Do you have such experience? No matter how much effort you have made to listen, you won't be able to understand what the hell someone is talking about, but once written down, you found that every words of it you are familiar with. How is it that there is such phenomenon?
This is the different between macro and micro. If every word being read out separately, it is not difficult to understand at all, because you are listening to consonants of each word. Such as t and d, b and p, f and th, be sure to listen clearly. Lets made this sentence as an example:"
Two different things we can interpreted as struggle, person by person we call it as a fighting skill or martial art, troop by troop we can call it as military strategy. when listening word by word we listen there consonant, listening sentence by sentence we listen there tone. This explains the case that we know every word but we can't understand the whole sentence by listening. With a macro-object, you need the macro-method to handle.
Besides the tone, there are other parts we have to pay attention to, one of them is the rhythm. within a conversation some part are speaking faster, some are slower, some with more stress, some less; sometimes pause, sometimes in consistent. To hear what was being said, we have to follow the rhythm, like dancing, two partner are with the same rhythm, otherwise they will be stepped on by each other, the dance cannot be continue any more. We need to know where to separate words, for example: "Pander eat shoots and leaves" can be listened as "Pander eats, shoots and leaves" in case you got the wrong rhythm. The noun "shoot" and "leaves" are plants, when they separate from eat, they will become verbs with totally different meaning. Here are two more interesting example: "A woman: without her, men is nothing." when the rhythm changed, it will become: "A woman, without her men, is nothing." "Forgive, not execute!" in different rhythm, will be: "Forgive not, execute!"
Even you can handle the tone and rhythm, some homo-phonic words are so hard to distinguish, affecting our understanding of the whole sentence. In Japanese "Organic" and "Courage" is a homonym: "Yu-u - ki [organic]", "Yu-u - ki [courage], "Perfume" and "Flood" is also: "ko-u - Sui [perfume], ko-u - Sui [flood] ". To tell the difference, can only rely on whole message around these words as clues to speculate, namely, the context of speaking. To determine the context, it is necessary to pay attention to some of the keywords, they will tell you what the topic is. Thus, you won't think farmer is planting "courage" vegetable, and won't think lady will go to department store to by "flood" also.
Tone, Rhythm and Context is the iron triangle in listening. Each of which has respective appropriated training.
1 Exercises for Mastering Tone - To find some textbook of basic level, those which covered different topics are the best, including terms of all kinds of occasions, for example, in restaurants, hotels, railway stations, hospitals, post offices, etc., a completed set of text and audio recording, about an hour long, contents are all dialogue. Firstly read the text a few times to ensure that all the contents are understand, and then play the recording, while listening watching the text at the same time. After your very familiar, don't see the text, just listen to the recording, if there are somethings you are not understand, refer to the text, until you can fully understand just by listening.
Attention, the full contents have to be listen consistently without interruption, don't study the first chapter today, and then the second chapter tomorrow. Because you must practice daily the totally identical contents, continuous reviewing it for seven days, after that reviewing one time a week, for four consecutive weeks, reviewing it one time every month. Repeat the same contents every time, it can become a long-term memory.
Do not use those Phase book, because they have only short sentences, no dialogue. The first and the second sentence does not related, it is very difficult to comprehend the listening. If you listen conversation, the second person are responding to the first person, even you cannot listen clearly to the second person, as long as you understand the first person, you can predict what will being said. Moreover, a conversation is a complete story, after you read it it is easy to remember. Having read it in advance, knowing what will be talking about, your listening will be more effective.
When you are so proficient to certain text, a lot of basic sentence is no longer necessary to listen word by word, just listen sentence by sentence, because what you are listening is the tone, not the consonant.
2 Exercises for Mastering Rhythm - According to your level, hobbies and knowledge, to chose what suit you most. These themes are about two to five minutes in length audio or video recording, repeatedly listen to the same subject matter. If your level is higher you can chose the longer one. For the first time the same subject may just be understand half of it, by the second time you may be according to what you already understand to guess what the rest is talking about, as such at the second time you may understand 20 percent more. Anyway, try your best. The purpose of this exercise is to tune your brain waves to the same frequency of a particular language.
There is a characteristics in language, of each language, there is a unique rhythm. Therefore, it is enough to choose only one topic to listen to, because no matter you're talking about politics, economics, art, or talk about sports ... as long as you speak the same language, Japanese or French, you will produce the same rhythm. Maybe you do not understand the politics, economics, the reason is that you are lack of vocabulary of politics and economics, so you need to read more materials of such subjects, to enrich your vocabulary which required.
With one rhythm, assisted by a wide range of vocabulary, you can comprehend different content. That is to say you can listen to just one theme, but the topics you read should be diversify.
3 Exercises for Mastering Context - Basically, with the tone and rhythm one can understand the content of speaking, but sometimes some sentences which are similar with the tone or rhythm are unrecognizable, then we have to relies on some keywords. Since keywords are necessary to observe particularly, therefor we cannot listen with the the whole sentence, some words have to be listen separately, by focusing, to listen there consonant clearly. By then we have to develop a sensitivity for individual words.
We can use some recording about five to ten minutes long, with a text of the same content. Firstly listen once, do not look at the text, just ask yourself what you had heard, then look up the the relevant text, pay attention to the parts that you didn't sure what they mean, by that you can stimulate your awareness of the unfamiliar part, form then on whenever you encounter any contents you once missed or ignored, your ears will be particularly sensitive for them, hence the contents will be more impressive.
Words or phase that need special attention will become the keywords, which provide a hint for the context of what you are going to listen. Therefore, you should listen news often, because the news cover topics such as politics, economy and livelihood, military, culture, science and technology, entertainment, sports, fashion etc, each topic has its own unique keywords.
One point have to pay special attention to, it is different from the exercise for mastering tone and rhythm as mentioned previously, the exercise for mastering context need not to listen a identical material repeatedly, on the contrary, need to consistently changing new material, it is enough to listen to once or twice. Each time have a different material, can help you to tell between which words those will appear frequently in certain topics, which only occasionally, which only rarely, by then you can determine their importance.
The three different exercises for mastering tone, rhythm, and the context as explain above require not much time everyday, as day passing by, your proficiency will be enhance. A same principle of "Quantitative Change cause Qualitative Change"(For details, please see "How to Mastering Vocabulary"). From the beginning just trained to listen to the tone, when you are more proficient, beginning to train to listening rhythm, when the rhythm are already being mastered, then start training to identify the context. As long as there is a plan, progressing step by step, success is not difficult indeed.
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