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Steve's Blog Posts, Listening Comprehension – An Important Language Skill

Listening Comprehension – An Important Language Skill

Speaking as a part of language learning is highly overrated and I'm going to explain why.

I meet a lot of people who tell me they are frustrated because they can't speak the language as well as they would like to, so that there is frustration at not being able to speak well. I meet people who tell me that they can understand well, but they can't speak well. Normally, in my experience, that is not the case. There are people who read well and who can't speak, but I don't really recollect having met many people who understand the spoken language well and are totally comfortable listening and understanding, but who have trouble speaking.

I have met a lot of people who seem to be able to speak the language but don't understand when you speak to them at a normal speed. I believe that listening comprehension is an important skill in language learning.

That is what you should drive for first of all. If you develop good listening comprehension, the other skills will come, the speaking will come, even your grammar, your accuracy. All of these things will come if you have had so much exposure to the language that you understand it when it is spoken by a native speaker. Listening has a number of other advantages: it's very easy to organize.

I just finished doing the dishes and cleaning up the kitchen. I have two different mp3 players and I have different content in each one of them. I have a variety of earphones. I have Bluetooth earphones so that I don't snare the wires on anything. I've got other ones for when I go jogging or exercise. I listen a lot. I can do it all the time. When I'm listening it's not just that I'm listening to the language, I'm either enjoying a novel or I'm learning about history and this is true in all languages.

There are so many resources available now; podcasts in German, Czech, Russian, Italian, Portuguese, any of the languages that I've been dealing with. The only language I haven't found anything I wanted really was in Korean, but there's lots of stuff out there to listen to. I could not have hired a tutor to sit beside me in the car driving to speak to me in Italian. I can't have someone standing by to speak to me in Italian while I'm doing the dishes. So it's not that I don't speak, I do speak.

I've been speaking probably three or four hours a week, three hours a week with our tutors at LingQ. It's great to do that. I'm not saying one shouldn't speak. I speak a lot better this week than I did last week. The speaking and the listening reinforce each other because when I speak I'm made aware of my problems, where my hesitations and doubts are, where I don't know if I'm speaking Spanish or Italian. I get my corrections back from my tutor and it's amazing how that makes me more observant of things when I'm listening and reading, especially reading. I should say reading, in a way, is a form of listening because when we read in a foreign language we tend to subvocalize to start with.

Second of all, reading, in other words the written language, is just another form of recording the spoken language. We originally had no way of recording the spoken language so everything was from memory, then we had writing to record the spoken language and nowadays we have various ways of recording the audio so that we can listen to it. I'm not a neuroscientist, but I think, to some extent, the brain is processing the language the same way and getting used to the language by this exposure to it. I think there's too much emphasis on speaking at the beginning, too much emphasis on speaking correctly.

There's too much pressure on people to produce the language correctly at a stage in their learning where they're unlikely to do so because they haven't had enough exposure. Then they become overly sensitive to the need to produce the language correctly. They second guess themselves. They're hesitant to speak. I would say that the emphasis should be on comprehension. In Canada, where kids are taught French for 10 years in the English-speaking school system, not even five percent of those kids are able to speak French when they graduate.

That is a colossal failure, even though those same kids pass their tests every year. As in all subjects, a few of them fail, the bulk of them pass. Theoretically, they answer grammar questions and at the end they still can't speak. They don't speak grammatically correctly. They have no vocabulary. They don't understand what people are saying. In the spoken language, they probably are able to read to some extent:a colossal failure. If, instead, the focus was entirely on helping those kids understand the language, then the emphasis would be on finding things that interest them.

They could perhaps work on vocabulary, watch movies, do a lot of things that appear to be passive. Allowing kids to read in the classroom rather than taking turns reading from a book where they all mangle the language has to be more efficient. If those kids graduated with the ability to understand the language, that was the only objective, then any speaking activity is only there in order to make them more aware of certain things in the language, but not to test them on their ability to speak. By all means, speak, I think speaking is good.

It helps to stimulate the brain to notice the language better, but the objective of the speaking is not to be tested on the speaking. The speaking is just an exercise in improving your comprehension ability, and if at the end of this people graduate being able to understand the language well, if they then want to learn to speak they'll be able to learn to speak very quickly. If someone graduates from say French in a Canadian school and goes off to Quebec or France and they fully understand what people are saying, they will learn to speak very quickly.

They'll have much more confidence going into that. If, on the other hand, they have some vague notions about gender, have a limited vocabulary and don't really understand, they will go to France and they will be lost and it will take them a long, long time to improve. Of course, in language learning you have to get past that initial stage where you're listening to silly things for beginners.

Not, by the way, kiddy stories, which I find are more difficult because they use more strange vocabulary than simple stories designed for the learner. You can't get away from it for the first month or two, but as soon as possible move into the real stuff. Try to have text available so that you can look up the words and increase your vocabulary, much as we do at LingQ, and then get on to things that are of interest. Then it just becomes so fascinating you're hardly aware that you're learning a language.

Listening Comprehension – An Important Language Skill الفهم السمعي - مهارة لغوية مهمة 듣기 이해력 - 중요한 언어 능력 Compreensão auditiva - uma competência linguística importante Понимание на слух - важный языковой навык

Speaking as a part of language learning is highly overrated and I’m going to explain why. إن التحدث كجزء من تعلم اللغة مبالغ فيه للغاية وسأشرح السبب.

I meet a lot of people who tell me they are frustrated because they can’t speak the language as well as they would like to, so that there is frustration at not being able to speak well. التقيت بالعديد من الأشخاص الذين أخبروني أنهم محبطون لأنهم لا يستطيعون التحدث باللغة كما يرغبون ، لذلك هناك إحباط لعدم القدرة على التحدث بشكل جيد. I meet people who tell me that they can understand well, but they can’t speak well. ألتقي بأشخاص يقولون لي إنهم يفهمون جيدًا ، لكنهم لا يستطيعون التحدث جيدًا. Normally, in my experience, that is not the case. في العادة ، حسب تجربتي ، هذا ليس هو الحال. There are people who read well and who can’t speak, but I don’t really recollect having met many people who understand the spoken language well and are totally comfortable listening and understanding, but who have trouble speaking. هناك أشخاص يقرؤون جيدًا ولا يستطيعون التحدث ، لكنني لا أتذكر حقًا أنني قابلت العديد من الأشخاص الذين يفهمون اللغة المنطوقة جيدًا وهم مرتاحون تمامًا للاستماع والفهم ، ولكنهم يواجهون صعوبة في التحدث.

I have met a lot of people who seem to be able to speak the language but don’t understand when you speak to them at a normal speed. لقد قابلت الكثير من الأشخاص الذين يبدو أنهم قادرون على التحدث باللغة ولكنهم لا يفهمون عندما تتحدث إليهم بسرعة عادية. I believe that listening comprehension is an important skill in language learning. أعتقد أن فهم الاستماع هو مهارة مهمة في تعلم اللغة.

That is what you should drive for first of all. هذا هو ما يجب عليك قيادته أولاً وقبل كل شيء. それはあなたがまず第一に運転すべきものです。 If you develop good listening comprehension, the other skills will come, the speaking will come, even your grammar, your accuracy. إذا طورت فهمًا جيدًا للاستماع ، فستأتي المهارات الأخرى ، وسيأتي التحدث ، حتى القواعد النحوية ، ودقتك. あなたが良いリスニングの理解を発達させるならば、他のスキルが来ます、話すことはあなたの文法、あなたの正確ささえも来ます。 All of these things will come if you have had so much exposure to the language that you understand it when it is spoken by a native speaker. ستأتي كل هذه الأشياء إذا تعرّضت كثيرًا للغة لدرجة أنك تفهمها عندما يتحدث بها متحدث أصلي. あなたが母国語を話すときにそれを理解するほど多くの言語に触れたならば、これらすべてのことが起こります。 Listening has a number of other advantages: it’s very easy to organize. يتمتع الاستماع بعدد من المزايا الأخرى: من السهل جدًا تنظيمه.

I just finished doing the dishes and cleaning up the kitchen. انتهيت للتو من غسل الأطباق وتنظيف المطبخ. I have two different mp3 players and I have different content in each one of them. لدي مشغلان مختلفان لملفات mp3 ولدي محتوى مختلف في كل منهما. I have a variety of earphones. لدي مجموعة متنوعة من سماعات الأذن. I have Bluetooth earphones so that I don’t snare the wires on anything. لدي سماعات أذن تعمل بتقنية Bluetooth حتى لا أعلق الأسلاك في أي شيء. 私はBluetoothイヤホンを持っているので、何にもワイヤーを引っ掛けないようにしています。 I’ve got other ones for when I go jogging or exercise. لدي أشياء أخرى عندما أذهب للركض أو التمرين. I listen a lot. I can do it all the time. When I’m listening it’s not just that I’m listening to the language, I’m either enjoying a novel or I’m learning about history and this is true in all languages. عندما أستمع ، لا يقتصر الأمر على أنني أستمع إلى اللغة ، فإما أني أستمتع برواية أو أتعلم عن التاريخ وهذا صحيح في جميع اللغات.

There are so many resources available now; podcasts in German, Czech, Russian, Italian, Portuguese, any of the languages that I’ve been dealing with. هناك الكثير من الموارد المتاحة الآن ؛ البودكاست باللغات الألمانية والتشيكية والروسية والإيطالية والبرتغالية ، وأي لغة من اللغات التي كنت أتعامل معها. The only language I haven’t found anything I wanted really was in Korean, but there’s lots of stuff out there to listen to. كانت اللغة الوحيدة التي لم أجد أي شيء أريدها هي اللغة الكورية ، ولكن هناك الكثير من الأشياء للاستماع إليها. 私が本当に欲しいものを見つけられなかった唯一の言語は韓国語でした、しかしそこに聞くべきものがたくさんあります。 I could not have hired a tutor to sit beside me in the car driving to speak to me in Italian. لم يكن بإمكاني تعيين معلم ليجلس بجانبي في السيارة التي أقودها للتحدث معي باللغة الإيطالية. 私はイタリア語で私に話すために車の運転で私のそばに座る家庭教師を雇うことができなかったでしょう。 I can’t have someone standing by to speak to me in Italian while I’m doing the dishes. لا يمكنني أن أجد شخصًا يقف بجانبي للتحدث إلي بالإيطالية أثناء غسل الأطباق. So it’s not that I don’t speak, I do speak. だから私が話さないということではありません、私は話します。

I’ve been speaking probably three or four hours a week, three hours a week with our tutors at LingQ. It’s great to do that. I’m not saying one shouldn’t speak. 話してはいけないと言っているのではありません。 I speak a lot better this week than I did last week. The speaking and the listening reinforce each other because when I speak I’m made aware of my problems, where my hesitations and doubts are, where I don’t know if I’m speaking Spanish or Italian. I get my corrections back from my tutor and it’s amazing how that makes me more observant of things when I’m listening and reading, especially reading. I should say reading, in a way, is a form of listening because when we read in a foreign language we tend to subvocalize to start with. 私たちが外国語で読むとき、私たちは最初にサブボーカルする傾向があるので、ある意味で、読むことは聞くことの形であると言わなければなりません。

Second of all, reading, in other words the written language, is just another form of recording the spoken language. We originally had no way of recording the spoken language so everything was from memory, then we had writing to record the spoken language and nowadays we have various ways of recording the audio so that we can listen to it. もともとは口頭言語を録音する方法がなかったので、すべてが記憶からのものでしたが、その後、口頭言語を録音するために書く必要がありましたが、今日では、音声を録音して聞くことができるようにさまざまな方法があります。 I’m not a neuroscientist, but I think, to some extent, the brain is processing the language the same way and getting used to the language by this exposure to it. 私は神経科学者ではありませんが、ある程度、脳は言語を同じように処理し、この言語への暴露によって言語に慣れていると思います。 I think there’s too much emphasis on speaking at the beginning, too much emphasis on speaking correctly.

There’s too much pressure on people to produce the language correctly at a stage in their learning where they’re unlikely to do so because they haven’t had enough exposure. Then they become overly sensitive to the need to produce the language correctly. They second guess themselves. They’re hesitant to speak. I would say that the emphasis should be on comprehension. In Canada, where kids are taught French for 10 years in the English-speaking school system, not even five percent of those kids are able to speak French when they graduate.

That is a colossal failure, even though those same kids pass their tests every year. As in all subjects, a few of them fail, the bulk of them pass. Theoretically, they answer grammar questions and at the end they still can’t speak. They don’t speak grammatically correctly. They have no vocabulary. They don’t understand what people are saying. In the spoken language, they probably are able to read to some extent:a colossal failure. 話されている言語では、彼らはおそらくある程度読むことができます:巨大な失敗。 If, instead, the focus was entirely on helping those kids understand the language, then the emphasis would be on finding things that interest them. 代わりに、それらの子供たちが言語を理解するのを助けることに完全に焦点が当てられた場合、彼らに興味のあるものを見つけることに重点が置かれるでしょう。

They could perhaps work on vocabulary, watch movies, do a lot of things that appear to be passive. Allowing kids to read in the classroom rather than taking turns reading from a book where they all mangle the language has to be more efficient. 子供たちが本を順番に読むのではなく、教室で読むことを許可することは、彼ら全員が言語を混乱させるので、より効率的でなければなりません。 If those kids graduated with the ability to understand the language, that was the only objective, then any speaking activity is only there in order to make them more aware of certain things in the language, but not to test them on their ability to speak. それらの子供たちが言語を理解する能力を持って卒業した場合、それが唯一の目的でした、そして話す活動は彼らに言語の特定のことをもっと意識させるためだけにありますが、彼らの話す能力をテストするためではありません。 By all means, speak, I think speaking is good.

It helps to stimulate the brain to notice the language better, but the objective of the speaking is not to be tested on the speaking. The speaking is just an exercise in improving your comprehension ability, and if at the end of this people graduate being able to understand the language well, if they then want to learn to speak they’ll be able to learn to speak very quickly. If someone graduates from say French in a Canadian school and goes off to Quebec or France and they fully understand what people are saying, they will learn to speak very quickly.

They’ll have much more confidence going into that. If, on the other hand, they have some vague notions about gender, have a limited vocabulary and don’t really understand, they will go to France and they will be lost and it will take them a long, long time to improve. 一方、性別について漠然とした考えがあり、語彙が限られていて、よくわからない場合は、フランスに行って道に迷い、改善に長い時間がかかります。 Of course, in language learning you have to get past that initial stage where you’re listening to silly things for beginners. もちろん、語学学習では、初心者のために愚かなことを聞いている最初の段階を乗り越えなければなりません。

Not, by the way, kiddy stories, which I find are more difficult because they use more strange vocabulary than simple stories designed for the learner. You can’t get away from it for the first month or two, but as soon as possible move into the real stuff. 最初の1、2か月はそれから逃れることはできませんが、できるだけ早く本物に移行してください。 Try to have text available so that you can look up the words and increase your vocabulary, much as we do at LingQ, and then get on to things that are of interest. LingQの場合と同じように、単語を調べて語彙を増やすことができるように、テキストを利用できるようにしてから、興味のあることに取り掛かってください。 Then it just becomes so fascinating you’re hardly aware that you’re learning a language. そうすると、言語を学んでいることにほとんど気づかないほど魅力的になります。