I should write a blog or something; I seem to enjoy writing things. Though I do ramble a lot.
I have been learning Korean for a short while (6-7 months), I've technically been learning it for a longer time but that was a very rough start. From day one of learning I made a habit of exposing myself to the language (via radio and learning material mainly), but I feel that there is a specific way you should do things. Don't understand? Well I don't either, but let me explain what I'm talking about.
Essentially my listening is rubbish (understatement), so I have trouble listening to Korean speech when I hear it on a podcast or when Korean people actually speak to me. I feel that I am somewhat unable to comprehend much, and that's at my best. When I say my "best," I am talking about how my listening confuses me: it's never consistent; some days my listening is how I mentioned it before, and other days it is worse than that. Some days I have what I like to call a "burnout phase" where my brain refuses to process Korean.
When people are asked how to improve listening, the usual answer is "Do a lot of listening; there are no shortcuts." That's fine. I'm not asking for a shortcut, I'm asking for a way to imrove my listening that works, and "Listen a lot" is kind of vague. A couple of questions pop in to my head:
a) Listen to what?
b) What? Just put on something and listen to it? Or do you do something else as well?
The problem is not that I haven't improved in the last 6-7 months; my problem is that I'm concerned about any future improvement. Also I'm curious about any way to keep that consistency. I have that same problem with speaking and thinking: sometimes I can do it, sometimes I can't. It can make the transition in the space of two minutes.
So let's have a fun discussion here shall we? Do you have problems with listening? If so, do you share my experiences? If you have shared - but no longer share - my experiences, how did you overcome it.
You can tell that this is the first language I'm learning, huh?
Have you tried listening (to dialogues, news, songs...) while reading the transcription? It can help a lot!
I think this is an issu attached to the mono-syllabic languages. I didn't have this problem when I was studiying japanese or arabic. I could u derstand as soon as I know the words the speaker uses.
Yes I do have similar listening problems with chinese. I can understand if I read a sentece. But the wotds are so short (it's a mono-syllabic language) that when people speak just like they do in TV or in the daily life, I can't understand anything. The words are short, so often very similar. When they say something, I need a laps of time to identify which word is said and it's meaning. But they have already finished a sentence....
I believe the only solution to fix this is to apply to classes with a native speaker as teacher. With the time you'll get used to hear him pronouncing...but it will take time
I've been trying to do that a lot lately, but there are two big problems I face with that:
a) They (in the audio) often speak faster than I can read.
b) I have a hard time focusing on both the reading and the listening. I am either focusing on the reading and not the listening, or focusing on the listening but not the reading.
I can still try, right? :P
