N5 listening

Anyone can suggest an very beginner fun drama anime or show to practice listening, with english subtitles. Maybe an transscript would be good, to put words in anki app.

2 Likes

I can recommend plenty of good drama anime. Not sure any will particularly help you with listening though


1 Like

Sad
 to hear that.

1 Like

In terms of word density, podcasts, youtube videos, or specifically graded news articles/videos are your best bet. Anime has a pretty low word density imo, and you focus a lot less on the words than you would in other resources.

1 Like

Try Peppa the pig and shows aimed for that age range. They use simple sentences, simple grammar, and speak slowly.

9 Likes

You have to be very careful if you’re using English subtitles. If you’re not careful, you can easily resort to reading and not actually listen to anything that is going on.

I remember seeing a statistic somewhere that listening to foreign media with English subtitles provides no results, no subtitles provides good results, and subtitles in the foreign language can provide the best results.

Unfortunately, I don’t really watch dramas/anime, so I can’t help you on that front ¯_(ツ)_/¯

5 Likes

I just wanted to point out that that’s a very troublesome setting to practice “actual” listening
 mostly because you’ll be putting all the conditions for your brain to take the path of least resistance, which will be basically reading the language you’re already fluent to avoid having to concentrate too much on the mumbled sounds that those characters are making when speaking
 also known as japanese. :sweat_smile: 


In any case using something like Subadub or Voracious can help in setting a routine for listening. Having the option to quickly turn the subs on “just in case”.

Some good shows I can think of are Shirokuma Cafe, Dragon Ball and Usagi Drop (clear language and no ben used).

Also I might say that some Graded Readers with audio recording can be a great listening resource as well even at very early stages
 that and SuperNative are both resources I would consider as listening practice too in case you are mentioning english subs because of the not understanding fear that can go with watching raw shows too early (which I think it’s not necessarily to much of a deal with the right material :+1:)

1 Like

I believe with enough hours even if all you’re doing is reading the subtitles, it will help somehow.
Not the most efficient way but hey, it works!

I think there’s plenty of material to watch with no subs that have sufficient visual clues or extra aids (shows you know well from before) as to be entairtaning enough and still challenging still in terms of actually building “listening muscles”.

Nothing wrong with watching shows with subs, as it’s fun. But counting that as listening practice I think it’s just wishful thinking
 that’s an experiment that has been done and proved to fail already as a language learning strategy.

This is true, but only to a point. I watch a lot of anime and don’t actually practice listening, but I still got a 41/100 on listening in the J-CAT (roughly N4). But I doubt I’ll ever do better than that without real practice.

I’ve watched a lot too and got 85/100 in the J-CAT. Well, I dont want to argue, just saying that in the long run, it does help.

Image result for i see what you did there I see what you did there

1 Like

Where can I watch anime with Japanese subtitles or just any show.

If you had to guess (or if you know) why do you think that while both of you did similar things, but your listening improved so much more? Were you shadowing? Maybe pausing the anime to figure out sentences? Watching with Japanese subs?

I’d actually like to second that this isn’t a bad method, but could be better if you consciously used subtitles with the intention of practicing. Clearly, I wouldn’t learn how to speak or understand German if I just watched English subbed German tv shows all day, but I think this study method has some potential if you use it right. :slightly_smiling_face:

I passed JLPT N2 last year and listening is not too big of an issue for me, but I watched dramas, anime etc with subtitles from the very beginning. I used subtitles to help me pick up vocabulary since trying to listen for a word and look it up in the dictionary while watching just wasn’t realistic for me to keep up with the pace of the dialogue. I also found that subtitles helped me confirm if my interpretation/understanding of the dialogue was accurate as well. However, I realize it might be hard to pick up anything at all if you were starting with 0 knowledge about the language.

Clearly this isn’t the only thing you should be doing and watching without subtitles is a great method too, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with using subtitles if you consciously use them to learn.

Especially since OP is looking for N5 level listening, throwing him/her straight into some dramas and anime without subtitles at all seems a bit tough considering the amount of different grammar/vocabulary used in these alone. I second the other recommendations other people left that are slower/targeted at children if you’re going to go with no subtitles.

3 Likes

Well first by lot I mean: 3600+ hrs, dunno if seanblue means that much too. Other than that I don’t think I did anything different.

1 Like

For the record, I do this fairly regularly. No shadowing or Japanese subs (yet) though.

AniList says about 2200 hours. :joy:

1 Like

I’m not so sure about that. Although watching anime or shows with subtitles didn’t really help me much yet, I’m pretty sure than when I’ll know more grammar and vocab’ it’ll be good practice.

Watching a lot of english tv shows (with french subtitles, since I’m french), helped me a ton with english. I wasn’t even trying to learn but that’s how I got most of it.
So even though it might be easier with english, I’m pretty sure it can work for japanese as well at some point.

Oh nice! I am taking the N2 in July. How would you say you found the listening to be? I tried Shin Kanzen Master’s N1 listening book recently, which seemed okay, so I am guessing at least listening section should be easy.

Yes, this is nice, specially for sentences where you know every other word, you learn that word.

+1

I won’t pretend to have the all encompassing answer to listening practice in japanese, 'cause I’m learning as many are here, but since there’re guys who do this language teaching thing as a profession and conduct studies for the rest of people to tell what works and doesn’t for learning new languages, I try to read a bit before embarking myself in the long road that learning japanese is
 and for watching shows with your L1 subtitles, the results are consistent with the “no good comes from it” conclusion.

There’re people that will watch shows with subs in their language, and if that helps in keeping a constant motivation I think it’s a great resource for keeping the spirits high while struggling with other parts.
In any case in the end I think the chances of been a backfiring strategy are pretty real; at some point you’ll be ready for letting go subs, and if having a thousands hours habit of having them on, how easy will it be to let them go when you’re “ready”? :man_shrugging:

Anyway, it’s hard to talk about language learning while learning the about subject too and expecting to not sound patronizing while giving a recommendation based on something more consistent than my onw experience. Anyway, I tried. :+1: