As title suggests im asking for best methods of practising and improving my listening. I have the N4 exam upcoming and wanted to improve listening a bit more, so was just wondering what are the best ways to go about this.
I recently found a japanese podcast youtuber called ‘ Learn Japanese with Tanaka San ‘, they are fairly enjoyable, however, when ever i try to just purely listen to them, it seems i cannot focus on it, and when i can, then i miss out on words. When i listen and read, then its all fine and can understand most of her materials, however, im not sure if this is really benefiting my listening practise. Thoughts?
2 comments
There’s a bunch of podcasts geared towards learners, in case Tanaka talks too fast:
* Japanese with Shun
* Japanese with Noriko
* Nihongo con Teppei
If you’re just starting out you’ll probably benefit from listening to the same episode multiple times until you can parse the words. You should find that with each listen-through you’ll get better.
Another technique that people find helps, is shadowing.
If you’re understanding all the words when you read along, then more practice is really the only option.
There is no best way, it just takes time. So take your time to absorb it. Missing words, it being ambiguous and not understanding at all are normal. All you need is more exposure and input. Do passive: background listening where you’re not focused on it and even if you’re comprehension is nothing it helps. Active: where you’re focused solely on listening and if you have a reading aid then make sure you keep focused on the audio part as you read along.
I’m still building my listening comprehension but when I started not long ago I had 0% comprehension. After a few months of 3-5 hours of day of listening input (active and passive mixed). I finally jumped (overnight, literally) from not hearing a word to understanding 15-30% of any random normal or even fast speed conversation (excited high energy speaking between 2 or more people); which is enough to follow along depending on topic. So just keep at it. I still prefer JP subtitles with everything since I learn a lot of random kanji that way.