Hello everyone!
After two years of studying, I have come to the conclusion that I have no listening comprehension. I can read the news or manga (albeit with a dictionary on my side) and understand most of it, but when it comes to listening I lose all of my knowledge of the language.
So, my question is, how should I go about using those types of media mentioned in the title? Should I stop on every new word in order to put it in a deck or should I let the video play out even if I don’t understand some of it? Should I even use subtitles at all?
Any tips would be greatly appreciated!
3 comments
From my personal experience to improve listening via subs works, but less effective as learning without it. Maybe even in 2-4 times (but these numbers are rather random). The point is that when you use subs, not always you are going to shadow it 1-to-1, sometimes you will simply read without even paying much attention to pronunciation.
Another point is that I would advice to change setting from time to time. If you simply focus on one area, then even if you use it for a long time like 2-3 years,you will still have problems with listening to something different. Pronunciation in songs, casual conversation and anime will be different. From distorted tone/time in songs to background noises and accents in real life to perfect and clear speech in production. If you want to learn it all, you need to use all of it starting from simpler and gradually moving to harder.
Firstly, you need something you actually enjoy watching even when you don’t understand much. Secondly, you need an anime where most of the characters speak slowly enough for you to be able to make out the individual words. Thirdly, you want to avoid anime with too much technical language to begin with (this means no science fiction, business, politics or military stuff). Something like Azumanga Daioh or Tanoshii Muumin Ikka is a good start.
Regarding subtitles, the only time you’ll benefit from watching with Japanese subtitles is when your reading speed has reached the point where you can actually read the subs before they go away. Once your reading speed reaches this point it becomes easy to transition to watching shows with more technical jargon (the aforementioned science/politics/etc stuff), and in those cases I actually really recommend watching with Japanese subs even if you feel like you can do without, because the increase in understanding is massive.
Only pause and look things up when not understanding a line distracts you and causes you to lose focus because your brain is stuck on thinking “what did he just say?” or “did he just say what I think he said or some other word?” instead of concentrating on the show and listening to what is being said now. Otherwise you’ll spend more time looking things up than actually listening and training your listening ability.
Don’t watch with English subs unless you just want to relax and enjoy the show instead of learn. The subs are localized and often completely inaccurate, and you won’t necessarily be able to tell when the subs are wrong due to the fact that your Japanese skills may not be up to the task. It’s a similar situation to using DeepL or Google Translate to check lines; unless your understanding of the language is already good you won’t know if the translation is BS or not and it may very well cause more harm than good.
I had much the same trouble as you before. I improved using JP subs as my reading was better than listening, and the subs helped me to match meaning to what I was hearing. Sometimes now I will watch things without subs.
As a lot of the video I watch is for enjoyment, I make it a point not to mine or do many lookups, unless a specific word keeps cropping up and it bugs me. This may not be the most effective method, but I felt from the beginning that I didn’t want this to feel like work. (I study/do intensive reading from other sources.)