Good Day Steve, I hope you are well.
I wanted to basically ask you at what point it is you start thinking about your level in Listening and Speaking in a language. I often recall hearing in your videos that enjoying a language for you doesn't necessarily mean speaking it from Day 1. I also recall hearing speak a lot of the Russian podcasts you listen to, may I ask, Do you understand them without a transcript of any sort and also, at what point in the 5 years of Russian (if I remember correctly) you have studied were you beginning to understand podcasts to a level that you are now.
I ask this because, In Danish for me, Listening (and speaking, but I know why my speaking isn't improving) is the only part of my studies I do not feel improving. It angers me a lot that I've been learning for nearly 10 months now and I still can't understand audio from not exactly complicated podcasts about Football. People have always told me to "keep going" but surely it has to get to the point where one says "I've been studying for X many years/months and still can't understand X amount when I listen". The fact my listening skill is so low despite all the listening I do makes me feel like a lot of the listening I have done has been put to waste.

I find that it takes a long time before I can understand content for which I have no transcript. For a long time, if I can read, and look up words, then I can understand more, but certainly not all of even these familiar texts. First of all, your brain needs to get used to the new language and second of all if there are more then 10-15% unknown words this can distract you from following the thread of the meaning. I am only now getting to the stage in Czech, after almost a year, that I understand 70% of some podcasts (if the context is familiar) without having the text. Movies are still hopeless for me.

Thanks for the reply Steve. Would you say you're at this stage now in Czech because of training your brain with transcripts? I've studied Danish for nearly a year (9-10 months) and have a great deal of stress trying to understand anything in a podcast, I'm sort of stranded at an Intermediate level (still a beginner listening wise) and I'm fast running out of transcripts that are level appropriate. Don't you think I should be concerned that I'm no-where near the 70% after nearly a year? Surely after nearly a year my brain should be used to this "new language"?

No you should not be concerned and should just enjoy the process. Try to find material that is at your level, or a little difficult. You are learning all the time. Just wait for it and don't be so impatient.

It's the finding material that is the issue I think :-/

Corin - is Danish not one of these languages that differ significantly from the way it is written and the way it is pronounced? If so, listening becomes a lot more important as you might not be able to simulate the sound in your head as you are reading (as easily).

You are very right Marianne, the pronounciation is rather different to the spelling. I guess i've always thought that because I've been with the language for so long I can often tell the pronounciation. But maybe this doesn't work when it comes to actually imrpoving listening ability, so you might have a point.

However different the writing is from the spoken language, it will follow a pattern. I suggest listening to texts where you also have access to the text, if possible.

Have you heard of something called "Acapela Box" steve? I'm sure you have, and I know it's basiclally just a dictator after inputting text. The Danish voice (or one of them) actually sounds reasonably fluid, and speed can be altered too. Perhaps I could use this with Newspaper articles I'm reading. Maybe you could have a go with the Czech voice or one of the other languages you speak and see if you think it may be a source worth using. Somebody recommended it to me on the "how-to-learn-any-language" forum, so i'd wondered if you'd heard of it.

Thanks Corin, but I have more than enough authentic content, with transcripts, to listen to in Czech.

I wasn't trying to suggest you use it as part of your studies, As why would I suggest something to you about how to improve your studying? I was merely seeing if you thought it was a resource worth using by judging the voice for one of the languages you know, such as czech.

I like listening to authentic content, read by real people. I like audio books, and I also like live interviews that have been transcribed. I don't think I would like Acapela Box based on how you described it. It may however really appeal to some people. Thanks for mentioning it.

The only case where I use a text-to-speech tool is if I have text in front of me and don't know how to pronounce it (usually this only happens with Chinese). For enjoyment, I prefer real audiobooks.

Corin - Do you know what kind of learner you are in terms of input? Do you have a greater retention through auditive, oral, haptic input etc. Some people do not learn that much from reading texts but need other types of exposure. Also children learn to listen/speak before they can even read :-)

I don't know what heptic input means, but I am quite sure that we all benefit from a combination of listening and reading. We may have preferences in terms of how like to get our input, but I personally do not believe that there are different types of learners. The brain works the same for all of use. We need lots of exposure.

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The book "Learning and the brain" by Manfred Spitzer is full of scientific evidence that our brains essentially learns in the same way. A very interesting read.

I feel your pain on this. I've been learning French for a year and a half and still have trouble finding my bearings in the midst of spoken French, All online of course (ain't too many French-speakers in Kansas). It upsets me at times that I'm not able to understand it well quite yet, but I always feel better when I remember that just a year ago I heard French as a series of abstract sounds and nothing more. And now only about a quarter of it sounds like gobbledygook. In fact now, even though I can understand a lot of it and even make out most of the words, the MEANING is mostly lost. It's like having all the pieces to a model ship but not knowing how to put them together. But at least now I know what most of the pieces are. Now I can better hear the SPACES between words, whereas before it was transcribed in my brain like some absurdly long German word with a hundred words all jammed together.

When one does those listening exercises where one learns a single word and listens for it specifically in a spoken sentence, it can be quite amazing how out of the aural mess you perceive what you had learned only a moment ago. It's like building a landmass from the ocean, grain of sand by grain of sand. In other words, think about your learning geologically. You've studied 10 months and therefore are 10 months closer. If you kept it going strong for another 10 months, obviously you'd be closer than you are now. In short: patience, grasshopper.

To indulge in another metaphor, you've planted the seed and grown the crop and are closer and closer to tasting the sweet fruit it bears. So be patient like a farmer is patient. And be fearful of the locusts (which in this analogy might be laziness or, worse, some kind of unfortunate brain trauma, or, worse yet, senility).

Cheers,

John

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@Johnny I know exactly where you're coming from, Alot of the times I think I'm hearing words I know but just can't make logical sense of them, it's been like that for quite a while. It bugs me hugely too, and for me, the aim ultimately is to be able to understand spoken danish well, hense why it's so annoying I can't understand enough to be able to say i'm even half way to achieving my goal. patience indeed though, I guess there's nothing else I can do apart from moan on the forums some more in a couple more months, but i guess (And I can bring Steve in on this point) perhaps my expectations are too high. Steve, I remember in your last, or one of your last videos you said you were going to do a video regarding expectations. So if you are, I would await that with much anticipation :-)

Theories of learning styles is not a new idea. see for example wikihttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_styles

I can only vouch for myself. I am an auditive learner. I need to hear things and can remember through retrieving words and sentences in my head. I hear the sentence/word ringing in my head before speaking it. A text does not help me much if I need to be able to speak the language. it does not matter how it is written. I will remember the spoken word. This is why I suggested that Corin you might want to consider if you have a particular learning style and take this into account.

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@Corin and everybody

There is a website I've been frequenting lately which you might find very useful: http://wwitv.com/portal.htm

Many of the links don't work for me but the few that do are always entertaining. I'm learning French, and there is in France a channel which basically (as far as I've seen) shows softcore porn... I don't learn much French as it's mostly slow motion images of girls running along the beach with terrible music...but... I endure. There's also a news channel that repeats the same 30 minutes of news over and over again on a loop so there's plenty of opportunities to review what you've heard; it's all very clear as well. And in Canada they have a channel which basically plays terrible American television and movies dubbed in French (tonight they play Taxi, with Jimmy Fallon and Queen Latifah, which promises to be awful in any language).

I've essentially replaced the two to three hours per day that I end up staring in silence at some kind of flickering screen with this rather absurd activity. Obviously I don't understand it all, but like reading a book which is kind of confusing plot-wise but is written in an intriguing way (any book by Faulkner or Joyce, for example), I do find myself drawn in. And for some reason things which you wouldn't enjoy watching in English (like commercials) become enjoyable and devilishly funny in a different tongue from a different culture.

Cheers,

John