I am in a bit of a pickle now. I have used all the suggestions I got from my last post and imported tons of interviews from people who were in WW2. This content is so interesting and I love reading it! However, a vast majority of these interviews are very hard to understand (the speakers are very old). Even for basic words, I have a hard time understanding them because the speakers barely say the whole world and kinda mumble. So I guess the question is, should I continue with this interesting material even thought I do not like the speaker’s voice and cannot understand them? Or should I move on to material that is less interesting for the sake of listening comprehension?
In my opinion you should begin building up vocabulary and listening comprehension with material that is not too difficult. If you have laid a basis, you can go further and continue with material that is a little bit less simple. There is a middle way between comprehensible dull and incomprehensible interesting content!
Dull is dull. Unpleasant voices do not have to be listened to. Pickles can be tasty.
What is your priority: the subject or your vocabulary? As benscheelings suggests, finding a way to combine both benefits, is the ticket out of your pickle.
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Just do whatever you like to do. People mumble in language all the time or speak a very colloquial form so it’s all still practice.
Neither.
If you’re not fully comfortable with native material, then it is best to interleave interesting beginning material with interesting native content. If you have transcripts, then native content shouldn’t be incomprehensible, but may take a while to work through.
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