In praise of listening.

By far my major language learning activity is listening.I listen while driving, skiing, walking, shopping, gardening, running, gardening etc.  Reading is  second, and word and phrase review is third. Then comes speaking. I hardly ever write, and only occasionally watch movies. I think listening, that is audio, should be used for a variety of educational purposes.

In response to some of the comments on my previous post, I have never understood the interest in videos for language learning. Videos ties you up. You have to watch them. You cannot multitask with them.
 Every day I go to Echo Moskvi to download Russian audio and text. There are videos there. I have watched two or three videos in 6 months. Videos are not convenient, not transportable, they are less "word intense", and I just do not find them effective for language learning.

Even movies, which can be fun to watch, and stimulating and a reward for the work I have put into the language,  are nowhere near as intense a learning medium as listening, especially when combined with reading.

Victor agrees with me in his comment, but many people seem to want videos. What am I missing?

Comments

[Pedro]

Hi Steve,

I like videos because sometimes I need a visual stimulus (related to the story) to keep the brain focused on the audio.

Another option that I have, is to read the transcript while listening.

With movies I have another benefit: it is easier to understand what's happening. Even if I can't understand some senteces.

But you are right we can't multitask with them. If the person can only listen while doing another thing it wouldn't help him. Maybe it's only usefull for those who can "sit down" and watch them.

For me the best part of my language learning is to listen. But even then I can't concentrate on it for a long time. Maybe it's my personal problem.

I'm curious to see other opinions.

Bye.

[TSS_Killer]

Hi Steve,

Videos can be indeed useful sometimes. I find that I can increase my vocabulary when I see a certain action take place. This is especially true in those Japanese evening variety shows, where it combines reading kanji/kana, listening to the performers, and watching the action at the same time. That combines all aspects of learning into one simple package. I like attacking the target language in as many ways that I possibly can, it's more efficient for me as a learner (although some people will disagree).

[Edwin]

Depending on the materials, sometimes I find video clips stick better in my memory. But then after watching the same clip many times, I would extract the audio and upload it to LingQ or my MP3-enabled phone. Then when I listen, I still have the visuals in my mind.

I agree with Steve that portability is a problem with videos.

[Cesar]

I use video as part of my language learning because it gives me an idea of what is going on with the audio portion and leads to guessing the meaning, which I believe is a key learning factor. As for being "word intense" or not, quality may have more value than quantity in some instances. As for convenience, many phones and mp3 players have the capability of playing videos. I use bookbox.com for short (approx. 5 minute) audio/visual stories with the target language text as a subtitle. Maybe the key is to keep the video short and have accompanying target language text. And, well, whatever keeps the synapses in the brain fire and connect can only lead to improvement.

[Cooper]

Steve,

You're certainly right about the mobility advantage of audio. I often listen to podcasts while I'm doing something else, as you describe. However, because I am doing something else I find I can easily become distracted- such as when I need to run to the other side of the road to avoid a car, or something like that. Also, I tend only to listen to things that I would also listen to in English, which is pretty much limited to news programs. I don't enjoy talking books.

If I watch a television news show, I find I'm concentrating a lot more, reading the subtitles and so making more connections between text, sound and image. It's certainly not possible to sit around watching a tv show all day long, but I find it a very intensive activity.

As for films, along with literature, it is a major reason for me wanting to learn a language in the first place, so I find that I spend a lot of time with them. I also think they can be helpful where news programs are not, in that the actors often don't speak as clearly or evenly as a newsreader- closer to how people hold conversations- and may have very memorable lines of dialogue which stick in the memory.

[Emilio]

I guess it depends on the language.

For Japanese, flashcards are essential to learn the writing system. It's good to start as soon as possible so you lessen the risk of becoming an illiterate.
Then you compliment it with massive listening.
I feel it is much easier to remember vocabulary if you are phonetically and analytically used to the morphologic elements of the language.

My first language is Portuguese and I'm starting to learn French. I really don't plan to use flashcards at all. I feel that, specially in the beginning, listening is the best.

[Advertising Degree]

I do find listening to audio are more convenient and quiet a time saver when compared to videos,and less tiring too.Watching a video may involve a lot of concentration in general!
-
Advertising Degree

[Victor]

Steve, I just spoiled by good videos. Try for example http://multiki.arjlover.net/multiki/bobik.v.gostjah.u.barbosa.avi. There are tons and tons good things on this site (in Russian). Read rules for foreign users on homepage: http://multiki.arjlover.net/, download and enjoy.

[Ana]

For me, listening is the easier and most common activity too. Even in periods in which I can't do other activities, like studying words or writing or speaking, I keep listening almost every day, while commuting or cooking.
Movies are a challenge I haven't overcome yet. I can follow podcast of several types, but can't understand most of what's said in movies. I can understand the overall story thanks to images, but those longer and deeper dialogs are a constant sort of frustration for me.
I agree that studying movies is much less convenient, but I guess that there is some kind of language there that need to be faced some day.

[Brusk Kurd]

Hello Steve!

I thank you for your nice blog. I have ordered your book the linguist but I have not recieved it yet :) I am Kurd from Syria and living in Norway, I can already speak 5 languages and these languages are my mother tongue Kurdish(kurmanci), Arabic, Norwegian, German and English. I am studing now Spanish and Turkish and I am tryieng to get benefit from your experience in Languages...I am trying too to focus on listning but the problem is that listning without understanding is borring.. I want also to know how could you increase your vocabulary in alle languages you can?

[Steve Kaufmann]

Brusk,

I agree that it is difficult to listen if you cannot understand. That is why I developed the learning method you will find at LingQ.com. Please go and have a look. You can register and use the site free of charge. You can study Spanish there, as well as nine other languages. We do not yet have Turkish or Kurdish but hope to in the future. Then you can help me or others learn Kurdish.

[Valina eckley]

Personally I am just happy with audio for studying. Too much is going on with videos. now I have some Japanese movies which I LOVE, and i found that I couldn't study them while watching them. I would focus too much on watching the movie.

So what I did was record the audio into my computer, cut it up into bite-sized pieces and put it into lingQ. I was able to pick up so much more from separating the audio from the video. Now I enjoy the movies even more

[Steve Kaufmann]

Val,

The world would be a boring place if everybody liked the same things. I agree with you, however, that audio, especially when combined with reading and vocabulary review, is more efficient in terms of time expended, than video.

Ana,

I have said this before. Movies are difficult. I lived in Japan for nine years. I conducted business and could meet socially with Japanese people and had no trouble communicating. I found movies and TV soap operas a real challenge. I do not think movie dialogues are natural, in fact I find them artificial even in English. We often are not so familiar with the context if we are watching a movie in a foreign language, and there is simply not that much dialogue. Give me words, texts to read, and a good narrator any time.

I remember my disappointment after enjoying my Romance of the Three Kingdoms by the famous Chinese storyteller Yuan Kuo Cheng, and then watching the movie. The movie was full of sword fighting and noise.

I do enjoy movies, however. I have enjoyed a number of especially Soviet era movies in Russian. But I spend most of my study time listening.

[Steve Kaufmann]

Victor,
I am not really set up to download movies from the web. When I went to your site and tried to download the movie you recommend I was asked to choose an application for this AVI file. What am I supposed to do?

Steve

[Marc H.]

Steve, interesting comments. I tend to be middle of the road as far as the whole video vs. audio thing. I do feel that audio listening requires more concentration and ultimately is more effective.

I agree with Pedro's remark that some people need a visual stimulus. Without trying to sound like I'm flattering you, I think you're a little bit unique and disciplined in not needing that. Personally I don't think you're missing anything.

I do like some video (usually TV, haven't really attempted many movies), although it's not my primary listening source. I live in Korea and watching the local programs reinforces the words and expressions that I've already learned. Also, when I watch Korean TV I imagine myself listening in on a conversation as if I was at a restaurant with friends or on the subway. So the people on the screen become like my acquaintances or the folks sitting next to me, if that makes sense.

Interestingly, many Korean television programs (especially the news and reality shows) include Korean subtitles. A friend told me that this was to accommodate hearing-impaired listeners. Humorously, another Korean friend suggested that Koreans have short attention spans. No comment on that, but I do know from living here for two and a half years that Koreans are extremely responsible to visual stimuli; much more than Westerners I think. The reality shows in particular feature bright Korean captions literally every 10 to 20 seconds. (I've noticed the same thing from video clips of Chinese programs on the Internet, so perhaps this is a distinctly Asian phenomenon.) No doubt for some this would be annoying, but for a Korean language learner like me, they're quite convenient. I sometimes watch TV with an electronic dictionary in hand and I learn new words as they pop up on the screen.

I've met at least a couple of Koreans who speak English quite well and told me that they learned it primarily by watching Western TV programs. The same goes for some foreigners here who say they improved their Korean by watching TV. So while I don't depend entirely on video, I don't completely write it off either.

A thought on multitasking: Does exercising in front of the TV count?

[Tamara]

Здравствуйте, Стив! Спасибо огромное за все, что Вы делаете для изучающих английский язык. Жду Ваших материалов с нетерпением, это просто сокровище для нас здесь.
Очень нужны тексты к Вашим статьям, а их последнее время почему-то нет. Знаете, приходится делать транскрипции самим. Мне кажется, что практика MP3 + текст идеальна. Для меня это удобнее, чем видео. Что до фильмов - по-моему, фильм с субтитрами на изучаемом языке- идеальное пособие для овладения живым языком, если правильно пользоваться и творчески подходить к этому. Спасибо!

[Ilya L.]

Hi Steve. You wrote “ I have never understood the interest in videos for language learning”. May I ask you to make a video on this topic, please? I am always so glad to watch them and I always smile back at your good-humored face looking at me.

At least you seem to be accepting the interest of other people in the videos. Good for the one who is “looking for a way to create a language learning service that people will be willing to pay for” ( my citing from your older post might not be exact).

The interest in videos and movies is obviously deeper than that in the language learning. Perhaps people like entertainment. Speaking faces appear to be more entertaining, emotional ( I LOVE - as Val has typed in capital letters) and “real” form of the virtual reality, as compared to the spoken word alone. Perhaps because of that, spoken videos could create additional links in the brain.( I feel the same as Edvin ).

I praise listening together with you, Steve, and agree that listening is easier to multitask, and that the audio, at the current stage of technology, is more mobile. However, in your other arguments you seem to me making staements which are too general.

You wrote: “Even movies, which can be fun to watch, … are nowhere near as intense a learning medium as listening…” . It is a generalization. I am now testing my player against the commercial DVD-Video “Before Sunset”. It is approx. 80 min movie, 77 of which are filled with very lovely and emotional dialogs (excluding a song) between a woman and a man. More than 2000 phrases. The number of words exceeds that 6000-word limit that can be imported into LingQ at once.

And there are lots of similar movies. We should not blame the genre as such, which is not created for language learning, but better appreciate its potential.

I do NOT agree with you mentioning (in response to Ana) that the movie dialogs are not natural. It could be true for some particular Japanese movies, but it is a generalization. Natural as compared to what? I find that the speech of native English speaking Joe the Plumber, or may he was Bill the Lawyer, that I heard yesterday in the local hospital, sounded much more like the movie rather than audio narration.

Digressing back to you previous post. Can your videocast be less “word intense” that the audio extracted from it? About my comment to that post. I meant to say (but I did not) also this. Although it is indeed easy to extract the audio from a YouTube video, the user should be already given the links to BOTH. (Woud be intersting if you could separately count the user clicks on the two. I think I know which clicks would outnumber).

“Fun to watch” – is the wording about the movies. Enjoyment is probably reserved for the lingQing.

Together with the audio, speeking videos and the movies belong to that glorious “ language input” category. They altogether belong to the listening category that you praise. They do not belong to the language language instructions that you dislike. Enjoyment in language learning is great! Whatever keeps you with the language is great! Whose ideas are these?

“Что до фильмов - по-моему, фильм с субтитрами на изучаемом языке- идеальное пособие для овладения живым языком, если правильно пользоваться и творчески подходить к этому.
Спасибо!”

[Ilya L.]

May I also ask Edwin or anybody else who uploads audio into LingQ. If the uploading is not accompanied with the importing of the transcript – then what’s for? The LingQ player is neither “mobile” nor easy to seek/navigate. What I am missing? Thank you.

[Brusk Kurd]

Hello again Steve!

I am happy to hear that may be you learn "Kurdish" :) I am ready to help you or others in learning Kurdish if you want. I have recieved your wonderfull book the linguist today,it contained very usefull informations, but I did not find any information about your experience with Spanish!! In any way the way you wrote the book is very clear and informative. At the end of my comment let me teach you some sentences in Kurdish

Rojbaş ( it sounds Rojbash): Good day
Şevbaş (it sounds Shevbash): Good night
Spas: thank you

Tu çawayî? ( it sounds tu chawayi): How are you?
Ez baş im zor spas( Ez bash im zor spas): I am fine thank you very much

Ez kurd im û tu kenedî yî: I am Kurd and YOu are Canadian

Digel slav û rêz/ with regards

Brusk

[Steve Kaufmann]

Brusk,

Having learned ten languages I am confident in saying that they are basically all learned the same way. Come to LingQ.com and learn Spanish.

[Brusk Kurd]

Hi Steve!

I have registered in LingQ.com. It was wonderfull,I could make my own vocabulary list , listen and downloading to my iphone...Thank you very much Steve for "LingQ.com" and your nice book

[Baligh]

Hi steve,

I think you are right that listening is the most important aspect in learning a new language. Thus, it is a good idea to listen more often. However, watching videos, noticing the facial expressions, and reading the instant translation on the screen are priceless.

Bye.