Hi, I have N3 level grammar and vocab, but I feel like my listening comprehension is lagging (damn homophones! How am I expected to process which of the 5 words that sound like what I’m hearing it is so quickly?!).
Does anyone have good resources they can recommend for working on listening comprehension specifically?
3 comments
Hello fellow learner with N3 level vocab and grammar with lagging listening comprehension! I too am curious where to go from here.
Satori Reader has been great for grammar and reading. But I haven’t been able to make effective use of it yet for listening. If I read a lesson first, then I know what to expect in the audio. It becomes an exercise in confirming my prior knowledge and seeing if I can hear all the mora that I’m expecting, and catch the rhythm and pitch accent. If I listen first, it becomes frustrating, and I keep peeking at the text anyway, lol. At a minimum, I’ll skip back a lot, which is great for helping me process the pick out words I missed or get a feel for certain grammar patterns, but not great for learning how to listen on the fly and deal with ambiguity.
I’ve listened to about the first 80 episodes of Nihongo con Teppei for beginners, and I like it, but it’s a little on the easy side now, probably more appropriate for N4 practice. I’ve tried his intermediate series, and I struggle more with it. Which maybe is the whole point, lol. But I’m looking for more options, maybe something with video. Idk.
Anyway, I’m curious to see what the community suggests.
I find that knowing all the vocab makes it easier to comprehend words; since if you do not know the word then it will be a gap anyways. Watch easier material and if you are on youtube or something where you can control the speed – set it to .75 to help comprehension. With Japanese subtitles you can watch it once with and then once without subs and see how much you understand. It will take a lot of listening, but you will start to get the words. Anime is easier because pronunciations are professionally done, a lot of native content can be quite difficult to follow.
For fun: Old Enough – netflix
For real answer: JLPT n3 resources like shin kanzen, soumatome
N3 is a comparatively tiny (but important) level compared to what is ahead. One pass of a specialised listening book/course should put you where you need to be to move on. N2 listening basically feels like N3 concepts and not that fast, so while I do not remember, the N3 is likely similar. That is, the written content is typically deploys more difficult grammar and longer sentences due to the time you have to digest the information, so even with ‘lagging’ listening, you may well be exactly where you want to be.