The problem of audition in language learning

[anne marie devlin]

Hi Paul
this is a very common problem in second  (or 3rd, 4th, 5th) language acquisition and I'm afraid there's no quick answer. One theory is that when we listen for overall comprehension that we don't pay attention to the 'smaller' elements.  At an elementary stage of learning the cognitive burden of trying to comprehend meaning and attend to unfamiliar phonemes is just too much (Pavel Trifimovich has written extensively on this).  So it may be an idea just to concentrate on the individual phonemes by comparing/contrasting words or even invented words which contain the problematic sounds and differentiating between them.  In that way your focus will be on the sound and not on the meaning.  It's boring, but might help - remember 'oryol' 'korol''?

 

AM     
> Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2010 02:18:11 -0400
> From: paulbg at PBG-TRANSLATIONS.COM
> Subject: [SEELANGS] The problem of audition in language learning
> To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
> 
> Dear colleagues,
> 
> Since we have a lot of professional language teachers here, I thought 
> this would be the right place to get expert advice.
> 
> I've been working with Russian for decades, and when I hear the 
> occasional unfamiliar word, my ear is now good enough that I identify 
> all the sounds correctly and can generally look the word up in a 
> dictionary on the first try, and almost always by the second or third 
> try (because of idiosyncrasies of the spelling system). But this has not 
> always been true, and it's certainly not true when I listen to 
> less-familiar languages.
> 
> I've recently taken an interest in Korean, and despite many hours of 
> hard work, I'm still often unsure of what I'm hearing or even mistaken. 
> Some of that is simply the vocabulary problem (listeners who expect a 
> word recognize it even if it's mispronounced a little), but mostly it's 
> because I'm just not proficient at hearing that sound inventory. For 
> example, the name of a favorite soap opera, 미우나 고우나, should be 
> /miuna kouna/, but when I hear it, the Korean /o/, which is somewhat 
> higher/closer than the American one, sounds to me like /u/, so I "hear" 
> 미우나 구우나 /miuna kuuna/. Conversely, when I pronounce it, I aim too 
> low and they think I'm saying 미우나 거우나 /miuna kɔuna/.
> 
> So my question to you experts is, how can I make faster progress 
> training my ear? I already know a certain amount of practice is 
> required; what I'm asking is how I can make the best use of that time so 
> that each hour of practice affords the maximum benefit.
> 
> Thanks much.
> 
> -- 
> War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
> --
> Paul B. Gallagher
> pbg translations, inc.
> "Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
> http://pbg-translations.com
> 
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