Which of these four types of listening do you do regularly?

Buondì.

Still busy, now also late, because first I had to take Roomie to the petting zoo, then go to the bank to get new plastic cards (after having been robbed on the bus several weeks back), then finally do a mailing for our Italian school’s annual promotion. You’ll find it here, if you’re interested: ‘Why Study Italian in Bologna?‘ (there are some good links in it!)

But here I am at last, and today’s topic, which I will deal with BRIEFLY, is different types of listening, this because I am often frustrated by students’ misguided approach.

People seem not to think much, or at all, about WHY they are doing what they’re doing when learning a language.

So let’s survey types of listening you might do while learning Italian:

1.) You listen to a recorded text, you keep listening to it, again and again, starting and stopping, rewinding, until you have UNDERSTOOD everything! Some might then try using the same text as dictation practice, or similar.

2.) You listen to a recorded text with a focus on general understanding. Who’s speaking? What’s the topic? What, in general, is going on?

3.) You listen to a recorded text with the task of extracting specific information from it, such as the price and specifications of a product being advertised, details of an announcement at an airport or railway station, the weather conditions in your city, etc.

4.) You listen to a live or otherwise autentic text (radio, TV, a podcast), as you would do if it were in your own language, though being realistic that you’ll understand less, perhaps little, of what you hear.

So then, which of these four do you do regularly?

If the answer is ‘none of them, I want to learn all the grammar first’, I wash my hands of you. Depart, never darken my door again!

Why? Because mastering skills in a foreign language (reading, writing, speaking, listening) is only peripherally connected to grammar. Vocabulary, pronunciation, cultural knowledge, and other things may be much more important.

What? You don’t want to master skills until AFTER you’ve learnt the grammar? You mean you don’t want to speak, understand when others speak, read texts, write brief messages, at all, until you feel you have a reasonable command of the structure of the language?

More fool you.

OK, what if your answer to ‘which of these four do you do regularly’ is 1.)?

Or 1.), 1.), 1.), 1.)!

I do lots and lots of 1.)!

1.) is my big thing!

I spend all day on 1.).

I 1.) until I’m ready to chuck up, in fact.

Ditto, more fool you.

I get this a lot over at EasyItalianNews.com, where people either don’t read the Advice page, or read it and decide that they know better than I do.

Some people own a dog but stay up all night ready to bark at strangers anyway.

People comment reguarly there that the site is very nice, very useful, lovely, thanks so much, but why oh why don’t we make it easy to go back and listen to a specific section again, why isn’t there a slider for the audio, why don’t we bookmark each section of the bulletin so that students can only listen to one small part of it?

Because that’s not what it’s FOR, I reply. Read the Advice page to understand better what it is for. Better still, try doing it.

What’s wrong with 1.), 1.), 1.) and only 1.), 1.), 1.)?

Skills (listening, speaking etc.) require you to do things in real time, NOT to focus on the microscopic details of the language.

Think of a child learning animals – what they look like, what they’re called. We have the zebra, the giraffe, the lion, the tiger, the crocodile. and many more.

What do little kids need to know? Basically the colour, the shape, and which ones have teeth that can hurt.

Do they need to look through a microscope to figure that out? Well, of course not.

And so, to master a foreign language, you need not, and should not, expect to know all or most of the words, to be able to manipulate most of the grammar, or to have native-speaker-like pronunciation.

Why? Because ‘good enough is good enough’, and perfect is much harder, and likely impossible.

Which brings us to 3.) – listening to a recorded text (for example, in a course book) with the aim of extracting specific information, otherwise known as answering the questions, this being the staple of any decent language exam.

When we evaluate whether someone has skills, call them competencies if you wish, in a foreign language, what we’re really looking to see is whether the student can DO the stuff that’s needed.

Suppose we’re aiming to hire a doctor to work in an Italian hospital – we need to ensure that their listening and speaking skills are up to interacting with the patients, right? And that they do so in a culturally acceptable way. Grammar barely enters into it. Vocabulary does, of course, but it’s the very predictable, specific, and FREQUENT vocabulary.

Which brings us to 4.) listening to a live or otherwise autentic text (radio, TV, a podcast), which is mostly all I do for my own foreign language learning, and is basically how we all learnt our first language or languages.

When you immerse yourself in the broadcast media of a language, you may not (at first) understand much of what you hear, but you will, with absolute certainty, pick up masses of ‘meta information’.

One of the first things I learnt when listening to Spanish state radio was that when it’s two o’clock in Madrid, it’s one o’clock in the Canary Islands, which clearly are in a different time zone.

Who cares? Perhaps no one. But because that difference was communicated every single hour, every single day, it was in no way hard to learn.

Another thing I noticed quickly was that whenever an interviewee spoke Catalan, there was a translation into Spanish, but that for me (Italian speaker) the Catalan was much easier to figure out.

FREQUENCY is meta data which tells you how important something is, and your brain naturally picks up on the frequent, so important, while refusing to stress over the infrequent, so leave it, what the heck.

In short, that’s how we learn language.

If your mum is always yelling at your dad, or vice versa, you won’t be able to help but notice.

Roomie picked up ‘Hello’, ‘Bye’ and the like just by overhearing me using English with others.

Unfortunately, 4.) is the listening that most students don’t do, because they ‘don’t understand’.

“Not understanding is precisely the point”, I tell them.

That’s a good chunk of life right there – the ‘not understanding’ part. If you’re honest with yourself, you’d admit you don’t understand much of what goes on around you.

If you work in a company, for instance, say in marketing, how much do you really know about what goes on in HR or Accounting. And what’s Logistics, when it’s at home?

Get good at handling the ‘not understanding’ and you’ll be in a much better position to start picking out the bits you do understand.

Learning, in other words.

As everyone knows, if you want to learn to ride a bike, you have to get on one and pedal.

A lunedì.

P.S.

Here’s a reminder about this week’s two seasonal, half-price ‘Ebooks of the Week’, the first being Natale a sorpresa, at level B2.

Matteo’s supposed to be writing a book – he has a deadline coming up – but he’s suffering terribly from writers’ block. All he can do is stare at a blank computer screen. He’s recently out of a relationship, which hasn’t helped…

Worse, it’s December and Christmas is coming! Normally Matteo spends the festive season with his family, but this year they’re visiting relatives in Australia. So it looks as if he’ll be celebrating alone.

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• 8 chapters to read and listen to
• Comprehension questions to check your understanding
• Italian/English glossary of ‘difficult’ terms for the level
• Suitable for students at intermediate level or above
• Download your Free Sample Chapter (.pdf)

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The second half-price ebook is Giallo a Capodanno, the level of which is B2/C1, which means it’s the harder of the two.

“Sbrigati Alida, o arriveremo in ritardo alla festa di Capodanno!” ripete nervosamente Martina alla sua compagna di stanza. Alida sta sdraiata sul letto con un libro di Agatha Christie fra le mani. Si toglie pigramente gli occhiali da lettura e guarda fuori dalla finestra: “Nevica ancora, che incubo!”

It’s New Year 1970 and Martina’s all dressed up for the party, determined to enjoy it! But her roommate, Alida is more cynical:

“Ascolta: siamo bloccati dalla neve in un collegio in cui viviamo tutto l’anno. Dei duecento alunni che frequentano la scuola, solo sette (sette, porca miseria!) hanno dei genitori che non li vogliono tra i piedi nemmeno durante le feste. E noi siamo tra questi sette. Quindi puoi anche vestirti come Marilyn Monroe… ma rimani una disgraziata!”

Alida would rather read detective thrillers than pretend to have fun with just six fellow students. But who knows? Perhaps something interesting will happen?

• .pdf e-book (+ audio available free online)
• .mobi (Kindle-compatible) and .epub (other ebook readers) available on request at no extra charge – just add a note to the order form or email us
• 8 chapters to read and listen to
• Comprehension questions to check your understanding
• Italian/English glossary of ‘difficult’ terms for the level
• Suitable for students at upper-intermediate level or above
• Download your Free Sample Chapter (.pdf)

Buy Giallo a Capodanno, just £3.99! | Free sample chapter (.pdf) | Catalog

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When your order is ‘completed’ (normally immediately after your payment), a download link will be automatically emailed to you. It’s valid for 7 days and 3 download attempts so please save a copy of the .pdf ebook in a safe place. Other versions of the ebook, where available, cannot be downloaded but will be emailed to people who request them. There’s a space to do that on the order form – where it says Additional information, Order notes (optional). If you forget, or if you have problems downloading the .pdf, don’t worry! Email us at the address on the website and we’ll help. Also, why not check out our FAQ?

P.P.S.

Thursday’s FREE bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news is FREE to read/listen to. Try using it in different ways, as suggested in the above article.

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