90% listening ain´t enough

So, I´ve been studying Czech for 4 years and I´ve been living here for 18 months now. At least 80% of my study time has been dedicated to listening, 10-15% reading, a little bit of speaking and basically zero grammar or vocabulary study.

Guess what?
Listening is my biggest weakness.

The only thing causing awkwardness and sometimes even problems in my everyday life is my listening comprehension. You only need to know one way of expressing any given idea but you need to understand 10 ways mumbled into a phone at lightning speed by a speaker with some weird accent who uses tons of filler words in his semi-coherent sentences xD
It also seems like people get much more bothered by having to slow down/paraphrase/repeat than by my accent or me getting endings wrong from time to time.

Has anyone else had similar experiences?

Edit: I´m actually satisfied with my progress when it comes to listening comprehension. I don´t think the issue is that I´m doing it wrong but rather that the level of listening comprehension I need to reach is so high that even a listening-focused approach doesn´t change the fact that it´s the biggest obstacle to communication. .

Trouble reading? Google translate or LingQ+ alot of time. Having an accent? No prob. Imperfect grammar? No prob. Can´t understand people? Trouble^^

I´m posting this to share experiences and maybe “warn” people who have never lived abroad.

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You can work on the individual skills in isolation: reading, listening, writing, and speaking. But they are really all interrelated. I would suggest reading and listening in parallel. You will acquire the language faster if you are reading what you are hearing. In this way, your brain is simultaneously receiving two forms of input instead of only one. You are providing more stimulus to your brain per day/week/month that you read and listen simultaneously. Also, you are forcing yourself to focus. Lastly, you are able to associate written words with audible sounds, making you more literate. Overall, I think the big win is simply the mass consumption of the language through as many senses as you can utilize in parallel–it just maximizes the use of your time and mental resources.

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I have never lived in a foreign country or been surrounded by people where my ability to understand a language other than English would be something expected of me. So, I can’t speak to the second part about people being frustrated with me.

However, with regards to the first part, I used to have problems with listening comprehension in Spanish. I found I could understand conversations I was involved in first, then news broadcasts, then TV shows like telenovelas, then conversations between other people, then movies. I also think that’s more or less the order of increasing difficulty. I noticed that my comprehension got signficantly better after between 300 and 400 hours of listening. Right now, I’m at about 760 hours of listening between the radio, dialogue in TV shows and movies, lectures, the news, audio books, etc. I have spent between 1300 and 1400 hours of total learning of Spanish. So, about half of my learning time has been spent listening. Moreover, the bulk of that listening was spent watching Spanish TV shows where I was also reading the Spanish subtitles. Much of my other listening time, for example, audio books or stories in the LingQ library was spent listening to the same material over and over and for material I had already read, lingqed, and learned from. A comparatively smaller amount was spent “just listening” for example to the radio or YouTube where I didn’t have access to the text of what was being said. Of those occasions where I did this kind of listening without a transcript, I would venture to guess that the bulk of it was done AFTER I was already pretty good at it, or I was just testing myself. I certainly didn’t spend much time listening to stuff I couldn’t understand. The specific numbers might be different for a harder language like Czech, but I mention them here only to illustrate the concept.

You could probably benefit from some self-diagnosis here. Do you find that you understand nearly everything when the person speaks more slowly? If so, you probably just need more listening time. Or, do you find that you are not comprehending enough of what you do make out? If that’s the case, then you might need to do more reading so you can increase your vocabulary.

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I’ve been living in Germany 3.5 years. The same problem with listening.
1012.4Hours of Listening (on LingQ, without taking in account other listenings)

By the way, I have learned Czech 2 times, every time about 1 month. After the 1st month I went to Prague and I had no problem surviving there as a tourist. Then in some years I went to Brno to take part in a conference where most of reports were in Czech. The last report was at a very high speed because the reporter had too few time. Surprisingly I was able to understand everything. But no wonder for a Slav person who understands other 4 Slavic languages at a very high level.
114.1Hours of Listening (on LingQ only)

My daughter goes to German school for 2.5 years. She understands German better than I do :frowning:

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Listening is the most difficult skill in our journeys. Often the misunderstanding doesn’t come because our weak skill but because how badly the natives speak. There are even languages barriers between generations of natives.

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I guess there´s listening comprehension as in “being able to identify which words are being said” and “understanding the meaning of what these words mean in a given situation”.

I was mostly focusing on the first aspect. I´m German and the cultural differences between us are relatively small, by which I mean that I can understand the meaning as long as I understand the words. That´s a way bigger issue in Japanese.

But yeah, there are “cultural differences” between native speakers based on their age and, imho, their poltical views, interests, education and whatnot.

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Long time no see^^

I mostly listened outside of LingQ but I´d assume that I was somewhere around 1,000 when I arrived and now I should be past 2,000… I could already understand “proper Czech” under optimal conditions when I arrived, but an additional 1,000 hours made a huge difference in terms of fast/slangy/mumbled speech

I noticed how I get better at filing in the gaps, so to speak.

I´ll use a text from wikipedia s an example and put in random “—” to simulate a noisy environment or bad audio quiality.

" “The po- -lling------- black” is a proverbial idiom that -ay be of Spanish ori—, of which Eng— versions be—n to appear ----irst half of the 17th century. Th- idiom is glossed in the original so—as being use— a person who is gu-- — very thing of which they accu- another and is thus an exam—psychological project—,[1] or ----crisy.[2] "

A native speaker or someone with a near-native level should be able to understand this but someone at lower level might need the “full version”

" “The pot calling the kettle black” is a proverbial idiom that may be of Spanish origin, of which English versions began to appear in the first half of the 17th century. The idiom is glossed in the original sources as being used of a person who is guilty of the very thing of which they accuse another and is thus an example of psychological projection,[1] or hypocrisy.[2] "

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I´ve been using content with Czech subtitles for self-diagnosis, vocab is rarely the issue.

It´s not just speed but also audio quality/noise/mumbling/dialects/accents/contractions and filling in the gaps (check out my response to Ress´ post). A professional radio host sitting in a recording studio is easier to understand than a tipsy middle aged guy from Slovakia in a noisy pub.

These things can obviously become an issue in one´s native language as well, so I might be expecting to much sometimes^^

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I should´ve stated that I´ve been focusing on listening for practical reasons. I agree that listening and reading simultaneously is awesome (and it´s backed up by research) but t´s often not possible or practical.

The people I interact with come without subtitles, most of the content I´m interested in doesn´t have subtitles, I listen a lot while exercising, taking a walk, doing the dishes, before I fall asleep etc.
My speaking is 50-90% listening so the 80/90% I stated were partially from speaking. Even when I have time to sit down and read, I´m often too lazy and work on my listening instead.

I´mma go ahead and claim that writing will not help me understand Czech mumbled into a phone at lightning speed by a speaker with some weird accent who uses tons of filler words in his semi-coherent sentences or, at the very least, that more listening (if possible while reading along) is a better way to get there.

How are things going in Puerto Rico? Can you understand fast, non-standard Spanish in sub-optimal conditions?

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That’s exact what I hear every day with such random “—” gaps :slight_smile:

We used to watch news for children on Kika. We understand the professional moderators very well. But when they take interviews on the streets…
The biggest surprize: the understanding level may be between 0 and 100% depending on a person :slight_smile:

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By the way I have a relative who speeks my mother tongue. I understand him just a little bit. But it is an extreme example.

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" My daughter goes to German school for 2.5 years. She understands German better than I do :frowning: "

That´d be 900 days or so. Let´s assume that she´s been listening to German eight hours a day…that´s 7200 hours^^

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On my listening what happens to me is that I can’t understand the words I don’t know. So maybe you should work on your vocabulary?
I agree with you that speaking and writting won’t help your understanding.

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I´ve been using content with Czech subtitles for self-diagnosis, vocab is rarely the issue.

It´s not just speed but also audio quality/noise/mumbling/dialects/accents/contractions/intonation and filling in the gaps (check out my response to Ress´ post). A professional radio host sitting in a recording studio is easier to understand than a tipsy middle aged guy from Slovakia in a noisy pub.

These things can obviously become an issue in one´s native language as well, so I might be expecting to much sometimes^^

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Well in that case I might say that it happens all the time in my native language as well. Depending on who is talking to me I have a hard time trying to understand it!!!

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Honestly, I think I just have a problem understanding people in my own language half the time because of the reasons you discuss in your responses to people. All of the weird quality and idiolect issues can make words difficult to hear. My friends and family often understand people and I just can’t catch it sometimes. :smiley:

In target language, I can’t say I have tons of experience communicating in Korean, but I have spent thousands of hours listening over the last 3 years ranging from music to conversation to tv. I still find it easier to make out words in faster speech than notes for the sake of a song. When in real life scenarios, I have trouble comprehending words simultaneously as I am hearing them, but I often don’t know the vocabulary, or I do if I read it, but I don’t have the automatic connection in the sound and the meaning. It can be quite funny sometimes. Just the other day someone asked me about the “type” of something, and I didn’t comprehend that. He said the word two more times when I repeated it back to him several times with a confused face. I’m not sure if his particular way of speaking is just unfamiliar to me so it didn’t register, or if I’m just lost without text. I DEFINITELY know the word and meaning though. I think it just takes time, and like I said above, sometimes I have trouble hearing correctly just in English. To me, certain people’s voices just don’t register as well as others. Your problem seems normal to me though :smiley: just keep on messing around and you’ll get used to it!! After all, listening at a place with lots of noise is always harder than using headphones or a loud speaker in a quiet area.

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How would your rank your overall German abilities after 3.5 years in-country?

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How would your rank your overall German abilities after 3.5 years in-country?

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It is getting better for sure. But I thought it could be much better.
I have visited a German course here in Germany from May till December. It was C1 level, it was possible to continue with C2 but I am not sure I really have C1.
I had to have more conversations with locals but I am too lazy and I don’t like to talk too much.
I have no problems talking via Skype but my collegues have different accents, I have always problems to understand them.
So, the German couse has helped me and the overall very limited practice, too.

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I can listen to higher quality audios and videos in Italian, and understand a lot of it. However, if I watch a video where they are talking to people on the street, I hardly understand anything! Sometimes I wonder if they are even speaking Italian.

In your case, the issue is probably the input quality. Do you have much trouble understanding people like friends, coworkers, and other people that you talk to frequently? I am guessing that most of your trouble comes from trying to understand people you do not know, and also people in less than ideal environments for listening.

With reading, we reach advanced levels by building our vocabulary by doing a lot of reading. But with speaking, once you reach the intermediate level, you have to be exposed to a lot of different people’s speech to reach an advanced level, so instead of building your vocabulary (as in reading) you are building your experience with people’s speaking patterns, accents, etc. This is just my own theory, but I think it is worth considering.