There used to be a language learning channel called Motivate Korean where one of the hosts talked about repetitive listening and its effects. What you're suggesting here has a lot of overlap with that. You asked if you think there's merit in what you were saying, and I think there is. The specific video is no longer available, but the gist of the method he suggested was: - Find an audio clip -- Length: 5-7 minutes for intermediate and advanced learners; 1-2 minutes for beginners. -- Difficulty: Preferably something near your level, but it doesn’t have to be 100% comprehensible. -- Format: Podcast with no more than two people speaking. Too many people makes it hard to follow, and a single person means you won’t pick up on how people actually converse. - Listen to the audio clip on repeat 80-100 times over a week -- It was recommended to do this while washing dishes, walking outside, or doing other mindless tasks. The reported results suggest that repetitive listening like this will result in phrases and words “bubbling up” to one’s consciousness after a maturation period. As a result, whole chunks of language flow naturally in one’s speech (often being exactly what one heard in one’s listening), and with a good accent. The guy in the video was often complimented on having native-like Korean in terms of expression and accent/pronunciation. One interesting thing he mentioned as being a benefit of this method is that he often found himself knowing how to use words and expressions before knowing the meaning.
Beautiful post! Thanks for sharing. I agree fully with that. Even better is something you start of with like 70% comprehension and you have the text and you listen to it like 80 times that week AND review the text and follow your advice . By the end of the week, you'll be super solid.
This happened to me as well with English from repeatedly watching Harry Potter. And it also happened to my sister from listening to songs without learning English at all.
I’m so glad you made this video. I’ve been telling people about this method in other immersion communities and I always get shot down and called stupid for doing this. But I keep getting better and better at Japanese despite not really putting nearly as much hours into it as most people. I feel like you have to be careful about this to make sure you don’t hammer in incorrect understanding of things and maybe you should wait to do this until you have at least a few months of basic experience first. But honestly, I’ve always felt like this is the real way to learn. Regardless of what anyone says, there has to be some merit to creating hours and hours of 99% comprehensible input that you can listen to over and over…
What I like to do is mine and learn as many words as I can in a tv show and pretty much make it as close to 100% comprehensible as I can, then I rewatch and I listen to it passively until I get bored of it. After that I go find a new show to mine and do the same thing with. For me I feel like it works and it’s actually pretty fun for me.
I spent a long time in the beginning listening to comprehensible learner content, so I feel like my situation might apply well to what you're talking about. When you're a beginner, native aimed podcasts, especially with multiple people talking, are super difficult. It's basically unintelligible. I went through this experience and it was frustrating. Since the whole point of this immersion thing is comprehensible input, pretty earlier into learning Japanese, I listened to a TON of learner podcasts. At first it was super baby shit, which was easy to get a grasp of just because of how common the words were, and sticking on that too long is a mistake, but there are intermediate/advanced level podcasts or content that is still aimed at learners in which I think are super useful. I spent many months listening to this podcast called "Nihongo Con Teppei" (basically a guy who talks about every day topics in relatively simple Japanese which is aimed at intermediate or advanced learners). Listening to this for hundreds of hours skyrocketed my comprehension probably faster than just brute forcing unintelligible native content would have. People act like listening to a learner aimed resource or podcast is poison to your ears because it's not exactly how natives would talk at full speed to one another, but in reality, it's still natural native speech because the person talking is a native in your target language and you're still hearing things spoken with a perfect accent and grammar, just with a higher degree of possible comprehension. My experience was that doing this allowed me to start learning from audio only sources in a way that didn't make it feel super painful from lack of engagement due to not understanding anything in the beginning. I solidified a lot of my conceptual knowledge of how Japanese works from doing this, and transferring that knowledge to native aimed sources was not super difficult. Taking the jump from understanding literally everything in a learner resource to listening to a native aimed podcast in which you don't understand as much is obviously going to be a pain, but you get used to it with enough listening time. I think if you are a beginner and want to use podcasts in any meaningful way, using beginner aimed content is actually very helpful and this community devalues it a ton. Something else I thought I would mention is that a I've noticed within my own immersion that the more I listen to an individual talk, it gets exponentially easier to understand them. Most of my immersion has come from the same few sources, so there are some people who I can understand almost everything they say, (I've listened to Roto's videos on repeat so many times lmao) and others which I struggle to understand as well because I haven't spent a long time listening to them. Despite this, I think tunnel visioning on one person is a great way to push your comprehension ceiling higher, and a reason that I think the Hikaru challenge will work wonders for anyone that does it. I'm currently doing something similar and aiming to listen to every episode of a pretty long podcast that I currently find pretty difficult to understand, and see where that takes my comprehension, but I have a feeling at the end I should be able to pick up the majority of it. As for the music thing, I also agree that people undervalue it a lot. It's not some god-tier source in which you'll acquire natural language, but for me, it is sort of like the natural SRS effect to the max. I often read lyrics of my favorite songs make Anki cards for all the words that I don't know, and then when I listen to those songs, it's like I'm doing reps for those words. The added benefit of music is that if you really like a song, you're probably going to listen to it many times over, and in my experience, listening over to any source of immersion seems to have great effects on acquiring certain phrases or difficult words way easier. sorry for writing an essay in the comments didn't expect this to be so long tl;dr - i think you are right
I am also listening to "nihongo con teppei" as my main immersion source right now. According to you what would be the next logical step after it content wise?
@@subhojitmalik1616 once you can understand almost all of it, start phasing it out and listen to podcasts that are meant for natives. This doesn't have to be instant, but eventually you don't want to be listening to stuff aimed at learners when you can understand it. If you can understand Teppei's podcast (the main one, not the beginner one), you're at a pretty solid level of base comprehension with everyday conversation. You will struggle with comprehending harder stuff undoubtedly, but the more time you spend on other content, the easier it gets. It's really up to you what you listen to, but the important thing is just to find a podcast that you can listen to a lot. You can download this app called Podcast Addict that lets you filter by language, and it has a ton of podcasts available for free. Also if you like listening to Teppei, he has a short playlist on his UA-cam channel somewhere with some videos in which he just talks about how to learn English which is aimed at a Japanese audience, so it's harder than his normal podcast.
@@subhojitmalik1616 game nantoka is a good videogame podcast, if you like anime, there is a really long running one called そこアニ. There is a tech podcast called Rebuild that I hear a lot of people say good things about but I never have listened to them a lot. You could also listen to ひろゆき livestreams
@@subhojitmalik1616 Just an FYI - There is the follow on podcast called "Nihongo Con Teppei Z" which is the slightly more advanced version of Nihongo Con Teppei.
When you mentioned music, WOW. I could not relate more, I have a playlist just for the Japanese music I listen to and it seems like every couple plays or so (after I've being learning through SRS and normal immersion) I pick up more and more of the lyrics, then I feel like that translates back into immersion
Little kids often listen to their favorite things over & over, so it seems like a natural enough way to learn, as long as it's balanced with plenty of variety. With regard to easy / beginner material, I think there are 2 different ways of doing this. One is to watch & listen to things that are spoken very clearly, with plenty of context, pictures & gestures, or words & phrases you already know, so that you can understand. This is the whole point of "comprehensible input," & is probably ideal for beginners. The other way of making things for beginners is to translate everything, or just dumb the language down so much that it becomes totally artificial, speaking super slowly, isolating & repeating single words over & over, etc. As far as I know, no real studies have ever been done to show if this is helpful or harmful, but I personally try to avoid it. In a natural setting, the brain's first job is to identify words & phrases in the speech stream, which it does by learning the language's phonology (rhythm, stress, timing, pitch, intonation, etc). Language learners often try to skip this phase, then wonder why our listening comprehension, pronunciation & accent suffer. Again, I don't think there's any strong evidence that artificially dumbed-down content is problematic, as it's never been studied; but if I can find easy authentic speech (complete sentences, etc), I prefer to listen to that. I also listen to full-on adult native material even as a beginner, like you mention - even babies hear more adult speech than they do baby talk.
I agree with this method. Just from my experience, I listen to material over and over until I understand most of it. I learn and pick out things I didn’t the first, second, third time, etc. When you hear the same words/phrases in something new、 your ear is tuned to it.
Two thoughts come to mind about this, especially with music. My wife is very musically talented, so she's able to pick up on lyrics, even in Japanese, in ways that I cannot (likely because her brain ties into rhythm, etc). So, for her, listen to music is like a shortcut - like, due to her natural/trained musical inclinations, she probably understands lyrics easier than she would as just pain text for the identical content. Therefore, depending on the learner, types of media may have different rates of comprehension. Additionally, my other thought about music that makes it unique is that there are varied tempos and rhythms which distort the language. Tones and syllables are shortened and elongated, depending on how the song is written/performed. I think this is a good thing, since it trains you to hear imperfect/unexpected/irregular speech patterns and pronunciation. Audio which accompanies textbooks or language courses tend to be overly scripted and robotic, which is very different from natural speech.
mate this is exactly what i've been doing. I watch a channel called Russian Progress on UA-cam and he makes his own transcriptions/ subs. I watch the video lots of times, extract the text into a PDF and read it on my kindle. I read through the English translations first, then read through in Russian. Whilst im reading I translate everything unknown, which is usually about 30-40%. The first few runs throughs are difficult but once I come back to it the next day I remember a lot. Sentences I dont know go straight into Anki. After having watched the video and read the transcripts lots of times, its amazing how quick those words stick. Once i have got a little bored of the content, I download it as an mp3 onto my iPod and it becomes passive immersion. This process has been working solid asf for me recently. Working with the text, translating, and high repetition is golden. I still add variety but for about an hour each day I consume content im already familiar with.
Pretty interesting learning idea. I think this was Cure Dolly's recommended way of getting into immersion too. But this is basically what you're doing when you read stuff with Yomichan, right? You know what every word means thanks to Yomichan, and you can just reread the sentence until feel like you understand it. It's like that, but in listening form. Also, I've also been taking vocab from music and listening to music over and over. Instead of taking time to make an i+1 sentence, I just try to remember where the word came from in the song, which saves time when making the card. Listening to music is just fun and it's inherently catchy, so I reckon it's a pretty good method. No one's going to remember a podcast, but even before studying Japanese, I could kind of repeat some sounds from Japanese music.
Yeah true good point it is pretty much the same process to thar isn't. Yeah music really is good in that way I reckon even if its just a small tiny part of your immersion still makes a difference I reckon
ngl when i first started japanese i got really hooked on a jp group, and for the first few months i'd loop their music nearly everyday (there are only about 7 songs so it's a lot of repetition) and yeah i kinda learned a lot of words and some basic grammar forms from them lmao
Interesting video! Thanks for talking about this. I got obsessed with the music of カネコアヤノduring the pandemic and learned a bunch of her songs - my cover versions are on my channel if anyone wants to check them out. Learning the songs required a ton of repetition and definitely taught me certain vocabulary and grammar. I would say learning songs is roughly equivalent to the immersion that results from reading a lot: if you read a long book, you're likely to see certain words enough times that they stick. If you learn a song, you repeat certain words so many times that they stick. Just listening to the songs many times over would probably be just as valuable, as long as you did the work to translate and understand the lyrics.
This reminds me of the idea of sentence audio cards in anki. When you think about it it's really similar to for example listening to a song you know the lyrics to over and over again. You have an audio track on the front of a highly comprehensible native audio, since it's an anki card you will surely listen to it over and over again. I have seen some people that have tried going full audio cards in anki and it greatly improves their listening comprehension. I honestly kinda brushed aside the idea of watching something on repeat but maybe there is some merit in for example taking an episode from a show (or smth like a ted talk), using transcripts / subs to make sure you know the words with the grammar and then just listening to it a lot on repeat until you can really easily comprehend what's being spoken. After all it usually takes a fair bit of repeated exposure to a word before you become able to naturally comprehend it, perhaps this kind of practice could speed up the process. I'm probably gonna stick to usual immersion anyway though because personally I really don't like listening to the same thing over and over again.
This is pretty minor but I felt like I experienced this yesterday. I was watching a video and couldn't actually understand some of it, so I decided to go back 5 minutes or so in the video and then I was suddenly much better able to understand what I was listening to.
With my experience (a little over 2 years) I practically didn't do any immersion by watching content with no subs or rarely watched with jp subs but I listened to ONLY japanese music the entire time (I immersed solely by books and manga), im now watching content all the time since last month and I feel that my listening is definitely my weakest aspect by far and needs a long way to go although I can tell I got extreme benefits from the listening as compared to if I didn't listen to jp music at all. I actually regret not studying more songs because when I did I would learn those words to a high degree. There 100% is value to music and it's much more than just a little as long as you put effort into learning the songs
During music practice, the metronome is king. It keeps time for you, but it's a horrible slave driver and trying to practice something at the same tempo all the time gets maddening. When I'm really struggling with playing something(piano) I'll speed up the tempo even if it's definitely not possible to keep up with. Because when I return to the normal pace, suddenly it's easier. I'll do this a couple times in the same 1 hour period or a couple times throughout the day if I cant get one solid practice session in. I think this is effect you're talking about. During music practice a lot of this is handled by the motor cortex in the brain. But from the research I've done, it isn't restricted to sports, music, or any task. That's just how the brain seems to work. ua-cam.com/video/xJ0IBzCjEPk/v-deo.html
Interesting idea, I did a little bit of easy stories and easy podcasts at the beginning of learning japanese like Japanese With Noriko, the season 1 (365 episodes) has a transcript, so that helped me a lot to get the basics of the language. Another experience that I had was leaning english in 2020, at the beginning I used easy stories and listen to that a lot, so when I get used to those stories, I just move on to youtube and started to watch anothers poliglots and watch others type of content like the minimalists podcast and etc. So because of the basic stories, I could get the basics and move on to something more real. But I stopped to study english and start to study japanese in 2021 until now, I've been really enjoying the hikaru's content brow, Thank you so much. obs.: This idea of reading the lyrics I going to try out, maybe can be really helpful, thanks again 😁
When I did my passive immersion, it would be audio of anime episodes I’ve seen. And after listening to the same episodes again and again just a few dozen times. I would know the audio of the episode like the back of my hand, and though I wouldn’t even know 20% of the words in the episodes, when I would encounter a word in active immersion it would lead to me instantly fitting it in because I had a sentence that used it stuck in my brain. I 100% think there is a place for this and I think as passive immersion having a rotation of a few comprehensible and even incomprehensible clips really works. Just the repetition aspect of it creates like shelves that are ready for information to be placed into.
Music-listening was actually the most review I ever did in terms of vocabulary vefore I ever heard of Anki. I kept a notebook of handwritten lyrics and a glossary of unknown vocabulary at the end of each song. If I ever got tripped up by the lyrical contennt while listening without looking at the lyrics, I'd consult my notes and remind myself to try and relisten to the song a few hours later. Years later, when I started learning 古文, music was *still* my gateway to comprehensible input. Mostly military marches like 抜刀隊, but still.
I can also speak from experience that I instantly understand long strings of Japanese in completely different contexts that are similar to audio I’ve listened to on repeat before… I find that I can understand larger chunks of Japanese in different contexts from this method rather than just a few words here and there like I used to..
I've been doing something like this. I have a selection of monologues that I listen to over and over, I also read along with the transcripts on LingQ in order to pick up the vocabulary (I hate Anki). My goal is to be able to speak with people. If I want to be as efficient as possible then watching TV or shows is not as useful because the language density is low (lots of pauses) and a lot of the vocabulary might not be applicable to day to day life (depending on the genre that you're watching). You have to be motivated to listen and read to the material that is quite dry, compared to an movie or show that has an interesting story.
I think you're right about the music part. When I was about 10 years old and only used to watch anime in english, I had the DVD for Gundam 00. During the opening Daybreak's Bell, both the english translation and the romajii were subtitled. At the end of the first sentence, the singer stretches/emphasizes the word onegai. In the translation, I saw it read 'please'. Since I listened to that song like every day as a kid, I always knew that onegai=please through that song. From then on, whenever I heard it in other anime openings (because at this point I still watched anime dubbed), I knew that they were saying please. More recently, with the opening of Tokyo Ghoul Unravel, the singer TK speaks every word super clearly and distinctly, that I was able to put two and two together that oshiete = tell me.
One more thing. When I first started with immersion, I found that I could not keep up with any of the Japanese subtitles at all. Obviously I couldn't read all of them, but I'd have trouble assigning what word was being spoken with what I saw at the bottom. While now I could easily pick out spoken words that I don't know, I could not do this before. However, like you mentioned at 8:00, I was able to load up Gurenge on spotify and keep up with every word LiSa was singing because I had heard that song a few thousand times already.
It's weird how I both have a musical ear and hyperlexia, I couldn't properly explain how that's like. I listen to so much 1960s anime openings not because I've watched them but because I have a niche for historical items and vintage things, there's so much 1920s japanese media that can be found; I listen to those quiet alot. Japanese culture was far different from today back at the end of the 明治時代 and if you're an amateur historian then I'd suggest checking out federal Japan for sure. I pick up words quickly especially when I listen to anyone who articulates their words accurately. I noticed how I also experienced all this, words I've picked up through music comes again in other media.
I agree. But I think in some way or another, we are already doing this without you knowing. If you love that particular video, song, anime or movie, of course you would go back to it frequently. Otherwise, the hell are you learning jp for? Back in 2017 (first year of learning JP), I was literally infatuated with Japanese idols. Some of the songs are a banger even till this day, and their songs lyrics are extremely relatable no cap, especially Keyakizaka, and I had memorised all their lyrics through the insane song replays. I rewatched their live and TV appearances too even though I didn't understand even 50% of it. I learnt a lot of words without using Anki. Sure you will memorise a lot more through mining shit you read, but naturally you would pick up words too. My weeb friend never studied jp (maybe some kana) but when we watched seiyuu stuff together, he actually got the gist of some parts. How? Probably hundreds of anime. Is it a novel, revoluntionary way that will break N1 speedrun record any%? Maybe, cause that piece of thing must be something you really love and you just subconsciously go back to it, like your favourite doujin, or that funny hololive clip, because if you don't have these guilty pleasures, you won't learn jp in the first place. However, it sounds similar to a technique called chorusing (which I've been trying) where you repeat a sentence and say it in unison, hundreds of times. I mean, you're already listening to the same, 100% comprehensible stuff, why not combine it with speaking? But I can't comment on the effectiveness yet as I've only been doing it for 1-2 months.
When I feel less motivated on an immersion day, I watch アオりチャンネルAoriChannel. The vocab is almost the same because most of her videos review department store items. Now when I watch 朝倉未来 it's easier to pick words.
Only part way through the video, but wanna say somethin'. I've been repeatedly binging Noriko podcast with and without my computer in front of me, with and without the transcript. So everyday I aim to listen and read (with transcript) one new one I haven't listened to yet, and I'll write down the words, or take note of them on the computer (I like practicing writing, every part of the language acquisition is important to me, or else I wouldn't feel like I have acquired). I get the gist of the episode. Then while doing chores, etc. I'll play the older episodes on repeat, until it is very easy to understand *almost* everything (an episode probably gets retired after 20 listens). There's some grammatical nuances here and there, so I don't go nuts over it generally unless I can discern what it is exactly I need to learn. Also, I'll go to an episode in between the old ones and the new ones (that I've watched, old and new to me in particular), and in order, I'll mine words from the podcasts I've played about 5-10 times. After mining the words and reviewing the cards, I then listen a few more times without subtitles to gain an ear for the language. This kinda sounds like what you are going to talk about, but yea I haven't completely finished the video yet. To sum it up, this 3 step process (new episode familiarization, old episodes without subs, + mining) is pretty time consuming (but a lot of it can be done almost 'passively'). It is a very very good method in my experience, and at the moment, as a late beginner, I do this method much, much more than immersing with reading (with no sound) or videos/anime, etc. I don't like Matt's sales tactics, he's scummy af, but the Refold idea of choosing a Domain and 'mastering' it applies here. So cherry picking the Refold guide has been at the very least decent sometimes. So, all in all, if anyone is questioning this method, I'd definitely recommend following my ascribed practice for like 10, 5-10 minute podcasts. Also, it is definitely important to have a good quality podcast. Noriko imo is good at mixing it up and increasing the difficulty here and there, it doesn't become stale. Also hundreds of episodes and transcripts afaik. also, i've heard of advanced learners using anki to mine whole paragraphs of text. I think this video and what I said is the gigachad way to actually drill a large block of text.
I want to ask about a similar idea of repetition that I have been using. My favorite immersion material is a Japanese youtuber who has around 100 or so videos on his gaming channel. He uploads very infrequently so I have basically just been cycling through the same 100 videos rewatching them over and over. His content is a little more difficult (in speed and complexity) and I would say, depending on the video, I can understand around 80% on average. Would this same idea of repetition and learning apply? Or is there too much volume and not enough comprehension for it to really work as well as simpler, more comprehensible content. I know that I have learned a lot of phrases that he uses frequently and they are very ingrained into my memory from hearing them so much. But, would the continued repetition be able to help me close the gap and comprehend the last ~30%?
Agree and disagree with this, but that's because I mostly think it depends on the person. For people who can tolerate going through more 'comprehensible' content, power to them, and vice versa! I've always tried to dive into the deep end with all immersion content and keep checking out new stuff because it keeps me engaged, and of course it's excruciating at times because you get the full native experience, haha, but it really gives your brain a good workout in the language. That being said, I keep saving content I particularly like and I do go back through them every so often and understand a teeny bit more every time. Small gains = snowball effect, right? 🙂 Oh, perhaps a tad off-topic and might've missed it if you mentioned it before, Aussie, but what advice to you have regarding focusing during listening? To phrase the question better, what do you focus on and how do you keep that focus when the majority of content can still sound like white noise? The thing is I know that's completely natural and will be for a very long time, as you confirmed yourself. Especially at the start of one's journey where nothing will be comprehensible, really, even things like beginner's podcasts, etc.
Hey オージマン I’ve been using a srs flash card system for a couple months and focused on learning new vocab and would watch content on UA-cam when I have the chance, however I’ve slowed down since school, and struggling to have the willpower to test myself on these words.I’m at 2000 + words but I feel as srs has become was too straining,and hindering my language learning.I don’t believe I’m taking the right approach any tips?
I began watching a Japanese UA-cam channel a few months ago that focuses on the more technical aspects of computers, networking, programming, and so on. At first, I didn't know a lot of technical vocabulary. Since I would to be able to talk to people and explain these concepts in Japanese, I began watching the same videos repeatedly until I perfectly shadow the audio. I've watched some videos so much that I can narrate them word for word. Do you need me to explain how a 半導体 works? （笑） Since the same technical vocabulary comes up repeatedly, I can now watch other technical UA-cam channels and my comprehension has increased exponentially in that area. I agree though, 10%-15% is probably enough and the rest should be focused on normal immersion.
So, let me get this straight. You memorize lyric sheets and listen on repeat, then are able to recognize the words from said lyric sheet elsewhere, and this is somehow groundbreaking?
There used to be a language learning channel called Motivate Korean where one of the hosts talked about repetitive listening and its effects. What you're suggesting here has a lot of overlap with that. You asked if you think there's merit in what you were saying, and I think there is.
The specific video is no longer available, but the gist of the method he suggested was:
- Find an audio clip
-- Length: 5-7 minutes for intermediate and advanced learners; 1-2 minutes for beginners.
-- Difficulty: Preferably something near your level, but it doesn’t have to be 100% comprehensible.
-- Format: Podcast with no more than two people speaking. Too many people makes it hard to follow, and a single person means you won’t pick up on how people actually converse.
- Listen to the audio clip on repeat 80-100 times over a week
-- It was recommended to do this while washing dishes, walking outside, or doing other mindless tasks.
The reported results suggest that repetitive listening like this will result in phrases and words “bubbling up” to one’s consciousness after a maturation period. As a result, whole chunks of language flow naturally in one’s speech (often being exactly what one heard in one’s listening), and with a good accent. The guy in the video was often complimented on having native-like Korean in terms of expression and accent/pronunciation. One interesting thing he mentioned as being a benefit of this method is that he often found himself knowing how to use words and expressions before knowing the meaning.
Beautiful post!
Thanks for sharing. I agree fully with that. Even better is something you start of with like 70% comprehension and you have the text and you listen to it like 80 times that week AND review the text and follow your advice . By the end of the week, you'll be super solid.
This happened to me as well with English from repeatedly watching Harry Potter. And it also happened to my sister from listening to songs without learning English at all.
I’m so glad you made this video.
I’ve been telling people about this method in other immersion communities and I always get shot down and called stupid for doing this.
But I keep getting better and better at Japanese despite not really putting nearly as much hours into it as most people.
I feel like you have to be careful about this to make sure you don’t hammer in incorrect understanding of things and maybe you should wait to do this until you have at least a few months of basic experience first.
But honestly, I’ve always felt like this is the real way to learn.
Regardless of what anyone says, there has to be some merit to creating hours and hours of 99% comprehensible input that you can listen to over and over…
What I like to do is mine and learn as many words as I can in a tv show and pretty much make it as close to 100% comprehensible as I can, then I rewatch and I listen to it passively until I get bored of it. After that I go find a new show to mine and do the same thing with. For me I feel like it works and it’s actually pretty fun for me.
I spent a long time in the beginning listening to comprehensible learner content, so I feel like my situation might apply well to what you're talking about.
When you're a beginner, native aimed podcasts, especially with multiple people talking, are super difficult. It's basically unintelligible. I went through this experience and it was frustrating. Since the whole point of this immersion thing is comprehensible input, pretty earlier into learning Japanese, I listened to a TON of learner podcasts. At first it was super baby shit, which was easy to get a grasp of just because of how common the words were, and sticking on that too long is a mistake, but there are intermediate/advanced level podcasts or content that is still aimed at learners in which I think are super useful. I spent many months listening to this podcast called "Nihongo Con Teppei" (basically a guy who talks about every day topics in relatively simple Japanese which is aimed at intermediate or advanced learners). Listening to this for hundreds of hours skyrocketed my comprehension probably faster than just brute forcing unintelligible native content would have. People act like listening to a learner aimed resource or podcast is poison to your ears because it's not exactly how natives would talk at full speed to one another, but in reality, it's still natural native speech because the person talking is a native in your target language and you're still hearing things spoken with a perfect accent and grammar, just with a higher degree of possible comprehension.
My experience was that doing this allowed me to start learning from audio only sources in a way that didn't make it feel super painful from lack of engagement due to not understanding anything in the beginning. I solidified a lot of my conceptual knowledge of how Japanese works from doing this, and transferring that knowledge to native aimed sources was not super difficult. Taking the jump from understanding literally everything in a learner resource to listening to a native aimed podcast in which you don't understand as much is obviously going to be a pain, but you get used to it with enough listening time. I think if you are a beginner and want to use podcasts in any meaningful way, using beginner aimed content is actually very helpful and this community devalues it a ton.
Something else I thought I would mention is that a I've noticed within my own immersion that the more I listen to an individual talk, it gets exponentially easier to understand them. Most of my immersion has come from the same few sources, so there are some people who I can understand almost everything they say, (I've listened to Roto's videos on repeat so many times lmao) and others which I struggle to understand as well because I haven't spent a long time listening to them. Despite this, I think tunnel visioning on one person is a great way to push your comprehension ceiling higher, and a reason that I think the Hikaru challenge will work wonders for anyone that does it. I'm currently doing something similar and aiming to listen to every episode of a pretty long podcast that I currently find pretty difficult to understand, and see where that takes my comprehension, but I have a feeling at the end I should be able to pick up the majority of it.
As for the music thing, I also agree that people undervalue it a lot. It's not some god-tier source in which you'll acquire natural language, but for me, it is sort of like the natural SRS effect to the max. I often read lyrics of my favorite songs make Anki cards for all the words that I don't know, and then when I listen to those songs, it's like I'm doing reps for those words. The added benefit of music is that if you really like a song, you're probably going to listen to it many times over, and in my experience, listening over to any source of immersion seems to have great effects on acquiring certain phrases or difficult words way easier.
sorry for writing an essay in the comments didn't expect this to be so long
tl;dr - i think you are right
I am also listening to "nihongo con teppei" as my main immersion source right now.
According to you what would be the next logical step after it content wise?
@@subhojitmalik1616 once you can understand almost all of it, start phasing it out and listen to podcasts that are meant for natives. This doesn't have to be instant, but eventually you don't want to be listening to stuff aimed at learners when you can understand it. If you can understand Teppei's podcast (the main one, not the beginner one), you're at a pretty solid level of base comprehension with everyday conversation. You will struggle with comprehending harder stuff undoubtedly, but the more time you spend on other content, the easier it gets. It's really up to you what you listen to, but the important thing is just to find a podcast that you can listen to a lot.
You can download this app called Podcast Addict that lets you filter by language, and it has a ton of podcasts available for free. Also if you like listening to Teppei, he has a short playlist on his UA-cam channel somewhere with some videos in which he just talks about how to learn English which is aimed at a Japanese audience, so it's harder than his normal podcast.
@@subhojitmalik1616 game nantoka is a good videogame podcast, if you like anime, there is a really long running one called そこアニ. There is a tech podcast called Rebuild that I hear a lot of people say good things about but I never have listened to them a lot. You could also listen to ひろゆき livestreams
@@aapolars thanks and best of luck in your japanese journey!
@@subhojitmalik1616 Just an FYI - There is the follow on podcast called "Nihongo Con Teppei Z" which is the slightly more advanced version of Nihongo Con Teppei.
When you mentioned music, WOW. I could not relate more, I have a playlist just for the Japanese music I listen to and it seems like every couple plays or so (after I've being learning through SRS and normal immersion) I pick up more and more of the lyrics, then I feel like that translates back into immersion
Little kids often listen to their favorite things over & over, so it seems like a natural enough way to learn, as long as it's balanced with plenty of variety.
With regard to easy / beginner material, I think there are 2 different ways of doing this. One is to watch & listen to things that are spoken very clearly, with plenty of context, pictures & gestures, or words & phrases you already know, so that you can understand. This is the whole point of "comprehensible input," & is probably ideal for beginners.
The other way of making things for beginners is to translate everything, or just dumb the language down so much that it becomes totally artificial, speaking super slowly, isolating & repeating single words over & over, etc. As far as I know, no real studies have ever been done to show if this is helpful or harmful, but I personally try to avoid it. In a natural setting, the brain's first job is to identify words & phrases in the speech stream, which it does by learning the language's phonology (rhythm, stress, timing, pitch, intonation, etc). Language learners often try to skip this phase, then wonder why our listening comprehension, pronunciation & accent suffer.
Again, I don't think there's any strong evidence that artificially dumbed-down content is problematic, as it's never been studied; but if I can find easy authentic speech (complete sentences, etc), I prefer to listen to that. I also listen to full-on adult native material even as a beginner, like you mention - even babies hear more adult speech than they do baby talk.
I agree with this method. Just from my experience, I listen to material over and over until I understand most of it. I learn and pick out things I didn’t the first, second, third time, etc. When you hear the same words/phrases in something new、 your ear is tuned to it.
I've done something similar called repetitive listening. The mistake I made was doing it 90% of the time, not 10% of the time.
Yeah gotta keep it as the minority of your immersion to get the best out of it prolly aye
Two thoughts come to mind about this, especially with music.
My wife is very musically talented, so she's able to pick up on lyrics, even in Japanese, in ways that I cannot (likely because her brain ties into rhythm, etc). So, for her, listen to music is like a shortcut - like, due to her natural/trained musical inclinations, she probably understands lyrics easier than she would as just pain text for the identical content. Therefore, depending on the learner, types of media may have different rates of comprehension.
Additionally, my other thought about music that makes it unique is that there are varied tempos and rhythms which distort the language. Tones and syllables are shortened and elongated, depending on how the song is written/performed. I think this is a good thing, since it trains you to hear imperfect/unexpected/irregular speech patterns and pronunciation. Audio which accompanies textbooks or language courses tend to be overly scripted and robotic, which is very different from natural speech.
mate this is exactly what i've been doing. I watch a channel called Russian Progress on UA-cam and he makes his own transcriptions/ subs. I watch the video lots of times, extract the text into a PDF and read it on my kindle. I read through the English translations first, then read through in Russian. Whilst im reading I translate everything unknown, which is usually about 30-40%. The first few runs throughs are difficult but once I come back to it the next day I remember a lot. Sentences I dont know go straight into Anki. After having watched the video and read the transcripts lots of times, its amazing how quick those words stick. Once i have got a little bored of the content, I download it as an mp3 onto my iPod and it becomes passive immersion. This process has been working solid asf for me recently. Working with the text, translating, and high repetition is golden. I still add variety but for about an hour each day I consume content im already familiar with.
Pretty interesting learning idea. I think this was Cure Dolly's recommended way of getting into immersion too. But this is basically what you're doing when you read stuff with Yomichan, right? You know what every word means thanks to Yomichan, and you can just reread the sentence until feel like you understand it. It's like that, but in listening form.
Also, I've also been taking vocab from music and listening to music over and over. Instead of taking time to make an i+1 sentence, I just try to remember where the word came from in the song, which saves time when making the card. Listening to music is just fun and it's inherently catchy, so I reckon it's a pretty good method. No one's going to remember a podcast, but even before studying Japanese, I could kind of repeat some sounds from Japanese music.
Yeah true good point it is pretty much the same process to thar isn't.
Yeah music really is good in that way I reckon even if its just a small tiny part of your immersion still makes a difference I reckon
ngl when i first started japanese i got really hooked on a jp group, and for the first few months i'd loop their music nearly everyday (there are only about 7 songs so it's a lot of repetition)
and yeah i kinda learned a lot of words and some basic grammar forms from them lmao
Interesting video! Thanks for talking about this. I got obsessed with the music of カネコアヤノduring the pandemic and learned a bunch of her songs - my cover versions are on my channel if anyone wants to check them out. Learning the songs required a ton of repetition and definitely taught me certain vocabulary and grammar. I would say learning songs is roughly equivalent to the immersion that results from reading a lot: if you read a long book, you're likely to see certain words enough times that they stick. If you learn a song, you repeat certain words so many times that they stick. Just listening to the songs many times over would probably be just as valuable, as long as you did the work to translate and understand the lyrics.
This reminds me of the idea of sentence audio cards in anki. When you think about it it's really similar to for example listening to a song you know the lyrics to over and over again.
You have an audio track on the front of a highly comprehensible native audio, since it's an anki card you will surely listen to it over and over again. I have seen some people that have tried going full audio cards in anki and it greatly improves their listening comprehension.
I honestly kinda brushed aside the idea of watching something on repeat but maybe there is some merit in for example taking an episode from a show (or smth like a ted talk), using transcripts / subs to make sure you know the words with the grammar and then just listening to it a lot on repeat until you can really easily comprehend what's being spoken. After all it usually takes a fair bit of repeated exposure to a word before you become able to naturally comprehend it, perhaps this kind of practice could speed up the process.
I'm probably gonna stick to usual immersion anyway though because personally I really don't like listening to the same thing over and over again.
This is pretty minor but I felt like I experienced this yesterday. I was watching a video and couldn't actually understand some of it, so I decided to go back 5 minutes or so in the video and then I was suddenly much better able to understand what I was listening to.
Oh cool yeah true tho that sounds like a minor occurrence of the same thing doesnt it
With my experience (a little over 2 years) I practically didn't do any immersion by watching content with no subs or rarely watched with jp subs but I listened to ONLY japanese music the entire time (I immersed solely by books and manga), im now watching content all the time since last month and I feel that my listening is definitely my weakest aspect by far and needs a long way to go although I can tell I got extreme benefits from the listening as compared to if I didn't listen to jp music at all. I actually regret not studying more songs because when I did I would learn those words to a high degree. There 100% is value to music and it's much more than just a little as long as you put effort into learning the songs
During music practice, the metronome is king. It keeps time for you, but it's a horrible slave driver and trying to practice something at the same tempo all the time gets maddening.
When I'm really struggling with playing something(piano) I'll speed up the tempo even if it's definitely not possible to keep up with. Because when I return to the normal pace, suddenly it's easier. I'll do this a couple times in the same 1 hour period or a couple times throughout the day if I cant get one solid practice session in.
I think this is effect you're talking about. During music practice a lot of this is handled by the motor cortex in the brain. But from the research I've done, it isn't restricted to sports, music, or any task. That's just how the brain seems to work.
ua-cam.com/video/xJ0IBzCjEPk/v-deo.html
Interesting idea, I did a little bit of easy stories and easy podcasts at the beginning of learning japanese like Japanese With Noriko, the season 1 (365 episodes) has a transcript, so that helped me a lot to get the basics of the language.
Another experience that I had was leaning english in 2020, at the beginning I used easy stories and listen to that a lot, so when I get used to those stories, I just move on to youtube and started to watch anothers poliglots and watch others type of content like the minimalists podcast and etc. So because of the basic stories, I could get the basics and move on to something more real. But I stopped to study english and start to study japanese in 2021 until now, I've been really enjoying the hikaru's content brow, Thank you so much.
obs.: This idea of reading the lyrics I going to try out, maybe can be really helpful, thanks again 😁
When I did my passive immersion, it would be audio of anime episodes I’ve seen. And after listening to the same episodes again and again just a few dozen times. I would know the audio of the episode like the back of my hand, and though I wouldn’t even know 20% of the words in the episodes, when I would encounter a word in active immersion it would lead to me instantly fitting it in because I had a sentence that used it stuck in my brain. I 100% think there is a place for this and I think as passive immersion having a rotation of a few comprehensible and even incomprehensible clips really works. Just the repetition aspect of it creates like shelves that are ready for information to be placed into.
Music-listening was actually the most review I ever did in terms of vocabulary vefore I ever heard of Anki. I kept a notebook of handwritten lyrics and a glossary of unknown vocabulary at the end of each song. If I ever got tripped up by the lyrical contennt while listening without looking at the lyrics, I'd consult my notes and remind myself to try and relisten to the song a few hours later.
Years later, when I started learning 古文, music was *still* my gateway to comprehensible input. Mostly military marches like 抜刀隊, but still.
I can also speak from experience that I instantly understand long strings of Japanese in completely different contexts that are similar to audio I’ve listened to on repeat before…
I find that I can understand larger chunks of Japanese in different contexts from this method rather than just a few words here and there like I used to..
I've been doing something like this. I have a selection of monologues that I listen to over and over, I also read along with the transcripts on LingQ in order to pick up the vocabulary (I hate Anki). My goal is to be able to speak with people. If I want to be as efficient as possible then watching TV or shows is not as useful because the language density is low (lots of pauses) and a lot of the vocabulary might not be applicable to day to day life (depending on the genre that you're watching). You have to be motivated to listen and read to the material that is quite dry, compared to an movie or show that has an interesting story.
I think you're right about the music part. When I was about 10 years old and only used to watch anime in english, I had the DVD for Gundam 00. During the opening Daybreak's Bell, both the english translation and the romajii were subtitled. At the end of the first sentence, the singer stretches/emphasizes the word onegai. In the translation, I saw it read 'please'. Since I listened to that song like every day as a kid, I always knew that onegai=please through that song. From then on, whenever I heard it in other anime openings (because at this point I still watched anime dubbed), I knew that they were saying please. More recently, with the opening of Tokyo Ghoul Unravel, the singer TK speaks every word super clearly and distinctly, that I was able to put two and two together that oshiete = tell me.
One more thing. When I first started with immersion, I found that I could not keep up with any of the Japanese subtitles at all. Obviously I couldn't read all of them, but I'd have trouble assigning what word was being spoken with what I saw at the bottom. While now I could easily pick out spoken words that I don't know, I could not do this before. However, like you mentioned at 8:00, I was able to load up Gurenge on spotify and keep up with every word LiSa was singing because I had heard that song a few thousand times already.
It's weird how I both have a musical ear and hyperlexia, I couldn't properly explain how that's like.
I listen to so much 1960s anime openings not because I've watched them but because I have a niche for historical items and vintage things, there's so much 1920s japanese media that can be found; I listen to those quiet alot. Japanese culture was far different from today back at the end of the 明治時代 and if you're an amateur historian then I'd suggest checking out federal Japan for sure.
I pick up words quickly especially when I listen to anyone who articulates their words accurately. I noticed how I also experienced all this, words I've picked up through music comes again in other media.
I agree.
But I think in some way or another, we are already doing this without you knowing. If you love that particular video, song, anime or movie, of course you would go back to it frequently. Otherwise, the hell are you learning jp for?
Back in 2017 (first year of learning JP), I was literally infatuated with Japanese idols. Some of the songs are a banger even till this day, and their songs lyrics are extremely relatable no cap, especially Keyakizaka, and I had memorised all their lyrics through the insane song replays. I rewatched their live and TV appearances too even though I didn't understand even 50% of it. I learnt a lot of words without using Anki. Sure you will memorise a lot more through mining shit you read, but naturally you would pick up words too.
My weeb friend never studied jp (maybe some kana) but when we watched seiyuu stuff together, he actually got the gist of some parts. How? Probably hundreds of anime.
Is it a novel, revoluntionary way that will break N1 speedrun record any%? Maybe, cause that piece of thing must be something you really love and you just subconsciously go back to it, like your favourite doujin, or that funny hololive clip, because if you don't have these guilty pleasures, you won't learn jp in the first place.
However, it sounds similar to a technique called chorusing (which I've been trying) where you repeat a sentence and say it in unison, hundreds of times. I mean, you're already listening to the same, 100% comprehensible stuff, why not combine it with speaking?
But I can't comment on the effectiveness yet as I've only been doing it for 1-2 months.
When I feel less motivated on an immersion day, I watch アオりチャンネルAoriChannel. The vocab is almost the same because most of her videos review department store items. Now when I watch 朝倉未来 it's easier to pick words.
I'm not gonna even lie, Ketsumeishi helped my listening back in the day.
Only part way through the video, but wanna say somethin'. I've been repeatedly binging Noriko podcast with and without my computer in front of me, with and without the transcript. So everyday I aim to listen and read (with transcript) one new one I haven't listened to yet, and I'll write down the words, or take note of them on the computer (I like practicing writing, every part of the language acquisition is important to me, or else I wouldn't feel like I have acquired). I get the gist of the episode. Then while doing chores, etc. I'll play the older episodes on repeat, until it is very easy to understand *almost* everything (an episode probably gets retired after 20 listens). There's some grammatical nuances here and there, so I don't go nuts over it generally unless I can discern what it is exactly I need to learn. Also, I'll go to an episode in between the old ones and the new ones (that I've watched, old and new to me in particular), and in order, I'll mine words from the podcasts I've played about 5-10 times. After mining the words and reviewing the cards, I then listen a few more times without subtitles to gain an ear for the language. This kinda sounds like what you are going to talk about, but yea I haven't completely finished the video yet. To sum it up, this 3 step process (new episode familiarization, old episodes without subs, + mining) is pretty time consuming (but a lot of it can be done almost 'passively'). It is a very very good method in my experience, and at the moment, as a late beginner, I do this method much, much more than immersing with reading (with no sound) or videos/anime, etc. I don't like Matt's sales tactics, he's scummy af, but the Refold idea of choosing a Domain and 'mastering' it applies here. So cherry picking the Refold guide has been at the very least decent sometimes. So, all in all, if anyone is questioning this method, I'd definitely recommend following my ascribed practice for like 10, 5-10 minute podcasts. Also, it is definitely important to have a good quality podcast. Noriko imo is good at mixing it up and increasing the difficulty here and there, it doesn't become stale. Also hundreds of episodes and transcripts afaik.
also, i've heard of advanced learners using anki to mine whole paragraphs of text. I think this video and what I said is the gigachad way to actually drill a large block of text.
I want to ask about a similar idea of repetition that I have been using. My favorite immersion material is a Japanese youtuber who has around 100 or so videos on his gaming channel. He uploads very infrequently so I have basically just been cycling through the same 100 videos rewatching them over and over. His content is a little more difficult (in speed and complexity) and I would say, depending on the video, I can understand around 80% on average. Would this same idea of repetition and learning apply? Or is there too much volume and not enough comprehension for it to really work as well as simpler, more comprehensible content. I know that I have learned a lot of phrases that he uses frequently and they are very ingrained into my memory from hearing them so much. But, would the continued repetition be able to help me close the gap and comprehend the last ~30%?
This also reminds me of how kids will watch their favorite movie 20 times in a row. There must be some language gains there for sure.
Agree and disagree with this, but that's because I mostly think it depends on the person. For people who can tolerate going through more 'comprehensible' content, power to them, and vice versa!
I've always tried to dive into the deep end with all immersion content and keep checking out new stuff because it keeps me engaged, and of course it's excruciating at times because you get the full native experience, haha, but it really gives your brain a good workout in the language. That being said, I keep saving content I particularly like and I do go back through them every so often and understand a teeny bit more every time. Small gains = snowball effect, right? 🙂
Oh, perhaps a tad off-topic and might've missed it if you mentioned it before, Aussie, but what advice to you have regarding focusing during listening?
To phrase the question better, what do you focus on and how do you keep that focus when the majority of content can still sound like white noise?
The thing is I know that's completely natural and will be for a very long time, as you confirmed yourself. Especially at the start of one's journey where nothing will be comprehensible, really, even things like beginner's podcasts, etc.
Hey オージマン I’ve been using a srs flash card system for a couple months and focused on learning new vocab and would watch content on UA-cam when I have the chance, however I’ve slowed down since school, and struggling to have the willpower to test myself on these words.I’m at 2000 + words but I feel as srs has become was too straining,and hindering my language learning.I don’t believe I’m taking the right approach any tips?
I began watching a Japanese UA-cam channel a few months ago that focuses on the more technical aspects of computers, networking, programming, and so on. At first, I didn't know a lot of technical vocabulary. Since I would to be able to talk to people and explain these concepts in Japanese, I began watching the same videos repeatedly until I perfectly shadow the audio. I've watched some videos so much that I can narrate them word for word. Do you need me to explain how a 半導体 works? （笑）
Since the same technical vocabulary comes up repeatedly, I can now watch other technical UA-cam channels and my comprehension has increased exponentially in that area. I agree though, 10%-15% is probably enough and the rest should be focused on normal immersion.
Yo what channel is that, I'm struggling a bit to find good japanese computer science channels
Thanks
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So, let me get this straight. You memorize lyric sheets and listen on repeat, then are able to recognize the words from said lyric sheet elsewhere, and this is somehow groundbreaking?