🔊 🎙 Listen Every Day Challenge - Winter 2023 ❄ 🧤

Welcome to the “Listen Every Single Day” Challenge, Winter 2023 edition! :snowflake: :gloves:

A little history: This Summer, @KJules had the awesome idea to start a Listen Every Day Challenge, where we challenged ourselves to listen to something in Japanese every day. This was inspired by the also awesome Read Every Day Challenge, which has been going on for more than a year now, with great success.

If you missed the previous Listen Every Day Challenges, feel free to jump in on this one - we would love to have more people join in the fun! Whether you’re an expert at listening or just starting out, everyone is welcome to participate.

So what is it? This is a place to set your own goals for listening, and to share what you’re listening to with all of the rest of us! This will be a positive, encouraging space to share and get advice from each other, or just to keep a study log for yourself. Make it into something that works for you!

Whether you are an expert or just starting out, everyone is welcome to participate in this challenge! To quote @KJUles quoting @windupbird quoting @Redglare ( :grin:):

This is a thread for people who:

:bookmark: want to spend time more time listening
:bookmark: want to improve their comprehension
:bookmark: want to hold themselves accountable and have a place to document their progress
:bookmark: simply want to join in on the challenge!

Time frame: January 1 - February 28

This is the “official” recommended time frame, but late starters are absolutely welcome! This thread will be up and running until the end of March, so you can start and finish your personal challenge at any point during that time, and shorten or lengthen the challenge to the time period that works best for you.

Your listening materials can be whatever you want, anime, podcasts, youtube videos, audiobooks, TV, JLPT listening quizzes - you name it, anything goes as long as it is something in Japanese :jp:. “Listening” can be interpreted creatively, if that helps keep you motivated!

Would you like to participate?
  • Yes
  • Yes, but I might start late
  • Not sure
  • No

0 voters


Threads worth checking out:

What do you listen to for Japanese practice?

Extensive Listening Challenge 2022

The community is working together to compile a list of the resources they like here. Please check it out if you’re looking for advice, and add to it if you have something you think others would like!

Listen Every Day Challenge - Fall 2022


Calendar template if you'd like to use one.
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To get these calendars, just copy and paste the text underneath into your post. Feel free to modify as you like.

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25 Likes

Participants

Feel free to add your username to the list!
Note: please try to keep this alphabetical

Username Date Joined Days Completed
a17t4 1 Jan 2023 0
basilsauce 1 Jan 2023 0
casualima 3 Jan 2023 see home post
cccswann 1 Jan 2023 0
chococat 4 Jan 2023 54
DictatorofTurtles 1 Jan 2023 2
fallynleaf 1 Mar 2023 31/31
frankiefrank 1 Jan 2023 7
happy_capy 1 Jan 2023 10
HaseebYousfani 1 Jan 2023 Home Post
jrmr50 1 Jan 2023 31
kanjiduck 1 Jan 2023 0
Katieruther 3 Jan 2023 1
KukiBee 1 Jan 2023 0
Larsjack 8 Jan 2023 -
Lizziemanan 1 Jan 2023 0
lucylavelle 1 Jan 2023 0
MissDagger 16 Jan 2023 21
omk3 1 Jan 2023 50
pocketcat 1 Jan 2023 0
polv 1 Jan 2023 all
prettysorchastic 1 Jan 2023 5
sudipabhattacharya 1 Jan 2023 Home Post
Sylph 1 Jan 2023 Home Post
TayaP0702 1 Jan 2023 See my home post
Twelvewishes 1 Jan 2023 see home post
windupbird 1 Feb 2023 See my home post
9 Likes

Count me in!
Thanks for hosting again @omk3 ! :slight_smile:
I’m going to be taking it easy with this challenge, it’ll probably mostly be Nihongo con Teppei for Beginners, learning-focused podcasts/youtube videos and some anime (with japanese subtitles where possible, but probably mostly english subs!)

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Progress Report
January
February
15 Likes

I won’t be doing a calendar (I already have a habit tracker) but as with the past challenge or two this will be my outlet for sharing youtube videos / podcasts / movies / tv shows I come across that are interesting. Also probably talking about audiobooks as well since I have a huge backlog of those now…

16 Likes

Here we go :ghost:
I will listen to one episode of Nihongo Con Teppei per day. I find that doing several mini lessons per day helps me to be consistent. For now, I only do 10 new Wanikani lessons and no more than 75 reviews per day. Slow and steady wins the race.

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16 Likes

My first time joining a challenge on WK! I assume I’ll mostly be watching some animes without subtitles (so I don’t rely on reading over listening) and also some podcasts :+1:

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16 Likes

:snowflake: :mountain_snow: Twelve's Winter Listening Home Post :snowman: :teapot:

:books: My Study Log
:open_book: My home post in the Read every day challenge

Here we go again! This challenge is always pretty intimidating. One day I’m gonna be able to do it without subtitles!

:snowman_with_snow: Jan :snowman_with_snow:
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:snowman: Feb :snowman:
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Template

:snowflake: Day X :snowflake:

:headphones: Back to my Home Post

16 Likes

About time I join a challenge, gonna have to think of what to listen to now

Jan
01 :ballot_box_with_check:
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16 Likes

:snowflake: polv’s Listening Challenge of Winter Q1 2023 Home Post

I classify listening materials into 3 types.

  • Visual Novels, where I can always rewind and replay the audio, accompanied with text.
  • JP sub anime / J-drama, where while I can pause to read, it would disturb the flow to the animation and audio.
  • Podcasts and audiobooks, where texts are entirely optional, no animation, and the flow tends to be very long. (Much shorter in podcasts.)

Personally, I count the first one as Reading (to be put in Reading Challenge), which the other two are listening. Indeed, the latter is closer to real listening. I haven’t yet count the dialogue type, where speaking tends to be short, and I can reply to explain or ask for clarification.

I would try to do my Listening Type every day.


Resources
  • Audiobooks
    • Finishing かがみの孤城
    • Recommended books with audiobooks attached
    • 君の膵臓をたべたい
  • Podcasts
    • YUYU Podcast
    • Learn Japanese with Noriko
  • J-drama and anime
  • VN
    • うたわれるもの
  • Textbooks
    • So-matome N3-N2 Listening Comprehension
15 Likes

Right, let’s see what 2023 brings, listening-wise!

Jan
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09 10 11 12 13 14 :heavy_multiplication_x: 15
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01 02 03 04 :heavy_multiplication_x: 05
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13 14 15 16 17 18 :heavy_multiplication_x: 19 :heavy_multiplication_x:
20 21 22 :heavy_multiplication_x: 23 24 25 :heavy_multiplication_x: 26 :heavy_multiplication_x:
27 28 :heavy_multiplication_x:
Mar
01 02 03 04 05
06 :heavy_multiplication_x: 07 08 09 :heavy_multiplication_x: 10 11 :heavy_multiplication_x: 12 :heavy_multiplication_x:
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20 :heavy_multiplication_x: 21 :heavy_multiplication_x: 22 :heavy_multiplication_x: 23 24 :heavy_multiplication_x: 25 :heavy_multiplication_x: 26
27 :heavy_multiplication_x: 28 :heavy_multiplication_x: 29 :heavy_multiplication_x: 30 31 :heavy_multiplication_x:
15 Likes

I don’t usually join challenges, but my listening comprehension definitely needs a push, so… let’s try this!

It’ll probably mostly be podcasts and VTubers for me. I also have the audio book of Intermediate Japanese Short Stories (L20) that I wanted to get to forever, so this might be a good opportunity.

And I’m just remembering that I have an audio book with a collection of over 60 modern fairytales written by 新美 南吉 - although those might be too hard from a vocab perspective. (Unknown vocab during listening comprehension practice is really hard for me…)

Jan
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17 Likes

One of the (many) things I did starting out which I recommend is to read first, looking up whatever vocab is needed. So long as the new words aren’t overwhelming, listen to it next. It may help to listen and read the second time, and do a textless listen last.

I still really like reading and listening to audiobooks actually :grin:

12 Likes

Thanks for the suggestion! Sadly I don’t think I can do that, because my brain really dislikes repeating things and stops paying attention.

(And I’m not sure it’s good listening practice anymore if you already basically know the whole text?)

7 Likes

Disclaimer: I’m not qualified to comment on listening specifically.

If there’s good to it, I think it would be in increasing the number of sounds you’re unconsciously linking to words (building pattern matching), as you’ll know more of the words those sounds are associating with.

My expectation for myself is that I would end up not hearing those sounds because my brain is already matching the existence of dialogue to what I expect it to be.

9 Likes

I dislike repeating things too. So what I’ve done in cases where there’s a lot of unknown vocabulary, is listen along with the text (rather than before or after). It takes a lot of pausing, but soon you’ll find you’ll be relying on the text less and less.

Surely you won’t remember the whole text by heart, you’ll just know what to expect. And that’s helpful. The first step to listening comprehension is matching sounds to words, so that your brain gets trained in recognizing them immediately, rather than slowly processing them, much like @ChristopherFritz said. When I started listening, recognizing almost any word took conscious effort. I’ve started processing things faster now, but I still have a long way to go. Listening while reading along, even listening/watching with English subtitles, helped a lot. I don’t consider any of that “cheating”. But of course, everyone is different.

14 Likes

I probably shouldn’t be doing this, but I think I’ll give this a try!

My plan is to watch some anime I have on DVD, which also have Japanese subtitles in existence, and use mpv to blur the subs and stop playing at the end of a subtitle’s dialogue. This creates a cycle of “watch/listen until a pause, think about what was just said, then check the subtitle to verify” and if needed, press a key re-play the dialogue’s audio. And since I’ve already seen these shows, I can opt to have mpv skip segments without dialogue.

Since mpv also can remember where I left off, I can focus on listening for a certain amount of time per day, rather than trying a whole episode or segment of an episode.

1月
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8 ✗ 9 ✗ 10 ✗ 11 ✗ 12 ✗ 13 ✗ 14 ✗
15 ✗ 16 ✗ 17 ✗ 18 ✗ 19 ✗ 20 21
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19 Likes

My past attempts at this challenge went terribly lol (I did like… 2 days), but I want 2023 to be the year where I finally improve my listening! So I will be trying really hard to listen to stuff every day. I will be listening to 1-3 Comprehensible Japanese videos per day until I catch up to the latest videos. Not sure what I’ll do after that, we’ll see what my comprehension’s like.

I’m actually going to start today just to start the habit early while I’m thinking about it :slight_smile:

一月

二月

三月

Update Posts

一月

  • 02: Comprehensible Japanese (2 yesterday, 3 today)

note: I am no longer tracking the amount of episodes I watch since I kept forgetting to keep track :sweat_smile:

Listening to Type Subs/Transcript?
Comprehensible Japanese (Beginner) youtube no
Sakura Tips podcast sometimes
極主夫道 anime yes

finished

Listening to Type Subs/Transcript?
リラックマとカオルさん anime yes

I am also able to practice listening at my university (I’m in a Japanese club)

16 Likes

This is perfect for me. When I took N5, my lowest score was the listening test. I haven’t got my N4 results yet, but listening seemed more difficult than the other sections. So, if I can implement my listening in the first months of 2023, that would be a good step to take.

Jan
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I’m planning to listen to podcasts, including:

  • Sayuri Saying/ Everyday Japanese
  • News in Slow Japanese
  • Thinking in Japanese
updates

Jan 7: So far so good. I’ve been listening to podcasts every day. I’ve been off work so the challenge is to continue the momentum next week. I have no empirical evidence but, I think it’s helping my listening.

18 Likes

I also don’t think cheating applies here… but, for my purposes, I’m keen to practice listening without reading at the same time. When people speak Japanese, there normally isn’t a prepared text, so for this challenge I want to focus on training my ear without subtitles or a similar text.

10 Likes

Thank you for organizing the challenge! My priority for 2023 is improving Listening so would love to join.

I aim to listen at least 30 minutes/day. If too exhausted days, 10 minutes to keep the streak going.
Each week, I will try to report progress of the previous week and have a more detailed plan for the coming week.

My resources

-Read-&-Listen-to-Audiobook at the same time: I tried to do this this year but my listening skill is weaker than reading, got frustrated and stopped. I want retry this method in 2023
-Anime/drama: watch first time without sub, if stuck, rewatch with JPN/ENG sub. I’m watching Flying witch without sub, so far so good so will continue it in Jan.
-Podcast: I listen to Akane-sensei and Noriko-sensei podcasts, want to explore podcasts aimed towards natives
-Youtube: I listen to book reviews (masakibooks) and Japanese Genshin vtuber (LizeHelesta); also want to explore more channels
-Situational drama CD
-Visual novels: I agree with polv above that this is nearer to reading than listening. Though on too exhausted days, I might turn into a blanket burrito playing visual novels so would cheekily count this as one of my listening activity :yum:

Jan
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Feb
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Progress Report

Week 1 (1-8/1/23)
Week 2 (9-15)
Week 3 (16-22)
Week 4 (23-29)
Week 5 (30-5/2)
Week 6 (6-12)
Week 7 (13-19)
Week 8 (20-26)

17 Likes