Listening-Reading Method
From Learn Any Language
Listening-Reading Method, also known as the L-R Method, is a language learning technique where you listen to an L2 while simultaneously reading the text. It was first described on HTLAL [1], but the thread is somewhat long and unwieldy. The truly curious should read the 'printable' version.
The most critical elements of L-R are joy and passion. To do it as described, you need to love your texts, the voice of the narrator, and the language you are trying to learn. Listening-Reading at a low intensity, up to a few hours a day, is useful, but doing step 3 (below) within 7-10 days is much better.
It is best done in five stages. The first two may be skipped by anyone already comfortable with phonetics and the correspondence between the spoken and written forms of his/her L2.
- Phonetic study. Get used to the sounds of your target language.
- Learn to associate the written and spoken languages. Listen to audio in your target language until you feel comfortable matching it with text in your target language at the speed of the audio.
- Listen to about 80-120 hours of audio in your target language. This is best done by having 20-40 hours of new material, and listening to each part of it three times. Switch texts if you can understand 50-70% easily.
- Speak after the recording: a form of Shadowing. This should only be done for material you understand entirely. You don't need to know every word of the novel, but you should know every word of the specific parts that you shadow. This should be done for at least half a dozen hours; they can be somewhat spread out and interspersed with listening to perhaps 20 hours.
- Translating from your known language into your target one.
All numbers given above are approximate. See also the first post on page 63 by siomotteikiru on HTLAL's epic L-R thread.
It can be compared to working on an extended Assimil dialog. Both involve listening to audio with a bilingual text. However, Listening-Reading is best done with novels, rather than disconnected short texts which focus on one element after another in turn, such as Assimil.
It is worth noting that it is best to do Listening-Reading with progressively more difficult material. The ideal would be to start with an interlinear translation of a children's story.
