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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 I’m talking about…
TIPS FOR LISTENING TO AUDIOBOOKS IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
I recently started dabbling in listening to audiobooks in Italian, on Spotify, so I thought I’d just list a few tips here if you’re thinking of trying this yourself, because this type of listening can be quite a lot more difficult than your regular listening to content. I’ll explain why in a minute.
So, the first tip, which isn’t something I have done, but I accept that it could be a way to make things easier, is to have a copy of the physicial, or eBook, so that you can read along as you listen. I don’t think there’s any need to explain why this would be helpful, it’s like having subtitles on when you watch filmed content, but I do think there should come a point when you don’t do this with audiobooks and just try to understand them without the text, because that is a skill in itself.
The second tip, which is somewhat related, would be to listen to an audiobook you’ve either read in your own language, or already read in your target language. Again, this isn’t something I’ve done, but it does make perfect sense. If you’re familiar with the story, your listening experience will be much easier. So, if you enjoy re-reading stories, you might want to try this. As a general rule, I don’t enjoy re-reading stories, so I’m unlikely to do this.
Right, let’s go back a step and get into things I actually do.
The first thing I think you should always do is listen to the audiobook sample. Most retailers, libraries and other audiobook services give you the opportunity to listen to a short sample of the book before purchasing or downloading. Why should you bother? Well, even if it’s a book you already know, or believe you will understand, you may not get along with the narrator’s voice. What is good narration is very subjective. You may have problems with the enunciation, the way different characters are voiced, or you may just find the accent grating. None of these things will make for a good listening experience. If you don’t like the narrator’s voice, you probably shouldn’t get that audiobook.
Use headphones to listen to your audiobook. This will stop outside distractions affecting your comprehension. It will ensure that you can hear the narration clearly. This will make your life much easier, especially when first starting to listen to audiobooks. You can still do other mindless tasks whilst listening, which I’ve suggested before, but having the sound directly into your ears will really boost your understanding.
When you start listening, don’t expect to understand straightaway. So, audiobooks are generally spoken more slowly than natural spoken language. This is so that the narration is clear to those listening, and you can always speed it up. But even slow narration is probably going to sound incredibly fast in a foreign language. So, instead of speeding things up, use the controls to slow things down. This shouldn’t distort the voice, if you’re using a retailer, streaming service or library’s app. Once you get used to the voice, you should be able to gradually speed things up to a more normal level, even if not up to true 1x speed. Somewhere around 0.7x speed works for me when I start listening.
Another benefit of slowing things down is to get used to the language that the author uses and their writing voice. I’ve said this about simply reading a book before, but you do need to get used to the author’s style over those first few chapters before being able to really get into a book. Their use of vocabulary and the way they form sentences will not be the same as another author. This really is a thing. I’m an author. I should know. Some books may only take one chapter for this, others several, but once you get used to things, you can, once again, speed the audio up.
Next, accept that you won’t understand everything even once you’re used to the narrator and the author’s voice. This is even more important with an audiobook than it is with a physical or ebook, especially if you don’t have the text to read along with. If you don’t understand something, there’s usually a jump back of 5 or 10 seconds you can use, if you think it’s important. But, if you can bear it, try letting things just pass without understanding them. If you get to the end of a chapter and feel you have no idea what happened, then go back and listen to the whole chapter again, with a dictionary on hand in case you need to look something up. Of course, looking things up will be more difficult for an audiobook, because you have to determine how the word is spelled, which may, or may not, be obvious. That’s a skill in itself. And I have done it for one book I talked about on my YouTube channel. Some words took several listens before I got them.
So, why is listening to an audiobook more difficult than general listening? Well, at least, I think it is. It’s because it isn’t real life. In a story, you often cannot predict what might come next, in the same way as listening to an interview or a newscast, which will also have pauses and thinking time. They also tend to follow patterns. Books don’t necessarily do this and can be really full on as a listening experience. The first time you listen to an audiobook, you might be completely overwhelmed and give it up as a bad job. But as with all aspects of language learning, eventually things will slot into place and listening to a story will become a lot easier. Of course, if you listen to non-fiction, it could be a lot easier straightaway, especially if the book covers a topic that you are very familiar with. So, if you enjoy non-fiction, maybe try that first.
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.