Listening and learning

Wow. This one dropped off the radar really fast. I posted it and watched it slide down the charts, minute by minute. The Connect section works really fast sometimes. I guess lesson comments are bound to dominate here.

"He who has never reflected upon language has not thought" (Emile Chartier, aka Alain) Uh, so loosely quoting, I'm not worthy ;) Lester, in awe I listen and infer your message with complete interaction. Let me just add that your comments apply indeed to ideal fluency, and to the learner the "native" speaker (not quite the right term here I guess) has such a fluency. But between peers in that respect, the "googling" (freely associating) stream of consciousness is a factor of unpredictability. Which doesn't mean that it misleads the listener, we share the universals.

TaiPan, These are excellent examples of looping. I'd love to hear more. Can anyone provide any other examples?

(TaiPan, please reply before the end of my typing :-) Ken, the link you establish between the hearing/listening process and looping is very significant (thanks for "looping" as a term I've needed more than once). May I add that the distinction between passive/hearing and active/listening is more "dialectic" than clear-cut? (Of course, Rhetoric Master) I mean, the brain hemispheres do not wait till the time's up to confront their data and tell each other of their results (because they're not submitting work to a boss up there). So, first, Ken, in the case of a learner of Chinese, is listening to a text when the written contents are known opposed to hearing it when they are not known yet? I think you'll agree that hearing can be understood differently, depending whether the listener needs an effort of comprehension, as is the case in learning. Same for listening, you may listen to decode meaning or just sounds... But then any description is by the same token cut off from real processes. Second, I think that as regards audio comprehension, the looping feature is significant indeed because it provides an explanation to a major difficulty in listening to Chinese. The more closely I listen, the more likely I am to get hooked by an odd word, and be drowned instead of being carried by the flow. So IMO, effective listening is twofold, the continuous current being passive/hearing with a secondary, active and free-moving alternative/listening current above, which collects information, but must not disturb the hearing process. So hearing is part of listening, even as you match inner and outer data together. When learning, you may divide the tasks of gathering and linking to known data or adding unknown data as you wish. But in real life conversations, there's no room for learning, it's more like hearing (being receptive) and remembering passively, i.e. experiencing. Or you get lost. Or you can tell me, get lost :)

franch, You're onto a major issue right here. You have to treat listening in a fluid way. DON'T get hung up on details if you're engaged in conversation, or, for that matter, listening to a podcast. Quite often, you can function simply by getting th general gist of a conversation. that's usually all you have to do. By contrast, focusing in on the first word you don't recognize blocks the rest of the signal, at which point you WILL become confused. Relax, be patient, and remember the looping effect. It's amazing what can transpire at times!

(warning this is a kind of philosophical text coming up) When I started with learning English in school I learned some words first. Then I started to build sentences. Now I´m not translating anything from English into German I just know the English meaning and that´s enough. When I started learning Chinese I picked up some sentences and some words of special interrest for me. Now I go from that what I know and add the new phrases and sentences that I hear and translate them and repeat them over and over again. When I know enough to say what ever comes to my mind I will translate them no more because I will know the meaning of my words and the meaning of what others will tell me. (I hope that will be soon ) :-)

Excuter, I'd feel wiser knowing if you guys in Germany use quite the same typological "looping" in your everyday talk. I've been resisting against German long ago (ugly pun overlooked) but what had driven me mad as a child (that is, the tendency to delay the verb until the end, exemplified by works such as Heinrich Böll's and many others for sure) is now a great wonder to me. I think that the tendency to put the point of the sentence, embodied in the verb clause, straight at the head of it is found in all spoken languages as opposed to their written form. It might even be so in spite of the typological requirements of the said language, even in spite of grammar. In French we do it at the cost of much redundancy, which is the feature of everyday speech. A common way to ask "What's this" is "Qu'est-ce que c'est que ça". This is supposed to be fluid (actually it trebles the same question). In English as in French and, I assume, in Chinese as in German (where the message is "suspended" as Ken says) everyday speech tends to be different in pattern to written expression. There are many grammatical side effects, which to the learner have the logical consequence of burying the gist of it. See how some complain about the legendary "gap" between ellie and intermeddle (sorry), they always have Jenny's banter in mind (那么就是说那里有这么特别利害的词汇). The key to find the key words is to keep cool and comply, keeping in mind only one thing, that is that a human being is communicating to you something and not trying to mesmerize you (given that you listen to any speeches or lectures). Indeed Ken, taking it easy is also how you can take it all in. But as an advice, it's too obvious to be helpful... [insert a chengyu about how nothing comes without effort] Cheers, ;)

Ken, I read the blog. Very interesting concepts, particularly the looping. Mark Twain brought up the valid example of the verb unlocking the rest of the paragraph. When dealing with Mandarin, for me the looping applies to context and colocated (i think that's what you call recurring word combinations) words. I might not understand the sentence until I recognize a colocated combo which puts the entire meaning into context, or until I get to a word that I know from a past lesson that puts the entire meaning into context... like an entire sudoku row filling up after figuring out one key number, or the entire lyrics of a song that you can't remember filling your head after unlocking one line from the chorus. Also in Mandarin, I notice it happening when I get to a question particle. I'll get the whole sentence then figure out that it was a question (or a past tense 'le') at the very end, and have to reframe the meaning in my mind. Very much the opposite of English. jonathan

Three great tools that Chinesepod uses to help keep me from a conscious loop that debilitates everything else are the following (at least in Newbie and Elem.): 1) Giving the CONTEXT prior to the dialogue (that line where Ken says, "what are we talking about today Jenny?" Jenny answers, "Today we are talking about paying a biyo." Then Ken says, "Paying a bill." then Jenny says "Paying a biyo.") 2) Introducing a NEW VOCAB word at the beginning, before the dialogues. Unknown words are the quickest way for me to fall into the "spin cycle" in my head and miss everything else. 3) Offering the dialogue 3 times before anything else. If I miss it the first time, I've trained myself to trust that I'll catch it the 2nd or 3rd time. When I first started with the podcasts, I didn't have that confidence.

On the general subject of different kinds of listening (as opposed to looping) I made some observations a little while back which may chime with what has been said here. The main point is that while it is important to relax, it's also important not to relax too much. Letting the words wash over you isn't enough. I find that I'm in the listening sweet-spot when I can mentally line up the words over their meaning. But it's a tricky state to get into, and very easy to fall out of - like trying to get your eyes ever so slightly out of focus by a fixed amount. This means of course means that eventually I have to go and read the dialog to understand all the meaning, before returning to listening. But only after listening a few times to give myself every opportunity to pick out the words that I should have already known.

Blimey. That i tag really shouts, doesn't it!?

Brendan, I think it's 'relaxed' but engaged wi the the message. I agree that letting stuff just wash over isn't enough. TaiPan, Delighted that you see the logic behind the audio.

Hi Ken, In reading Mark Twain's essay snippet, I was pretty much prepared for the whole meaning of the sentence within the first phrase. So, the main verb became confirmation, or the "lid" on the sentence. I wonder if fluency is that way. There's the predictive aspect of listening. And when the prediction "comes true" or is confirmed, maybe the listener becomes more and more engaged with what he is listening to. He can subconsciously put a "lid" of completeness on successive information packets, and process them in background. As a result, he understands and actively participates. I definitely see this in music, both sound and lyric. Rhyme appeases our desire to predict. Most music we listen to follows a set familiar pattern. Surprises are welcome and enhance the enjoyment, as long as there aren't too many of them. So I think "prediction" might have something to do with our being able to "actively" listen in a conversation where we are totally comfortable and relaxed (i.e., not trying to listen, simply participating). To put it another way, sometimes it's hard work to listen, while at other times it's quite easy, natural. Now, to the degree these predictions fail, there is too much looping and resultant frustration, confusion. Which explains why new languages are so hard. One begins with absolutely no skill at predicting the outcome of the sentence. As a newbie, one is constantly behind, parsing in the past. As an "ele", one experiences excitement as lexical chunk are recognized, but being too excited and self-congratulator, "falls off" the sentence (his concentration lapses and chunks of meaning fly by completely uncomprehended). Looping also occurs on the micro-scale, that is, at the word level. When I first learned of "qu san bu", it was in the context of a question; and I heard "... qu san buhao ma?" rather than "... qusanbu, hao ma?" There are many more examples, in every language I'm sure. I'm no expert on learning languages, but your blog is quite thought provoking.

lester, We're all experts in language learning. We just don't realize it! The cognitive gymnastics involved in even the simplest conversation is staggering. I love the link you made to music is really interesting. I hadn't thought about that. What a marvel is this Big Brain!

franch, These are great observations. All languages loop. We've seen eamples of how Chinese does it here. The admonition it relax and wait it out may seem obvious to you, but in my experience, most learners fall foul to it.