling to understand this kind of content. But, unless you’re really concentrating on the vocabulary, you won’t learn much just from dialogue in a drama production.
And just a side note on that. When you watch a drama production, of whatever kind, or read a book for that matter, remember that the dialogue isn’t real-life dialogue. It’s a hybrid of real speech. One where all the hesitations are taken out. One where the characters say the perfect things at the perfect time, rather than scrabbling around, like most of us do in real life. So, this kind of dialogue has a limited relation to actually understanding a native speaker in real life. I’m not saying it’s useless. I’m just saying that none of us are that perfect.
What about reading a book whilst listening to an audiobook? Or using text-to-speech whilst reading? This may work for you. It doesn’t work for me. You see, my reading speed never matches the speed of the audio. I either want to race ahead, which is more likely with an audiobook, because they’re naturally narrated more slowly, so people can understand them, or slow it down, which is what might happen with text-to-speech. But the settings are never quite right for my reading speed. This, for me, makes it distracting, rather than helpful and I just give up.
Also, some narrators have voices that are pleasing to your ear and some have voices that really grate. This will happen no matter the language. Always, if you can, listen to a sample of the narrator’s voice before you spend your well-earned cash on an audiobook.
Now, if you’re just listening to short paragraphs at a time, perhaps these things won’t be so much of a problem, but they’re definitely something to bear in mind.
Okay, so what about just listening? Have you ever tried this? This is my preferred way of listening to a foreign language, but I don’t just mean audiobooks, I mean listening to any content. No other distractions.
Well, that’s not really accurate. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever sat down to just listen to something and found your mind keeps wandering? It always happens to me. I start looking around the room, or twiddling my thumbs, or just thinking about something else. Just listening isn’t that easy.
So, what’s the solution to this? Do something else whilst you’re listening. It has to be something that would usually be termed mindless, so that it doesn’t distract your brain. So, for example, tidying the house, doing the washing up, gardening. I listened to a whole long English-language audiobook a couple of weeks ago, whilst out in the garden doing weeding and the like, and my attention was actually on the book the whole time. There wasn’t one instance where I thought, I missed something there. This really does work and, I believe, is the best way to listen. Listen on your commute. Listen whilst you’re eating. Listen when you’re walking the dog. There are a multitude of opportunities for multi-tasking your listening.
And when you think about it, reading subtitles is listening and doing, as is listening and reading, so it all ties in.
Right, that’s all the possible hows, but what about whys? Why listen?
First, of course, just to get used to hearing the language. You need to hear natives speaking in order to be able to correctly imitate the sounds of the words.
Second, to help with comprehension. The more you listen, the easier it will become to understand native speakers. But, the level of comprehension will depend on what you’re actually listening to and you should probably listen to quite a variety of things in your language journey. Listening to the radio is very different to listening to an audiobook. Listening to a podcast is different to listening to a language-learning video lesson. You probably need to do all of these at some point to get the widest variety of listening experiences and this isn’t, by any means, an exhaustive list. Songs, for example, that’s a whole other level of difficulty, which I’m sure I’ll talk about at some point.
That’s all for today’s episode. Don’t forget to join me again next time, for more language learning tips, tricks and tales and in the meantime, check out the A Language Learning Tale YouTube channel for additional, non-podcast content.
Ciao, salut, hwyl and bye for now.