Developing comprehension

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December 6, 2006· Filed Under Italy, Language, Work 

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As I mentioned in a recent post about comprehension skills, in order to develop my own comprehension level, I have started listening to Italian radio - Radio 1 - which has some music, but a lot of phone-ins about topical social and economic issues affecting Italy.  It’s early days yet, but while I have no real problems understanding the presenter, I cannot always follow what the callers are saying.  I think my comprehension difficulties are down to the speed with which certain, not all people, speak.  It appears that I cannot distinguish between individual words and the detailed meaning becomes blurred, although I can grasp the sense of what is being said.  I also find that I need to concentrate more to follow what is being said - which is probably a good thing as it should have a positive effect on my ability to understand and interact with Italian speakers.

There seems to be something of a paradox here.  When you start learning a language you are not encouraged to listen for exact details, but to try to grasp the sense or gist of a conversation.  However, once you are able to understand quite well, if you are a self-taught speaker like myself, you seem to lack the ability to hear all the words and, while you can often grasp the sense, you cannot always understand more precise details.  There are other factors too - trained speakers are easier to understand than non-trained speakers (probably due to the fact that they pronounce words clearly), such as members of the public.  Certain accents, surprise, surprise, cause comprehension problems too.  Advanced level language courses teach learners how to develop comprehension or listening skills and often include activities designed to raise the ability of a learner to understand as much detail as possible.

To an extent it is possible to develop your listening skills on your own, especially if you reside in the country in which the target language is spoken.  This can be done by honestly asking yourself what you have understood.  You can try paraphrasing the spoken discourse heard in the language you are learning in your mind - talking to yourself - but in your head, not out-loud, unless you are comfortable with this.  Radio has to be the most effective tool, in that you are forced to listen and you do not have images which can provide you with points of reference.   You can listen in two ways: Let the radio play in the background while you are doing something else, working, for example and see how much you are able to pick up from this ‘passive’ listening, and, stop what you are doing and try to concentrate on what is being said and see just how well you can follow the details of the conversation.

The passive listening will help to familiarise your dear old grey matter with the ’sound’ of the language, whereas the active listening should help to activate your passive skills and lead to an increase in your ability to understand the spoken word.   My own knowledge of Italian vocabulary is quite high, so listening regularly should help me to recognise the same words when they are used by different speakers. In turn I should find that my ability to understand and interact with a wider range of speaks becomes higher.  That’s the theory.  I’ll let you know how I get on. Oh, and sorry about this long-winded post, but I do find that writing things down helps me to focus my thoughts better and also understand whether what I am thinking about is plausible.

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4 Responses to “Developing comprehension”

  1. davidbdale said on December 6th, 2006 4:36 pm

    One technique I’ve been using to familiarize myself with the sound and sense of Spanish conversation is to keep Univision playing along with screen captions in English. Granted, I’m only fluent when speaking about the love affairs of curvaceous women and their unfaithful suitors, but, still, I guess that might come in handy some day!

  2. Alex said on December 6th, 2006 5:44 pm

    Hi David,
    I’m not a great one for subtitles. Don’t you find that you spend more time reading the English than listening to the Spanish? Seeing the subtitles in English also encourages translation, which is not good IMHO because it slows you down too much when you are speaking in the language you are trying to learn and more often than not leads to ‘painful’ hesitations (I know a lot about this from my always translating students…).

    How about turning those subtitles off and making your brain do the work? You will think you only understand a little, but your brain will be absorbing much, much more. I watched TV when I first came here without subtitles and it did real wonders for my comprehension.

    Having said that though, if you find that it develops your ability to speak ‘about the love affairs of curvaceous women and their unfaithful suitors’, then fine! As you say, you never know when that kind of skill may come in handy;-)
    Alex

  3. davidbdale said on December 6th, 2006 5:57 pm

    Hey Alex,

    Yes, you’re absolutely right. Both techniques have real value. Most of the time I let that TV run without looking at it at all, just absorbing the ryhthms of the language and learning to think in Spanish. The wonderful thing about TV subtitles is, they’re often still onscreen long after the words are spoken, so they provide a way to confirm (or dispute) that you’ve understood what you thought you understood.

    And, yes, curvaceous women do prefer to be addressed in their own language.

  4. Alex said on December 6th, 2006 6:04 pm

    Hi back David,
    Letting the TV just run without looking at it is an excellent way of getting your comprehension skills up to scratch, although watching it too is more effective (Without subtitles!!) as your clever old brain is able to connect much of the language to the images or vice versa. Anyway, it works. Although I’m not sure why.

    Now all you have to do is find a few curvaceous women and try out your, er, language skills;-)

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