The progresses I have made : 9 Listening little by little again and again
Recently I've been transcribing newscasts spoken in English. I do this on the train to work and when I have a seat the train from work. It's 20 to 40 minutes a day. The average progress for a day is only one or two minutes a day. In some days I progress by 3 minutes.
One thing I noticed while transcribing is I stop my iPod word by word or at most two, three or four words. At first I played a phrase or clause before transcribing, ending up in playing back many times, sometimes more than ten times. Now I stop word by word, write words, and play back a word or two or a little more again.
Playing back word by word is what I didn't do when I was crazy about getting a high score in an English test. In the listening part in an English test, participants have to answer questions after listening to a passage just once. Basically, stopping the playback and listening again is not allowed in a test. This made me think that it's useless to practicing listening to English speeches.
Actually, listening to a newscast stopping by a few words, transcribing them, and playing it again by a few words helps me check my understanding of what I'm listening in at least two points.
First, I can check I'm really understanding words spoken in the newscast. When I listen to news without stopping and hear a name of a place I don't know very well although I frequently hear, I hardly think of that I don't know very well. It's just after I began to listen "slowly" that I perceived that I don't know the place very well and felt that I might like to look up what the place is like.
Second, I can concentrate on sounds. By listening little by little and sometimes listening again and again the small part I'm listening, I'm much more likely to able to recognize the sound made in the part of the speech. Sometimes I notice or grab the sounds I didn't recognize when I listened previously by just listening to extra times. Listening again and again carefully also help me imagine what is happening in the speaker's tongue and lips, which help me improving my pronunciation.
And surprisingly, listening little by little again and again even help me understand much more when I listen through the whole newscast.
It take a lot of effort to transcribing a newscast listening little by little and again and again, but now I'm thinking that this effort is beginning to pay.
One thing I noticed while transcribing is I stop my iPod word by word or at most two, three or four words. At first I played a phrase or clause before transcribing, ending up in playing back many times, sometimes more than ten times. Now I stop word by word, write words, and play back a word or two or a little more again.
Playing back word by word is what I didn't do when I was crazy about getting a high score in an English test. In the listening part in an English test, participants have to answer questions after listening to a passage just once. Basically, stopping the playback and listening again is not allowed in a test. This made me think that it's useless to practicing listening to English speeches.
Actually, listening to a newscast stopping by a few words, transcribing them, and playing it again by a few words helps me check my understanding of what I'm listening in at least two points.
First, I can check I'm really understanding words spoken in the newscast. When I listen to news without stopping and hear a name of a place I don't know very well although I frequently hear, I hardly think of that I don't know very well. It's just after I began to listen "slowly" that I perceived that I don't know the place very well and felt that I might like to look up what the place is like.
Second, I can concentrate on sounds. By listening little by little and sometimes listening again and again the small part I'm listening, I'm much more likely to able to recognize the sound made in the part of the speech. Sometimes I notice or grab the sounds I didn't recognize when I listened previously by just listening to extra times. Listening again and again carefully also help me imagine what is happening in the speaker's tongue and lips, which help me improving my pronunciation.
And surprisingly, listening little by little again and again even help me understand much more when I listen through the whole newscast.
It take a lot of effort to transcribing a newscast listening little by little and again and again, but now I'm thinking that this effort is beginning to pay.
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