#l r method

[rigelmejo]

An interesting bit from the Listening Reading Method article http://users.bestweb.net/~siom/martian_mountain/!%20L-R%20the%20most%20important%20passages.htm#What_you_expetct_if , since I'm rereading it:

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I read a page in Polish, I listened to German and looked at the German text, I paid attention to the meaning, grammar, and letters-phonemes correspondence.

Then another page, and so on, until the end of the book. I understood almost everything.

It was the first day.

The second day:

I only read in Polish and listened to the German reader and the same time. I understood everything.

The third day – I only listened to the German reader. I understood almost everything.

I worked ten to twelve hours a day. I made 15-minute breaks every 45 minutes. I did some physical exercises.

I had three meals a day. I slept eight hours a day. I was healthy.

And then I tested myself:

I took a recording in German – it was The Snow Queen by Andersen. I hadn’t read the story before, so I knew nothing about it. And... I understood it...

I noticed something very interesting about intensive L-R (and then natural listening) – after a while (two-four weeks, 10-15 hours a day), speaking (and writing for languages with alphabet) come naturally, there are only two conditions to activate the skills, phonetic training and repeating after the recording here and there while listening to something you understand and enjoy.

ONE MORE THING:

if you’re unable to attach the (or at least some) meaning from what you’ve just read to what you’re LISTENING to, you cannot say it is L-R. I would consider it pointless.

Let me say it once more: L-R is not mechanical.

If you know hardly anything about the language, the first 3 to 5 hours need to be translated word for word with some grammar commentary, the way I did for French, English, and German for Polish learners of the languages. Examples of literary texts for zero beginners. To download:

http://users.bestweb.net/~siom/martian_mountain/mL-R/ai.7z

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My notes:

I'm of the belief Listening Reading Method works. I tried it for chinese, I did about 20 hours of it one month so I did a slower version of the steps, rather than doing 10 hours each day like the person above I instead did 1-2 hours a day (20 minutes of audio for each chapter so 40 minutes per chapter to do L R Method with the chinese text then English text).

After ~20 chapters doing Listening Reading Method with zhenhun by priest, I was able to go and read stuff that was a bit easier. I was also able to go listen to children's audiobooks and had much better Listening comprehension - before the 20 chapters of L R Method I couldn't follow any audiobook, afterward I could follow the audiobooks of easier reading level stuff like Alice in Wonderland. So i did notice an improvement in "natural listening" skill for easier texts. With some re-listening of chapters I'd done L R Method with (re-listening 5-15 times), I noticed I was able to start following the main plot and many details when Listening to the zhenhun audiobook. So I could listen to the audiobook for main story now (including chapters I hadn't read yet). I also noticed I was able to go from needing to intensively read zhenhun, to after the L R Method experiment being able to extensively read the novel and follow the plot (and a portion of details) fine. So after the L R Method experiment I extensively read 100 pages of my print copy of the novel.

L R Method was by far the fastest way I'd picked up new vocabulary and improved my listening and reading comprehension level. I think if I had stuck with it and done ~40 hours like the person did (so twice as many hours as I did), then I would've noticed my reading level come up to the actual books level detail comprehension and and all, and I would've noticed my natural listening significantly better (as in most to all details) for easier audiobooks (whereas I only improved to "main story gist comprehension" of easier audiobooks after the 20 hours of L R Method I did).

I also think the total-beginner version of L R Method works well with Pleco app. For zhenhun, I would click the loudspeaker button and listen to the TTS as I looked at the English definitions popping up for each word. Then I'd click the loudspeaker again, listening to TTS as I followed along with only the text and ignored the English pop-up definitions. I did these 2 steps, along with re listening to the audiobook chapters using Avenuex's audiobook instead of TTS in the background during work, for 20 chapters of zhenhun. It worked well. And using Pleco gave me a word-for-word translation which made it easier to learn new words and follow the audio initially. So yeah, I definitely think L R Method can work as good as implied if given a proper chance.

[rigelmejo]

Also, I've mentioned this before but: I truly do think Listening Reading Method is at least 75% as good for learning as it claims it is.

I've never had the stamina to do an entire book with it, but the one time I did 20 chapters of Listening Reading Method with Guardian (just steps 2-3 of chinese audio with English text, and Chinese audio with chinese text), I improved a significantly noticeable amount. That was 1 month of approximately 20 chapters x 40 minutes each to listen twice to each chapter. So 800 minutes, or a little over 13 hours. 13 hours of study is not that much study time in a month. But it drastically upped my vocabulary and reading/listening ability in that small time, and I'd say for anyone upper beginner/lower intermediate (A2-B1 ish) it would give a significant improvement to your abilities in a reasonably short time frame of study (10-20 hours short study time to see a significant improvement).

The L R Method suggests more study time, at like 40+ a novel and 200 hours in a short time period like 2 weeks. I've never been able to focus long enough to test out how well it works in that recommended study time. But I've tested L R Method in shorter bursts, and any time I did it 10 hours in a month or more I noticed a significant vocabulary boost, reading level boost, and noticed listening level brought up closer to my reading level.

It's the shortest "time investment" study method I've seen that works even somewhat as well as it claims to. It's only downside is it Does require you to focus the entire length of an audiobook chapter, and then do that 2+ times for each chapter. Which for me was the hardest part - I am not good at focusing for long unless I do other things at the same time like draw or move (which I can't do when reading/listening with my full attention).

And I've mentioned this before but like. If you've got Pleco (or some similar tool), for "english" you can just click the megaphone and have Pleco read aloud in chinese while giving a word by word translation. Then read the translation in one round and the chinese in another. Or even, the quickest laziest way to do this - open up the Chinese, paste that baby into Google translate, and use the resulting English text for ur translation part. And click the speaker for the Chinese part for ur audio. An audiobook is going to be wayyyy better in quality, but in a pinch machine audio does work (I used it and it still helped). And Pleco in particular will highlight each word as it speaks which helps keep you following along. So there's reading tools out there to do this in a very easy way with very little inconvenience or set up time, if you're lazy like me and won't do it if it takes too much work. (There's also SOME youtube and bilibili chinese audiobook postings with chinese subtitles, so you can use natural audio for the step of following along chinese text with chinese audio).

[rigelmejo]

I present today, the free reader app Duoreader!

The app has several short novels and also some articles, and provides them in parallel texts. It also provides audio for both the languages you select (so you could pick a story with chinese/English text or french/Japanese etc). It also has the ability to look up words with a click dictionary. I'm not quite sure how to utilize that feature though, as the way my phone is set up Google Translate is always an option go highlight and translate text so that's what I end up doing in that app.

It's basically a really convenient app for reading, reading listening, getting parallel texts for an upper beginner/lower intermediate learner where you can start to push into non graded materials but aren't ready to give up some support tools and would like to start with something on the easier end (a lot of the novels on here are stuff i read from 8th grade to 10th grade in school or stuff I've seen read in another language as first novels in a class - The Little Prince, Around the World in 80 Days, Alice in Wonderland etc). Each of these novels is between Around 1-3 hours of audio so theyre short listens/reads, and even if you spend 3x the time just looking up words and figuring out each sentence, one of these novels is not a huge time commitment (for fun, zhenhun is at minimum 26 hours of audio... so zhenhuns a significantly bigger time commitment even if I never pause at all ToT).

I plan to try a Listening-Reading Method experiment with Duoreader app in Japanese at some point, just because I think I can manage it with a short novel. I'd do step 2 (Language 2 audio/Language 2 text), and step 3 (Language 2 audio/Language 1 text follow along). Then doing L2/L2 again slower with pauses/repetition to catch a lot of words I can figure out with the context if I just slow down. I may do the initial step 2 slow too, since I can comprehend a lot more Japanese if I slow down to break up the sentences mentally and figure out the grammar and word amount (then with a parallel text and Kanji I can figure out some word meanings). Alice in Wonderland takes about 1 hour to read, I'll give myself 1.5 hours for all the relistening to some sentences. Maybe 2 hours for the step 2 sessions where I slow down and try to break down sentences. So 5.5 hours to L R Method with Alice and Wonderland. Even if I double that and do some steps more, it should be a 1-3 day project. Certainly something I can do within a week and see if it works. I've often mentioned Wasabi Japanese websites lessons, because one of their courses is basically intensive listening reading repetition with short passages to learn and I love that style of study (and their other courses similarly work in a way that works well for me). Well L R Method works a lot like that for me when I put the effort in.

This is what Duoreader looks like:

I tried a little bit the other day, just to see how much I could understand. I did a lot of relistening to sentences over and over. And comparing the Japanese to English. After a little while I realized I knew a lot of words in that first paragraph already I just hadn't learned to READ them (and definitely not recognize them at speaking speed). A bit of breaking down sentences later, I'd made some progress. It's not anything impressive yet lol! But for me it was a big deal to manage to read that first paragraph and mostly get what parts meant what with the help of the parallel text. I also noticed this app uses a combo of hiragana at some times and Kanji other times for words that can be spelled with both. Kodomo for child was spelled both with Kanji and hiragana in this and I didn't even recognize it at first cause I'm used to only reading it in Kanji. It was good practice trying to recognize it both ways.

[rigelmejo]

Some articles just kind of on the study methods I’ve been thinking about recently.

Article 1: Listen and Read Method - https://www.linguajunkie.com/featured/listen-and-read-method

Here’s the process.

Listen to an audio lesson that you DON’T yet understand.

Read along to get the meaning.

Listen to the language again.

Now you will understand it. SIMPLE.

Repeat what you hear to practice your speaking.

Once you hear the phrases, your ear becomes trained for it.

However, you don’t yet understand it because your brain has no prior information to relate it to.

Once you know its meaning, you associate the sound to its meaning.

And when you hear the phrases again, you’ll know what it is.

Your brain now relates most recent information – the meaning you just learned.

Hearing the unknown trains your ear.

Reading along gives you the meaning & makes an instant connection with it’s English translation

Next time you hear it, you will understand it.

Repeat what you hear to practice your speaking.

My summary:

You listen to audio you do not yet understand (Clozemaster listen mode/radio mode are structured this way, so is Chinese Spoonfed Anki audio).

You read along to comprehend the meaning (or I would assume you hear the english translation would work)

Listen to the audio again

Shadow if you’d like to practice speaking.

So basically, it is extremely similar to WasabiJapanese, and to the audio-flashcard type files I like.

Article 2: Language Learning with Bilingual Books (aka Listening Reading Method) - https://forum-sprachen-lernen.com/en/language-learning-with-bilingual-books/

First, read the translation to familiarize yourself with the content of the text. Depending on previous knowledge, this can be one page or maybe even several pages.

Next, listen to the book version and read it in the second language at the same time. Try to understand every word and read at the same time. If you can understand everything and read along easily, you can move on to point

Listening without reading. Maybe even close your eyes. Can you still understand everything? If so, then you can move on to point 4. If not, briefly stop at the places you do not yet understand and look up the unfamiliar word.

Now that you understand the text blindly, you can switch to passive listening. Take the audiobook and listen to it again and again. Set your MP3 player to “repeat indefinitely”. It won’t hurt to listen to the whole story over and over again. Then you have already prepared yourself for the next sections and will be faster at points 1 to 3. You will notice that you will soon know many sentences of the text by heart.

My Notes: This is extremely similar to the forum on L-R Method. Differences: in this one the initial ‘get context by reading translation’ (step 1 in L-R)  is important, you skip the target-language audio/translation text step (step 3 in L-R), you repeat the target-language audio/text step as needed (which is step 2 in L-R Method and also suggested to be repeated but not mandatory), you listen without reading and Glance at the target-language text/translation as needed to look up any unknown words and keep doing this until you understand all of the audio without looking (so L-R Method’s listen-only stage is longer). 

Thoughts:

What I find interesting is both of these articles had some core ideas in common with study methods i’m currently using. Notably:

1. Play audio in TARGET LANGUAGE, then see (or hear) a translation, then target language again. Which is how Clozemaster works and Chinese Spoonfed Anki - that may be part of why they’re effective (I think Glossika, JapaneseAudioLessons.com also work that way). The key thing being - practice hearing before knowing the translation a little bit, then see the meaning after, then practice listening again.

2. For the bilingual texts article, this article seems to boil down to - get prior context, then listen-read in target language (looking up words as needed), then listen-only (looking up words as needed until no text is needed). 

I think if we apply point 1, it makes more sense now why the original L-R Method form suggests Step 2 (target language audio and text) before step 3 (english text/target language audio). Step 2 in this case would be to prime your ears for listening, then step 3 would give you understanding, then step 4 (listening without any text) would give you practice understanding without translation. 

However, if you do step 3 first or read the translation first (as in point 2 above), people have made progress as well. So it is possible. I’d argue in this particular case L-R Method may be effective even with step 3 first since you get momentary priming of sound and meaning, then step 2 (after) would be like point 2 above - you would again practice listening and have mostly comprehension of everything you’re reading in target language. 

[rigelmejo]

I’ve talked about listening reading method before. And i’m bringing it up again lol! for 2 reasons - first, i found a very nice practical article on it today (skip to the LAST section to just click this ToT), and second because i’m finally in the Mood to l-r Guardian again so i’m gonna see how many chapters i can do today.

A quick summary - what is the listening reading method?

It’s primary goal: acquire vocabulary and grammar over time, also improve listening comprehension. 

You may also improve reading comprehension to an extent, but not necessarily - reading comprehension is highly dependent on how much you read the text in your target language (like if you have a parallel text and look at the target language often), if you do step 2 AGAIN after step 3, etc. Since using the text IN the target language is optional, your reading comprehension improvement is also optional.

*I personally think the activities that help reading comprehension most (that are adjacent to the activities in l-r method) are: doing step 2 AFTER step 3, or simply reading the target language text after either step 1 or step 3 (so reading the target language text after you’ve just seen the english text and have context). I often read a translation, then go and read the chinese version a few hours after, and my ability to pick up new words/follow along is MUCH easier than if i’d just read the chinese with no context. It should be noted either of these activities can be done on their own, so again its more ‘listening reading method’ adjacent rather than actually part of the method. The method is primarily listening comprehension.

What you do:

3 steps, and all of them are optional except for step 3. I do however recommend steps 1 and 2 if you have never read the novel you use before. Or if you’re new to studying the language and aren’t used to the sound of it/word boundaries yet. You will need: a novel translated into a language you understand, that same novel in your target language, audiobook in the target language. The novel can be a parallel text if you’re lucky enough to find a combined text.  

Notes: you will have a much easier time if the audiobook MATCHES the text! Especially matches the paragraphs (no paragraphs omitted in the audiobook) and ends chapters in the same places the text ends chapters. LOTS of cnovels have audiobooks which will omit paragraphs, or end audio ‘chapters’ in random places... this requires you to focus a lot harder on keeping the audio and text aligned. Its still useable, but you will feel way less exhausted if you can just find audio that reasonably matches the text (at LEAST that matches each paragraph without cutting anything... you can mark when it ends yourself if the chapter ends aren’t the same, but suddenly missing paragraphs sucks).

Step 1: (optional) read the novel in a language you understand (for me that’s english). This step is so you have context/familiarity. If you use a novel you already know/love, skip this. This can be skipped period, but if its a new novel to you then you may find step 3 more difficult.

Step 2: (optional) listen to the target language audio while following along with the target language text. Your goal is primarily to get familiar with the sounds of the language, and word boundaries. Once you are comfortable with following along to this speed of speaking, and recognizing word and phrase boundaries, you can stop doing this step. At this step learning new words is not necessary - although if you’re an intermediate learner you MAY pick up some new words and if that happens feel free to KEEP doing this step as long as its helpful. (Alternatively - you can continue doing this step, put it after step 3 at that point, and use it to match words you recently learned the SOUND of in step 3 and then match them to the spelling/hanzi/kana etc with the help of the target language text).

 Step 3: (mandatory) listen to the target language audio while following along with the translation in a language you fully understand. So basically, listening to the novel target language audiobook with a translated transcript. It is important at this step to focus ON the audio. You are attempting to comprehend the audio. You look at the english (or whatever language you comprehend) text to KEEP your place in the audio. You look at the text to lookup any unknown words/phrases etc that you hear. You are not reading the english text with the audio in the background. You need to pay attention TO the audio. You are using the english text to fill in the gaps of your understanding - to look up meanings in real time, and hopefully hear new words+see their meanings constantly enough that you start picking up new words. Your english text is to ensure you can look up any part of a sentence you don’t understand, that you can follow along with the meaning of the audiobook as you listen. Over time, you will pick up more and more. 

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You can continue to do this for hundreds of hours. Get through a novel completely - you may wish to do the same novel again 2-3 times, until there’s no more that you are picking up from it. Or you might chose to move onto another novel. There’s no major drawback i can see to jumping between novels either - if you’d like to just do segments of multiple. However, since authors usually use their own preferred vocabulary, you will most likely have MORE vocabulary/phrase repetition if you stick with one author for a few dozen hours - and the repetition will help you really learn it. With basic vocabulary, any text will likely give you enough repetition to learn them. But if you want to learn genre specific words, or author specific words, or just words used less often... sticking to one novel for a WHILE will likely give you more repetition to pick them up. (Just like intensively or extensively reading ONE novel all the way through will help you pick up a lot more author specific words, versus reading only a few chapters before moving onto a new author).

Once you can listen to the audiobook without the text, and understand it and follow along well, you may want to move onto another novel. If you want to test yourself - pick another novel of the same difficulty or slightly easier, listen to that audiobook on its own, and if you can understand it fine without any text to look up the unknown parts, then you’ve reached a ‘natural listening’ stage. The creator of this method says this usually took them a few novels before they’d get to this point. I haven’t lol so i’ll let you know if i do. I’m still at the ‘can do step 3 basically as long as it keeps benefiting me.’ 

So at the minimum, the process is - be familiar with the text already (step 1 if you need it), be familiar with the sounds of the language/listening to it spoken (step 2 if you need it), then listen to the target language audiobook while following along with a translation in a language you fully understand. Focusing on the audio and attempting to understand as much as possible, using the text as reference to help you. As you follow along, you can use that translation to learn new words/phrases, get an understanding of the grammar you hear, and continue picking things up until eventually you can understand the audiobook on its own. 

*It should be noted, the original creator of this method would do L-R for 6-10 hours a day, and would do a novel for 50-100 hours. They would intensively study. They aimed to use longer novels as that gave them more study material/study hours (if you’re learning chinese we have ample long novels to pick). So expect noticeable progress in 20 hours, 50 hours, etc. Not in 2. Study in general is like this anyway - we don’t see noticeable language learning progress doing anything in like 2 hours pretty much. But its just something to keep in mind - even if you do L-R a novel intensively and finish one within a couple weeks or a month, you should still expect that it will take a lot of hours. Look at how long the audiobook is, and then know if you do step 1 and 2 it will take 2 or 3 times as long as that audiobook is. 

Guardian is 106 chapters (before the extras), with roughly 20 minute audio files per chapter of audiobook - so it will take 2120 minutes, or 35.33 hours to do step 3 (assuming I don’t lose my spot in the text). Step 2 will also take 35.33 hours in a best case scenario. Step 1 will probably take me 17 hours on a BEST case scenario if I read at my fastest, which I might not. So to finish L-R Guardian it will take me 87.66 hours... or 52.33 hours if i just completely skip step 2 (since i already can hear word boundaries/have some basic listening comprehension). So... Listening Reading method is time consuming. A benefit might be - you get to do study hours spent reading/experiencing a cool audiobook, and getting to engage with the original novel and translation. If you were going to do that in your free time in some way anyway, then using it to study can be fun. And unlike trying to get 50 hours of another study method in, if you are a serious reader/you can keep your attention focused? You could probably get these 50 hours done within couple weeks or a month - just like how when you get interested in a novel you can read it in a few days/weeks. Which is definitely a sweet thing if you can get focused on L-R that much... definitely more hours spent studying per month compared to when i intensively read (i spend maybe 12 hours intensively reading a month when i’m reading a lot).

The person who initially did Listening Reading Method would do 100-200 hours, would go through novels 2-3 times then move onto another, and would do it intensively in the span of weeks and a few months. They made very fast improvements - but hours spent wise, it makes a lot of sense. Its a ‘fast’ way to learn a lot, in the sense you can do it intensively in a short period of days/weeks. But the hours spent is still gonna be a LOT. 

And you can also... just be lazy. I’m lazy. ToT You can also just do L-R as desired. I maybe do it once or twice a week. Or maybe 4 chapters every couple weeks lol. I certainly don’t do it intensively over a consistent period. (That said, i think you will probably pick up more things, more Quickly, if you study daily with this method using the same novel - since repetition helps you remember things and pick them up). I’ve done maybe 12 hours of listening reading overall, using a few different novels (so no significant chunk of any of them). I already noticed immediate benefit from doing it. If you’re a mid-beginner+, and already know words through reading? Simply doing the L-R activity helps with listening comprehension skills immediately. While I pick up new words/phrases, its definitely the slower thing I notice. The quickest thing I notice improvement in, is how much BETTER I know all the words I ‘kind of’ knew before from reading alone. Now I have much better instant listening recognition of words, have much better instinctive idea of how ‘phrases’ should sound in listening when people actually speak - the way they flow, how to immediately recognize them. That’s improved my overall listening comprehension to audiobooks, shows, people speaking. Also its improved my reading comprehension - I can now zoom through reading phrases because I recognize them as full chunks, I can now zoom ‘internally sound out what i’m reading’ faster and that causes me to stumble less when I’m reading to myself. All these benefits i noticed as early as like 6 hours into L-R. I also do notice myself picking up a few new words, but I imagine that will happen more once I am done ‘fully’ picking up words I already half knew. I also, again, think if I L-R more regularly, I would notice myself picking up completely new things at a faster rate (because they’d quickly also become ‘partly learned from that initial exposure’ then reinforced over and over). Anyway my point is - if you already have SOME comprehension of the language you’re studying, L-R can within a short amount of time help you improve your listening comprehension of things you already ‘know’ or ‘partly know.’ While picking up new stuff will also happen, I do think that will take longer (and I think beginners are most likely to notice rapid ‘completely new stuff’ pick up since they don’t have material ‘half learned’ bouncing around like I do lol).

This is the original Listening Reading Method article which is long and so, I understand if you just skim it lol: http://users.bestweb.net/~siom/martian_mountain/!%20L-R%20the%20most%20important%20passages.htm

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Like I said, you can do a lot of variations on it lol. Doing step 2 alone and TRYING to learn word meanings could be very useful if you’re already an intermediate learner and just need to learn Spellings of words you know by sound, or you can understand the meaning of words in context (so you don’t need another language translation to know the meaning of a word). Doing step 2 After step 3 i think is pretty beneficial if you WANT to also work on reading comprehension for the new words/things you learn. (Or just reading the text in the target language, after doing step 3 since you will have the context/meaning fresh in your mind).

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Finally, this is the article I read on using the Listening Reading Method for languages very unfamiliar to you. I find a lot of its explanations very to the point and clear: http://users.bestweb.net/~siom/martian_mountain/!L-R/lr_for_grasshoppers.html

[rigelmejo]

fyi if anyone besides me IS trying out the Listening Reading Method - I have some tips you can read if you want (or feel free to ignore):

you should see significant progress within 30 hours. If you started as an absolute beginner, did what the guide suggests beforehand (learned some common words like a few hundred, looked at a pronunciation guide, looked at a basic grammar summary), then you should see SOME progress. If after 30 hours you don’t see any - you might be doing it wrong (or its not a method that works for you in which case don’t feel u need to waste ur time on it when other stuff might help you more). (http://users.bestweb.net/~siom/martian_mountain/!%20L-R%20the%20most%20important%20passages.htm)

Someone did L R Method as an absolute beginner in Italian (they already knew french, english). They took tests - were A1 when they started L R Method. They did about 30 hours of L R Method. They took a test again and scored B1. So 30 hours should see SIGNIFICANT progress for a language reasonably close to yours, and SOME clear progress I’d imagine even if it’s a less common language (even some gains from absolute beginner to A1-A2 would be solid and noticeable). (https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1721&p=99415#p99415)

Someone tried to L R Method mandarin as a proof of concept. So they only did several hours, and used The Little Prince (which is much simpler writing/language than the L R Method article recommends using). This is their results: “I tried Mandarin LR as a proof of concept a while ago. I used "The Little Prince", and did a few hours. The first couple of hours were exhausting and I was usually lost; by the end, I was associating quite a few characters with their sounds, occasionally understanding sentences in real time as I read along (knowing what parts corresponded) of up to 7 characters or so, etc. Again, this was a small handful of hours, as an effectively zero-beginner; I know some Kanji, but my active Mandarin vocabulary was probably in the single digits... I think this was after I'd studied tones/Mandarin phonology relatively intensively, but I don't recall for certain.” So - within a handful of hours, someone saw language improvement in Mandarin as a total beginner (http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=38593)

I personally have been trying L R Method as a beginner-intermediate ish learner. What I noticed: without a parallel text (so just using english text for step 3) I improved listening comprehension of words I already partly knew (through reading) FIRST. I also picked up some new words, but listening comprehension of words I knew improved most noticeably the first 10ish hours I did L R Method. Using Pleco’s dictation tool for step 3 (so instead of english text, I use chinese text where the english definition auto-pops up as the audio reads each word), or using a parallel text (so chinese and english visible at same time), both VASTLY improved how many new words I pick up per session. For me at least, seeing the chinese text to keep my place in the audio, and seeing easier what audio matches to what english definition, lets me learn new words faster. Since I waste much less effort trying to just keep the text/audio matched up. 

So if the effort of matching up text is draining to you (like it is to me), I recommend: getting an audiobook and chinese text that match as closely as possible. And getting either a parallel text, or using Pleco’s dictation tool in the Reader, or something similar (Pleco’s dictation tool is a lot like using a word by word chinese/english translated text). 

Step 2 seems very useful for: giving you context prior to step 3, practicing reading comprehension and reading speed, listening practice with the chinese(target language) spelling visible, and reinforcing what’s learned in prior step 3′s. 

Step 3 does seem useful the more you repeat it (I’m just lazy).

Test yourself by trying to LISTEN ONLY every once in a while. You should be noticing some improvements in your listening comprehension - the audiobook chapters you should follow more parts, a show without subtitles you might recognize more dialogue, etc. If your listening comprehension itself is not improving to some noticeable degree after 10+ hours of L R Method you may either be doing L R Method wrong, or its just not useful for you.

To see considerable progress in language abilities, it may take 50-100 hours. Or even 100-300. The article linked above, the person who does L R Method (aYa) would usually do at least 30 hours, then 50-100 for a language - eventually also doing step 4 shadowing, step 5 translating back and forth. For less-closely related languages, people mention having done it for a few hundred hours. So do NOT expect total beginner to Fluent in 30 hours. I simply mean, you should expect noticeable progress after some X milestones. After a dozen or so hours you should be able to start recognizing word boundaries with ease, some short phrases. If you’re not a total-beginner, but beginner-intermediate like me, then you should start notice much BETTER listening comprehension of words you already half-knew from reading within a few dozen hours. Then after 30-50, maybe some dialogue understanding, some common words regularly understood, etc. Again - test yourself with Listening-Only every once in a while to see if you’re actually making any progress. Also to see if you wanna ‘alter’ the L R Method to suit your needs better. Maybe you’ll find a way to do it that works better for you.

For ABSOLUTE beginners, especially in languages very different from their own, at the beginning stages simply using sentences with audio may be easier. To perhaps learn a few hundred to thousand common words first - and/or using translations that are word BY word translation right under the target language word. To help with getting used to the grammar, all the new common words, the sounds etc. So materials like Assimil probably do this - Spoonfed Chinese anki deck with its audio/text does this, Nukemarine’s LLJ audio/text deck does this, Japanese Core 2k with its audio/text does this, etc. Clozemaster app might even be a nice beginner transition tool...

For the L R Method steps - really READ them and understand what they mean. Step 3 is NOT watching a target language audio movie with english subs. It is trying to comprehend all of the audio, glancing at the translation JUST to fill in the gaps for parts you can’t manage to comprehend (so for looking up words here and there). While you’re supposed to ‘follow along’ with the translation text, you do NOT tune out the audio. The audio should be your main focus, keeping in line with the translation text is so you can REFERENCE it when you hear a word/phrase/sentence you don’t fully comprehend. And I am guessing step 3 is suggested to be done multiple times so that each time you need the translation less.

 L R Method works best with very vocabulary rich, long texts. If you use a simple text, or a short one (3 hours of audio for example), there’s only so much you’ll be able to learn from it. For example The Little Prince only has a vocabulary of 2000-3000 unique words, 1200ish hanzi in it - so even if you learned it entirely, repeating it over and over, that’s not a lot of info. Particularly if you don’t plan to repeat things, it’s probably going to serve your time better to pick rich vocabulary long texts (so you can pick up tons of words just through one pass through the book, and if you choose to repeat the book, pick up tons more words, before you start running into the rarely used words which will be harder to pick up). 

I am mentioning all this, because I saw someone who did L R method for mandarin for hundreds of hours, and does not have natural listening yet - so cannot follow a new audiobook listening-only, cannot follow a show listening-only. Considering that people have demonstrated they made some progress in 5-10 hours for Mandarin, and 30 hours for Italian, then 300 hours in Mandarin might be able to make more progress. I’ve done maybe 20-30 hours of L R Method so far, and already find I can now listen to at Least the audiobook of the book I’m L R Method-ing now without the text, and follow the main scenes fine. With simpler audio, if I have a visual cue (like acting scenes, or pictures) I find I can follow the main idea much easier than I could before. So I just think... if you are seeing very little noticeable progress after 30-50 hours, the method may not be giving you benefits as quickly as you might want a study method to show improvements. I think if something isn’t giving you some improvement after X effort, you don’t need to stick with it if something else helps you more.

Other factors that may affect this: 

I had some reading basis before I started L R Method. This might have helped me as far as how fast a rate L R Method is helping my progress. For an example: when I simply do step 2 ON ITS OWN I see improvements - because it helps me read through a chapter as fast as the audio, matches audio to the spelling I might already know, and I already can understand enough when reading at that speed to follow the general plot (so step 2 gives me context and increased plot understanding). Therefore, when I do step 3, I can really primarily put my attention on learning to recognize the SOUND of what I already understood - and on learning a few new keywords I already JUST saw and realized I didn’t know. Basically I can use L R Method to quickly pinpoint areas I’m weaker in, while practicing what I can already do. A total beginner won’t have the ‘practice what they already know’ benefit. (Genuinely though step 2 is helping my reading SO much and I know that’s in part due to my current reading comprehension level).

Also I have seen an example of someone who did L R Method while already B2 in Italian - he was aiming for C1. He noticed less drastic improvement after 40 hours - he did still notice some, like easier listening comprehension for shows and conversations. But he did not reach C1 listening/reading skills. So from this we see: L R Method might help you improve faster if you start off with more you still need to learn (which makes sense, since as the words you need to learn get rarer you will run into them less frequently in L R Method). Also, the gap from B2-C1 may be bigger than the gap from A1-B1? Also what I took from his example, is repeating step 3 multiple times becomes MORE important as you’re more intermediate-advanced. I would guess because you probably have less frequently occurring words/grammar to learn, so repeating content WITH those things in it is a way to get more exposure (whereas just going over it once then moving on is Not going to expose you to it much). Also step 3, if you really look away from the transcript for most of it, allows you to really practice listening comprehension. Also shadowing/translating, steps 4 and 5, may be of more benefit to an intermediate-advanced learner. Since shadowing may be doable for them now, and translation may be doable (and hone in on skills more). So... I would guess either the gap you have to bridge as an intermediate-advanced learner is bigger, and/or you just need to do more challenging aspects of L R Method to get similar frequency of benefits you would’ve saw at the beginning stages. 

[rigelmejo]

March - Listening Reading Method

This post will be updated probably.

Will I do any Guardian, who knows?

The Glass Maiden (Love and Redemption Novel):

Chapters done: 5 

chapter: 6  at paragraph:  However, the Hairpin Hall at the top of the mountain was still in chaos. He Danping was so worried that she fainted, and Chu Yinghong is busy taking care of her. Linglong was still pestering her father to go in her sister’s place, but he refused to agree. audio: 17

*Note that audio does not line up to chapters, 3 audiobook chapters seems to = the first written chapter. (as of chapter 4 the audio stopped ever lining up, now audio ends in random places in chapters :/ )

*Note I have not read the english chapter ahead, so I’m skimming slightly then matching audio to text. Thankfully its working fine as Liuli is not written too complexly, and the audio matches up very closely to the translation so I am not losing my place.

I only did chinese audio/english text for this one. I have the chinese book so I’ll read it if/when I feel like it. I’m already reading plenty of chinese I don’t need to with l-r.

Is it working out? Yeah I’m catching some new words! And as usual its nice to catch chunks and phrases. Listening Reading method works really well for me - picking up some new words/phrases and building up listening skills for words I partly know. 

Also a personal note: its the easiest xianxia genre novel I’ve tried this with (easier to follow than 2ha), and i like Xuanji’s audiobook voice.

Japanese Audio Lessons:

Lessons done: 1

Listening to the japanese audio lesson while following along with the transcript.

This is literally what the L-R method site had described as the ideal way to do L-R for languages like japanese as a beginner (english, japanese, romaji all next to each other to compare). So I’m curious if it works to be honest. Regardless of it it ‘works’ like L-R, it is good review for me both listening to stuff I learned once years ago and reading (getting some refresher on how everything is spelled).

Guardian:

Chapters done: 2

*none done this month as of 3/10

Doing chinese audio - english text. 

Also reading the english beforehand, and reading the chinese extensively as desired (although I’m no longer going to try to match the chinese audio to the chinese text because my print novel has so many added/changed scenes it makes following along difficult).

---

Unrelated to L-R method, I’m just reading 寒舍 and am on chapter 24. I might listen to the audio but it slows down my reading speed so mostly I’m just reading. As of the last few chapters I’ve had to look up a lot less words/been able to speed through more. So I’m really hoping my reading speed overall stops dragging as much. (Currently 15 minutes for 10 pages, 30 minutes for 20 pages).

*also i have the inexplicable urge to l-r Ever night... as if that wouldn’t take forever ahh i need to prioritize that’s gotta waitttttt

[rigelmejo]

I don’t have enough focus today to find out how long a chapter takes to read, but I do think the recent practice of extensive reading (like 小王子) has helped my reading skills in general.

I just read some guardian again (don’t get excited only 2 pages ToT - guess who just realized I’m on a 20 page chapter ;-;). And I found very few words I couldn’t figure out in context. For the most part, the only frustrating thing is Hanzi I don’t know (or can’t clearly remember) the pronunciation of. I looked up one word “hesitated” 犹豫 youyi, because I recognized those characters and it frustrates me I couldn’t remember the word/pronunciation. But paused/hesitated was pretty clear in context.

In a way guardian is easier to read than 小王子 - not out loud since lol I can’t pronounce half these, but for meaning since I know guardians plot, I have a lot of context to figure out each detail from, and usually when priest uses descriptive language/sayings/imagery it’s to build up to some character conclusion/feeling. So then I can go back and make out some of the phrases I didn’t quite get and maybe figure out what they were better - which is what I did today which is why pretty much everything I got. Also... just the genre, authors speaking style in general. I’m much more used to priests most regularly used ways of describing actions: 瞪，盯，愣，一松手，不由自主，心想，似的，立刻，转向，蹭鼻子，擦擦手，送给你，估计 etc. Idk a lot of words priest uses for main points in the writing like actions and feelings, 寒舍 also used, so I am much more likely to get the core gist and just need to figure out the surrounding details. Sometimes more words makes this easier - more context. I do think reading that other stuff helped tho, is my point. Debating what I’ll do next tbh as easier stuff...

Also I. May have perhaps found some goldmines for trying listening reading method. First - I found a Chinese audiobook channel with English audio and English/Chinese dual text it follows and highlights. I’ve read before that listening to your language while reading the target language can help with reading? Would be cool to test. I did this a little bit - watching it - and it definitely helped me read it? If for no other reason then it’s a graded reader where I can focus on the Chinese and have to focus under time pressure. Then the channel also has dual text the little prince with Chinese audio! So bam I could literally just test listening reading method like that! (Although I think the little prince is a little too text-light to help past a certain amount). And then another channel called Eazy Mandarin that makes a lot of Chinese audios with dual text! Perfect!