Ok, so, I’m at a point now where my reading comprehension is pretty alright! General knowledge of kanji and grammar has helped with educated guesses should I not recognise a word (id say lower N4 is the limit of what I can stumble my way through)… But, it feels like my listening comprehension is lagging WAY behind. Am I just expecting too much of myself? Is there any learning tools for this or do I just gotta let things happen naturally? Wondering if I’ve gotta be patient and wait till the words in Japanese just mean what they mean, (if that makes sense). (Like when I hear “かっこいい” I don’t translate it, it’s just かっこいい.)
Context: I only understand around 1/4 of “Nihongo con Teipei for Beginners” when i’m paying attention, and half the time it feels like its all just loan words that I’m getting (granted I don’t sit down and listen, I usually have it on for a few hours while I work.) ((if this podcast is technically N4 or N3 please tell me and I’ll feel so much better lol))
The initial transition into listening is pretty hard, because there’s only so slow that spoken language can get and initially you’re not going to be able to process it in real time. Ultimately, I found I just had to power through that for a few months, though there is stuff like Japanese subtitled listening content or graded readers with audiobook options that can be an even more beginner option than beginner podcasts.
The other thing is that background listening is kind of a next level compared to active listening, much like skim reading is much harder than focused reading. Like when actively listening, I’m able to handle a lot of native content these days, but my background listening skill is firmly in the beginner territory.
That sounds very normal to me and you should feel very proud of making it where you are! Listening comprehension is always harder and will require specific practice to get good at even if your reading is more advanced. But also if improving your reading is your primary focus right now, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with continuing that way until you feel like you want to boost your speaking/listening.
The more advanced your reading ability the easier it will be to work on your listening since you’ll be able to draw from your vast vocabulary, grammar and idiom knowledge to decipher what you’re hearing.
That won’t do much good (although it won’t do much harm either). I recommend active listening and, if you struggle, using subtitles to associate the words with the pronunciation. Listening practice doesn’t have to be devoid of reading, in fact I find that even playing a videogame for instance with voice acting will help boost my listening comprehension even if I mostly rely on the text to understand what’s going on.
Absolutely! Frankly personally I struggle to extract anything from audio that plays in the background while I’m working, even in my native language. It might as well be white noise. Maybe if I’m doing a repetitive task that doesn’t require a lot of focus, but if I’m actively programming it’s hopeless.
When you started learning the hiragana and katakana, you probably didn’t recognize many or even any kanji. When you started learning kanji and vocab, and first tried to read something that wasn’t from your study materials, you probably didn’t recognize much or any of that.
This is the same thing, what you’re learning in one component of the language will eventually complement the other components, but it will take time. It sounds like you have a good foundation building up and maybe just finding the right resource or just time on task will help.
As far as the active v. passive listening, I’ll defer to everyone else on this. I’m pretty early in this process and I’m not even sure if passive listening is terribly helpful or not, but I feel like it’s nice to pick out some words here and there and hopefully more as time goes on.
@araigoshi@simias@hrudey Thank you! Very reassuring, sometimes I worry that all the time I’ve been spending hasn’t done much, but I just seem to forget what it was like when I first started!
@trunklayer dunno what you said but I’m sure it was great as usual
Thank you!
Sorry, I just originally thought you were asking for listening resources and posted links to Nihongo con Teppei – then I read the whole post and realized that you already know that resource and that it was not what you were asking… What’s more, somehow, my post ended up as an answer to @simias さん、so I decided to just delete it to avoid the confusion
I don’t know any specific tools to improve listening, but what I am doing myself – is that I just keep listening. I personally prefer background listening while doing something else. Something that doesn’t require much concentration, like riding bicycle or playing American Truck Simulator or Superflight or just sitting on my balcony sipping coffee or tea…
Nihongo con Teppei for Beginners is the one I understand like 98-99%, and the remaining 1-2% are mostly due to lack of concentration… I’ve always had huge trouble keeping concentration, I tend to drift away into my thoughts too often… Interestingly enough, the less I try to concentrate – the more I’m able to do it. So, if I just sit for the purpose of listening – I’d quickly get distracted, but if I’m already distracting myself in a very small way – the remaining part of me finds it easier to concentrate…
Nihongo con Teppei Original – I understand aroud 70%. But that’s ok. I think if you listened to the podcast and understood the topic and the author’s general idea on it – then it’s a success. I gave up on trying to catch every word – I just try to catch the general idea. It’s like the Tadoku principle in reading:
Now, of course, looking up every single word – also has its advantages, but overall I prefer the Tadoku method. More precisely, I do sort of hybrid reading – I do look up words, but only when I have trouble deducing their meaning from the context.
Anyway, whichever method you choose, as long as you keep listening – you will get better and better at it! Believe in yourself!
I think I actually heard of him through one of your posts? If not, it was definitely on here where I read about him!
My work is mostly muscle memory so I can usually focus! I find if I already know the topic word I can follow but if not I try and guess. I have yet to get it right but I’m sometimes on the right track (not of categories, just the vibes of the categories.) Again though, I only have this experience 25% of the time. Weirdly enough, knowing more kanji helps with my comprehension! I feel like I can visualise a word if I’m struggling to remember but know I know it.
Edit: I think I’m the same as you, I find when I’m doing active listening exercises on Duo (the lil radio ones) I get more if I stare off into the distance a bit! (I know Duolingo’s robot accents aren’t great but I’ve noticed that they do help me at this stage.)
Out of curiosity, do you have a rough guess of where you are on the JLPT scale?
I think it’s important to expect that listening and reading are different skills. While there is some cross over (subtitles, and just general knowledge of the language), they do need to be trained separately.
There are many words I can recognize in a written setting that I wouldn’t recognize in audio because 1) no kanji 2) having to know when the word starts and ends and 3) I could have the wrong pitch accent in my inner voice when I read and thus won’t recognize the real version when spoken.
Personally I’ve found that the only cure for this is to keep training it. Teppei’s not to my taste, but I really enjoy Speak Japanese Naturally. It had on screen human-made Japanese subtitles (though occasionally a mistake might pass through) so I get to leverage my reading to focus on recognizing the flow and the pitch accent.
I also do JapanesePod101 and try to do audio only for the first time around. Then I read the lesson notes. Then I do dialog-only reviews once every few months for series I’ve already completed - audio only first and I might check the transcript if it stumped me.
Beyond that, I like flash cards with sound. NativShark has voice acted cards (not TTS) so I always do it while listening. I don’t find TTS flash cards to be helpful unless it is really really high quality (JPDB’s TTS is so good that I often doubt myself if it’s TTS or not.)
I get very frustrated with errors so things like TTS or auto-generated subtitles/furigana, which are very error prone, frustrate me a lot. It’s costly to have both NS and JP101 but the errors are minimal because it’s all been reviewed and spoken by humans. And for YouTube videos I definitely prefer creators who publish reviewed subtitles instead of relying on auto-generation.
It’s improved my listening a lot for when I consume content with no subtitles/transcript.
It improves with time and experience. The best example I can think of is kana. At the start I had to pay attention to each one and remember its meaning, but after seeing them who knows how many times, reading them has become second nature. (Kanji tho….)
Actually, I shouldn’t say that. A lot of the early kanji have transitioned into that… 年, 無, 音… eventually you’ll see something enough times that your brain firmly locks it in.
Might I recommend watching anime with the Japanese subtitles. It’ll feel like speed reading practice, because you have to read it faster than the characters speak if it is to help you. And you can always replay a section a few times to try to make sense of it.
If you do this, prepare yourself for name kanji that wanikani isn’t going to teach you.
Satori Reader really helped me up my listening game when I was in a similar situation. I’d listen to a sentence a few times in the story before reading it to see if I could make sense of it. Then I’d read it until I understood it, then I’d listen to it again until I could hear what I knew I was supposed to. The first story I did was oku-nikkou and it really motivated me to keep going and dramatically improved my Japanese grammar, vocab, and listening when I went through it.
Congratulations on your progress, you should be proud! I encourage you to keep listening to the podcast. It’s completely normal not to understand everything at first. The important thing is to keep going. As you continue listening, you’ll gradually start to pick up the language. You just need to be patient and keep at it, even when things aren’t fully clear. This ability is actually called ambiguity tolerance and it’s a key part of language learning!
i would always advise to not just listen to something but have some visual input/ cues. so TV-Shows, YouTube Videos (that are not just sitdown videos) or movies etc.
like manga for reading it is always easier to dicypher meaning when you have some visual hints as to what it is about.
I think I asked the same question a couple weeks ago, I feel the same way. Some people suggested Youtube for Comprehensive Japanese input. I tried and I find it hard to understand. I think because I can’t associated a Kanji or vocabulary with an audio. WaniKani is really good for recognizing a kanji or vocabulary but I’m struggling with listening. I wish there were a mode in which we will hear an audio and just write the meaning.
I know we should go out and find different resources but the other thing I struggle with is, I can’t find any listening material that goes hand to hand with WaniKani level. Im level 5, maybe I need to be level 10 or so to comprehend listening.
That’s completely normal when you study Japanese writing-first, I have the same struggle when, for whatever reason, a word is written in full kana instead of kanji in something I read.
You can be level 60 and it’ll make no difference on that front, only listening practice can help improve your listening ability. What is true however is that improving your general vocab knowledge will make it easier to improve your listening later on. You may not be able to immediately recognize てんき as being 天気 but if you at least know the word in kanji it will be easier to create the link later on.
If you’re fine with focusing on written Japanese in the short term and leave listening comprehension for later, then continue what you’re doing and don’t worry too much about it until you reach the point where you can read simple Japanese relatively well. If however your main drive for learning Japanese involves understanding the spoken language or speaking it yourself, you should maybe consider spending less time on WaniKani and more on audio-focused study methods.
If you’re willing to use WK scripts, then WK Self-Study Quiz from @rfindley has that capability. It’ll put up a meaningless (I think) kanji and say the word in Japanese. Once you answer, it’ll then ask you for the meaning!
To help with recognising or just isolating words (not translating them) I find a podcast about something I’m interested in. I listen to an anime podcast 「そこあに」because they sometimes do a gundam episode. I understand mayyyybe 1% but it’s helped in getting the flow and blocking off words/ sounds…. I’m at a point now where I roughly know when a word is said bc of pitch accent but ask me what that familiar word is (that I know I know) and I can’t tell you! Gunna try satori reader personally, but passive-ish listening has at least helped with that lol. (I don’t try and translate unless I fully recognize a sentence.)
If you have any mindless work that you do on a daily basis, maybe you could put something like that on?
(granted I don’t sit down and listen, I usually have it on for a few hours while I work.) ((if this podcast is technically N4 or N3 please tell me and I’ll feel so much better lol))
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