What's a good methodology for improving listening skills?
By 'methodology' I mean something more sophisticated than just 'do it a lot and hope for the best'. Like what profesional teachers would advise you. I already went through the talks on Spanish Proficiency Exercises. In general I can follow the Simplified Examples without problems, but the other ones are almost always too fast without the aid of Spanish subtitles. The problem is that I don't feel as if there's much improvement. ¿Me ayudáis?
4 Answers
Watch movies that:
- you like a lot
- without subtitles
- and only one movie at a time. By this I mean, understand it thoroughly and then move to the next movie.
- if possible, movies that you have seen before in your language.
This should be accompanied by transcribing a novel from the target language to the native language, ideally the same novel as the movie you are watching.
It may not sound all that glamorous, but the only way to develop listening ability is, quite frankly, by listening. Two key factors in this process are repetition and interest. Overcoming initial hurdles requires that we focus on selecting suitable audio material. It is a good idea, especially at first, to be sure to choose material that provides enough visual context to make the audio content at least partially comprehensible. The material must also hold our interest well enough to withstand repeated viewings.
Of course, I am only speaking from personal experience, but my greatest leaps in ability came when I started watching the same program—a long running Mexican telenovela—repeatedly and frequently. Initially, I started watching it in the (perhaps naive) hope of developing a particular regional accent; however, I have found that by repeatedly watching the same episodes (each episode broken into five 10-minute clips), my listening ability has improved tremendously.
Regarding methodology, here are a few suggestions:
?If you are interested in a particular accent, you might try using resources such as Wikipedia to research what shows are available from particular regions.
?Armed with this information, you could then search on video sharing sites such as youtube or tu.tv for the availability of the programs you have found.
?If the clips are on youtube, you have the added advantages of (1) each episode generally being broken up into more manageable clips—generally clips lasting 10 minutes or less—and (2) having the ability to set up playlists that can be put on a play loop for repetitive viewing.
?Depending on both your ability and interest level, you might try slowly adding only one clip at a time so that your first viewing would only entail a single ten-minute clip and at each subsequent viewing, you could introduce an additional clip until you reach a point that the total viewing time requires that you start retiring some of the initial clips.
?If you feel compelled to look up vocabulary that you are unsure of, try to do so by using a Spanish-Spanish dictionary (such as the DRAE or others) rather than a bilingual dictionary. Remember that the goal is comprehension, and inadvertently translating between languages tends to play an inhibitory role towards this end.
?Although it helps to focus on a single repetitive series such as I have mentioned, this does not mean that it is desirable to limit yourself exclusively to a single resource. I would suggest that you liberally supplement your main listening material with other resources such as music, movies, documentaries, interviews, etc.
Of course, it may be that you find telenovelas mind-numbingly dull. If this is the case then it would probably be best to avoid them, but whatever you choose—and I cannot stress this enough—be sure to watch it repeatedly and frequently, and be sure that what you are watching provides you with sufficient nonverbal cues to help shape your understanding of the verbal message being conveyed.
It really all boils down to two key ideas: Keep it interesting, and repeat.
I would give News in Slow Spanish a try. Personally I still listen to it sometimes but for 6 months I used it a lot, and my listening comprehension improved signficantly. I was listening to lots of other things, too, transcribing books on tape, videos from CNN Vivo, but it sounds like this site would be perfect for you. You pay a fee, but in my experience 'valía la pena'.
Please make a search on the forum, there are lots of threads open on this topic, thanks
