This will be a two part post.
*The first part will be on listening as a skill, some important factors, and practice tips.
*The second part will be on how higher listening skills can help retain vocab and improve reading.
These are based off of my own experience trying to improve my listening ability.
So for context, I did a poll about listening vs reading, and the majority said reading is easier.
The Reasons Include:
*Bring able to go at your own pace
*Guessing meaning based on known kanji
*speak too fast
*Mishearing words
*Seeing words or kanji, but you can’t recognize it when it’s spoken
All that being said, I feel like high-level listening is one of those overlooked factors compared to reading/speaking. Like some people might take for granted like if I can read at an intermediate/high level, I can listen and understand. But it’s different skill sets.
The 3 most important factors in my opinion to improve listening are:
1 Time: It will take a lot of time, no matter how fast you are at picking up new words (unless you are a heritage speaker/lived abroad at a young age).
2 Diversity: You should listen to all types of native speakers (young, old, kids, dialects, etc.) because every situation is different.
3 Practice: Just keep going even if you can’t understand anything in the beginning. It gets easier as you learn more especially when you hit N4. You should be okay by then with everyday talk.
*Exception: the bulk of average anime shows won’t help your listening as much, since Japanese people don’t really talk like anime
BUT anime movies tend to be a lot more natural compared to the shows, so I recommend those if you want to use anime as practice.
Practice Tips
*Start With Advanced / Native Content
Unlike reading, I believe you can start off with the advanced stuff. You can listen to beginner slowed down speech as well, but the main bulk should be at natural speed. You need to train your listening early on to get used to native speed and jargon. Reading advanced material might make you discouraged early on, but listening usually is alright (motivation-wise).
*Watch Japanese Shows with Japanese Subtitles
Some people think it’s more reading than listening, but I think it’s both. With kanji, it can be a bit hard to read subs as they fly by pretty quickly, but it gets easier with practice.
*Listen to Podcasts
If you think you are relying too much on visual context or subs, try purely listening to podcasts. There’s no context and you can really test those skills. Try to find a topic that you are already familiar with and it will be much easier to understand.
How Listening Improves Reading
If you think about the way kids learn to read, they start with already being familiar or knowing the words, and then they learn how to read/write. So they have listening comprehension first that translates to reading.
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As adults, we can do the same thing. If you already know a word from hearing it, even if you don’t know the exact meaning, once you see it written out, you have the “ah-ha” moment. And it makes it SO much easier to remember. You need to hear how words sound to remember them better.
Book Example
I’m over halfway through my first book, and I think I figured out why it’s not as bad for me.
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天気の子 has a decent amount of informal phrases, so I think my familiarity with spoken Japanese has helped me imagine what it sounds like if they were speaking aloud. This then makes it easier to read faster. The characters speak very casually and even Hodaka’s inner thoughts are the same way sometimes. Textbooks generally aren’t written in the casual way they talk in this novel.
For example:
「東京って怖えな」
「私も。やっぱコーヒーいいや、麺がいいな」
Try to imagine that tiny voice in your head as you read or say it aloud. This is how people speak, but now written out. Lot’s of え, な, ねえ, さあ, って, じゃん, etc.
As opposed to something like this:
「東京というて怖いですよ。」
「私もです。やっぱりコーヒーはいりません。麺がいいですよ。」
You can already tell the difference. It’s the colloquialism.
Here’s a longer sentence Hodaka thinks:
「(有)K&Aプランニング CEO 須賀圭介」という文字列を眺めながら、するわけねえだろ、と心の中で僕は答えた。
「するわけねえだろ」
This is written informally. It’s also kind of rude. He’s thinking “there’s no way I’d do that”. But if you don’t already have an idea of what that phrase sounds like spoken, you might not pick up that it’s rude.
The point is having a higher listening basis can make reading these fictional novels a lot easier because you have the “sense” already. Like you already know how people talk. Not only can you read dialogue quicker, you can reinforce familiar vocabulary that you have already before.
So I personally think this prior understanding has helped me get through the pages much faster compared to if I had less of this listening “sense”.
I hope this makes a little bit of sense and maybe inspires you to listen more to Japanese moving forward.
Quotes from 天気の子 by 新海誠
framed in beige 