18
votes
Accepted
Can listening during sleep help language learning?
There is a Wikipedia page about Sleep-learning (hypnopædia, or hypnopedia) referring to two studies indicating no significant learning effects during sleeping:
Since the electroencephalography ...
- 661
15
votes
Accepted
Can I understand 95 percent of CNN and talk show, movies, anything just in 3 years?
Three hours/day for 3 years is over 3000 hours. That is a LOT of time, so, YES, you can do it if you take the right approach. You are already well past the beginner stage. But of course you will have ...
- 5,036
11
votes
Which is the more efficient method to improve the listening of the american english?
Learning a language is not an easy task, and can often take years to master. The best advice I can give you is to force yourself to do tasks that you'd normally do in your native language instead in ...
- 377
10
votes
Which is the more efficient method to improve the listening of the american english?
I had similar problems with listening comprehension of American English. Being very fluent in writing English, I could barely understand radio or TV. To overcome this problem I did three steps:
...
- 966
10
votes
Which is the more efficient method to improve the listening of the american english?
A method I find very useful is listening to a talk radio channel in the target language while I do other stuff such as cleaning, cooking or typing answers on Stack Exchange. The point is to focus on ...
- 679
8
votes
Learning through videos: what makes a video easy to understand for learners?
Like you said, some key factors that make a language video useful for learners are:
Slow and clear pronunciation (like you said above)
Repetitive usage of words or phrases that the learner is ...
- 9,047
8
votes
Accepted
How can I help someone improve their listening comprehension?
Be patient, 8 months isn't very long.
I like your approach to letting her talk to the sales person. It gives her instant gratification when she gets something right and is useful in everyday life. ...
- 196
7
votes
Accepted
Is "difficulty" an inherent trait in language?
My linguistics professors at university told me that all languages are roughly equally difficult because children learn their native language at roughly the same speed across the world. Languages that ...
- 19.5k
7
votes
Is "difficulty" an inherent trait in language?
Firstly, it does seem that some languages might be inherently more difficult than other languages to learn in the classroom. This is because many languages have large amounts of irregulars, exceptions ...
- 71
7
votes
Will having a part time or freelancing translation job affect my effort of thinking in second language?
I think I understand where you're coming from, however, I don't think you need to worry.
You already seem to have a fairly good understanding of English, and translating from Persian to English is ...
- 4,935
7
votes
How to use subtitles most effectvely?
This is quite difficult since preferences can't exactly be proven by research which brings up the answer: whatever works for you.
Take the cielo24 article for instance. It promptly states that:
If ...
- 5,308
6
votes
Can I understand 95 percent of CNN and talk show, movies, anything just in 3 years?
I am not sure about "anything/everything", but after 3 years of watching CNN, you will be able to understand standard American accent. You might still have issues with other American accents (southern,...
6
votes
Is "difficulty" an inherent trait in language?
Yes, there is such a thing as an inherent difficulty of a language. All languages are learnable by children, but it is clear that there are features that require more time to learn, and languages ...
- 2,284
6
votes
How can I help someone improve their listening comprehension?
Apart from all the good suggestions previously mentioned (Watching movies, make the listening activities useful and relevant to everyday life), I would like to give you some specific pointer about ...
- 169
6
votes
How do I make my Chinese listening robust to unknown words?
In my experience reading has always been easier than listening, but I think that is because the majority of my study comes from text based materials. Practice is definitely required for learning to be ...
- 344
5
votes
Accepted
Technical term for aural proficiency in a language
TL;DR Passive speaker
You've probably seen something like this before,
+-----------------+-----------+------------+
| LANGUAGE SKILLS | RECEPTIVE | PRODUCTIVE |
+-----------------+-----------+-------...
- 4,935
5
votes
How can I help someone improve their listening comprehension?
You are correct, let her be herself when learning. When fluent with the basic and, hopefully, some advanced parts of her language, she should try to naturally speak to others to see if she can recall ...
- 5,308
5
votes
Accepted
Learning through videos: what makes a video easy to understand for learners?
The University of Queensland suggest multiple points related to using videos for learning in general but do apply do language learning.
Visual cues helps memory processing and memory recall. This is ...
- 5,308
5
votes
Japanese – how to learn it without using SRS?
Sometimes, SRS really does just feel like a chore. I'm definitely not sufficiently consistent with my reviews. However, specifically with Japanese, I have discovered some other ways to improve my ...
- 4,935
4
votes
Japanese – how to learn it without using SRS?
Keep in mind that reading and listening are, generally speaking, passive learning activities. And while passive learning is better than nothing, Active approaches (speaking, writing in the case of ...
- 5,036
4
votes
Accepted
French subtitles
Yes, it is definitely helpful to have the French subtitles even if they don't match the verbal text. The fact that you are hearing the difference is showing it's less passive than active. I do the ...
- 56
4
votes
Can I understand 95 percent of CNN and talk show, movies, anything just in 3 years?
Definitively.
And maybe even in a shorter time. But you will have to push your limits. If you just listen to get a general idea about the material, you can watch and watch and your level won't ...
- 141
4
votes
Accepted
Is it a good idea to practice American English by listening to radio from the USA?
Whether it is a good idea or not to listen to a specific radio programme depends on the difficulty level of the language. If the programme's level is at your level or just a little bit higher, you ...
- 19.5k
4
votes
Accepted
How many words/characters do I need to understand Chinese sitcoms?
My experience is that even after passing HSK4 (1200 words, 1064 characters) with ~90% in the listening and reading part, and now closing in HSK5, I am still not fully comfortable to sitcoms without ...
- 156
3
votes
Is dictation any more effective than just writing in brain?
In my opinion, dictation is a useful exercise to develop writing skills. It improves one's style and forces to use less familiar vocabulary and grammar structures.
However, listening comprehension is ...
- 998
3
votes
How does the vocabulary learned through immersion compare to vocabulary learned via study?
Like you said, the context can help you to learn a new word. That same context, in my opinion, is better than a flashcard or a vocab list. Words are better learned when in context, so learning phrases ...
- 359
2
votes
How can I help someone improve their listening comprehension?
There have been several good suggestions to practice listening in the previous posting.
There is another point: You can train the typical formats of listening comprehension tests (answering yes/no ...
- 753
2
votes
How useful is passive "background" listening?
Information from Quora :
Passive learning is an important element in the language education approach referred to as Immersion or Total Immersion. Much research has been done on the effectiveness of ...
- 393
2
votes
How can I improve the listening and speaking skill as a self-learner?
Even as a self learner, there are (especially today) possibilities to find people to talk to using dedicated apps or web-sites. This is especially true for language tandems. There are many people out ...
- 141
2
votes
How to look for resources that are available in multiple languages?
Something else that is very frequently translated into many languages is religious scripture and religious publications in general. Here are some examples:
E-Sword - A Bible Study tool with many free ...
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Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible