I used to watch an online news report thing from FNN every day, but whenever I had it on in the background while studying, it just made it 10x harder to concentrate. And when I had it on at other times, the constant sound was irritating XD I’ve no idea how Khatzumoto could have a TV on beside him all the time and not be driven crazy haha. I think I just prefer having a more chilled atmosphere, quiet and peaceful most of the time.

@JKline – What’s language shadowing?

I do think it is more effective if you try to pick listening material that fits the level you are currently at.

As a beginner that’s only halfway season 2, I don’t think I will learn as much from listening to the news, as listening to japanese songs for children, for example.
With learning/practicing in general, I personally prefer to use material that is just a tad bit higher than the level I’m currently at.

Edit: To be clear, I agree that listening as often as possible is the best way to learn it. I just think you can be even more effective if you pick the right material for your current level. I learned English mostly by just reading it, watching it and listening to it a lot.

• This reply was modified 12 years, 1 month ago by  Linus.

@Angela – that looks really interesting – good find!

Same here, thanks for sharing.

There is an app for mobile devices called “Tunein FM” that lets you listen to radio programs broadcast anywhere in the world.  Of course this eats up streaming data on your data plan, but if you’re in wifi range it’s no issue.  The timing is just right too, because normal work hours where I live are the middle of the night in Japan, so in the evening I can listen to morning talk shows.  Of course, being a beginner, I have no idea what they are saying!!!

To me, I feel that it’s a person-to-person basis for which someone can say whether watching anime with subs is worthless or not. I believe it’s entirely subjective. Each person has their own learning style, attention span, multitasking ability, listening capability, and deductive/inductive reasoning skill set. I can say for myself that I think watching something with subtitles helps me to grasp the idea of speech pace, conversational interaction, and even grammatical structure. It helps me to identify what words come up most often, and usually at what timing they should appear. All in all it helps me to pick up social speech patterns. But this might not be the case for the next person who might be a “one thing at a time” learner (so they MUST watch anime in its raw form; anime sans subtitles). They might not be used to hearing a foreign language to begin with, and that’s always overwhelming (I’ve had previous foreign-language listening skills training when forced to learn Spanish throughout my life, so I already kind of know what to do with what I’m hearing). The main point is that if it works for you, wonderful! It’s an abundant resource that is fun to learn with. If not, that’s ok too! As long as you recognize when it’s time to move forward and not sit in a comfort zone forever, then you’ll do just fine either way.
Just my two cents. ^^”

Justin wrote:

Righto! There are a slew of things you can be picked up from anime, and although anime is still slightly off from reality, it has taught me quite a bit thus far anyhow.
You point out the different translations from a single word when involved in different scenarios, and I’ve definitely picked up on this as well. It just shows how flexible the language is, and also helps it to seems less intimidating. An example I can think of off the top of my head would be the use of “そうですね”/”そうか?”. I’ve heard it so many times that I’m pretty confident of when to use it, what inflection I should use, and even at what times I should shorten it to just “そう..”. I love that!
You’re totally right about the honorifics as well. Someone just learning Japanese probably finds the idea of honorifics to be really strange, but someone who watches Japanese shows most likely thinks it quite natural after a while.