I’ll start by saying I already made another thread some time ago regarding reading as a beginner in Japanese; this one will touch the listening aspect more
As I continue to learn Japanese, I think to myself that although I can read and speak what I know at a fairly good level, my listening ability and my vocabulary both aren’t at the level I want them to be.
Now, my question:
Does anybody know of a good way to practice listening / gather a bit more vocabulary?
For example, through podcasts or YouTube channels, preferably ones that I can listen to on the go.
I listen to a podcast called ‘Japanese with Shun’ on Spotify, and it’s great! But I wanted to see if there are other better/easier (?) ways.
I recommend doing a ‘set it and forget it’ method with listening where you do a set amount of listening every day (I did 10 minutes as a beginner), but don’t worry about understanding. It’ll take a while for everything to come together and your brain to start processing Japanese speech, so just keep at it.
I’m a strong proponent of Natural Japanese
If you watch shun you can probably skip the beginner levels. At least use their free material. 6h of “intermediate” listening will certainly help.
It is pretty varied, and you can learn a lot of interesting vocabulary with their system.
I really like repeated listening to stuff that you like which ideally has transcripts. As a bonus, you might listen to stuff you already know well in another language. I learned this formula from a YouTuber.
I spent a couple months (~end of January-ish to ~May) repeatedly watching a couple episodes of the Death Note anime at a time without subtitles and also reading the manga. I also repeatedly listened to chapters of the audiobook for the Japanese translation of the first Harry Potter novel while reading the novel as well.
I think probably with the exception of the week I spent in Japan, these few months was the greatest improvement I made to my listening comprehension of Japanese in my entire life. The repetition is really key because not only do you cement the stuff you already understood, your mind can be freed up to really lock in on the bits that don’t come quite as quick.
Yes, for a beginner, I would always recommend Teppei and the more you improve you can just move on to his upper beginner/intermediate stuff until you feel you can take on more intense listening.
