Improving Listening Skills

[Rionoir]

Ok.. my Thai is an intermediate level I guess (according to Chula), I can read and write on MSN with my Thai friends very easily, and I can speak well too. But... when I listen to a commercial, Thai movie, or someone talks at me full speed... I feel like an idiot a good percentage of the time. I don't know if it's that my vocabulary just still isn't good enough, or what to do to improve my listening. I should say, it isn't total crap... I maybe understand 50% of what is going on, maybe... more or less... but, with something like a Thai soap opera... I don't understand hardly anything... they talk so fast and so crazy... it does me no good to even watch it.

People always say just watch a lot of Thai TV or whatever... but honestly, my brain turns off after 5 minutes of Thai TV because I start trying WAY too hard and I just can't be bothered to listen anymore, and my mind turns off. LoL Is there an easier way? I know I need to speak more Thai with my friends... some of my friends only speak Thai, but many of them still speak English to me, especially in public (of course they want to impress people, I know).

I need something around intermediate level listening.. what might that be?

[DavidHouston]

Radio Parliament carries some wonderful programs in Thai; its hallmarks are current affairs and live broadcasts from both the lower house and from the Senate. In Phuket here, the programs are carried at 99.25 FM but the frequencies differ around the country.

The Thai speech is generally literate and the topics interesting. The only exceptions I have heard is during certain sessions of parliament when some members take liberties with clear expression, arising primarily from their advanced age.

Let me know what you think. Thanks.

[RickBradford]

Thai Community Radio puts out a half-hour current affairs program every day, available as an MP3 download.

The presenters generally speak clearly, and there is a wide variety of voices to listen to.

I tend to listen to this at 80% playback speed to begin with so that I can get the gist, and maybe reprise a few days later at full speed.

[Rionoir]

Thanks for the recommendations guys.

[rak sa_ngop]

Voice of America in Thai is worth listening to. Contains international news with 'bites' in English which helps you to work out the Thai words.

http://www.voanews.com/thai/webcasts.cfm

[keo]

but, with something like a Thai soap opera... I don't understand hardly anything... they talk so fast and so crazy... it does me no good to even watch it.

I need something around intermediate level listening.. what might that be?

I have the same problem with the soap operas. I find the sound quality is so bad in some of them that it really hinders my ability to understand what is being said. Sounds like it has been recorded in a cave or something!

Check out Little Leader Geo cartoons on youtube. quite good listening practice!

[Rionoir]

Keo... those cartoons are totally my speed... haha Pathetic

[Rikker]

Highly recommended: changkhui.com, the ช่างคุย podcast station.

It has at least a dozen different Thai-language podcasts on a variety of topics.

Here's their page with RSS feeds for each program: http://www.changkhui.com/Thai_iTunes_and_RSS.html

[anothertorres]

might i also give a plug to Brett from http://www.learnthaifromawhiteguy.com

he puts up transcripts and it's great to read and listen at the same time.

[Gwindarr]

Alright, so this may sound kinda silly, but it really isn't.

The only way to get better at listening, is by listening. And the best way to make sure that happens (that you listen..) is by finding stuff that is interesting for you. It works better if its less a matter of discipline and more a matter of doing stuff you do already. Partially comprehensible stuff is preferred. While it is possible to take a body of text and audio that you don't understand at all and learn it all, it takes a really long time so if you can find stuff where you already understand the main idea, then you can just focus on the stuff you don't know.

Get a clip (cut up a soap, news clip, or whatever) and listen to it until you can't take it anymore. Then put it away for a while and listen to something else. Cut up the files into pieces. Audacity is a good piece of free software that can help you with that. Its better if you have text, but its more important that you can handle listening to it a bunch of times. Watch out for people who have nice voices. Thai dubbed movies are rough because its the same handful of people all the <deleted> time.

Anyways, just listen. Master what you enjoy first and by being good at that stuff you will have an easy time when you attack stuff you don't like Don't aim for 100%. You can't compete with a native speaker without thousands and thousands of hours of listening so set smaller goals. Drop stuff if it sucks. Move on and listen to new stuff if you get bored. Just keep listening.

Whatever happens, I promise you can't get worse by listening so no time spent will be wasted. A huge portion of the language learning process is done behind the scenes and you aren't always going to be aware of progress. Just keep listening.

The hard part is finding good material.

Ok.. my Thai is an intermediate level I guess (according to Chula), I can read and write on MSN with my Thai friends very easily, and I can speak well too. But... when I listen to a commercial, Thai movie, or someone talks at me full speed... I feel like an idiot a good percentage of the time. I don't know if it's that my vocabulary just still isn't good enough, or what to do to improve my listening. I should say, it isn't total crap... I maybe understand 50% of what is going on, maybe... more or less... but, with something like a Thai soap opera... I don't understand hardly anything... they talk so fast and so crazy... it does me no good to even watch it.

People always say just watch a lot of Thai TV or whatever... but honestly, my brain turns off after 5 minutes of Thai TV because I start trying WAY too hard and I just can't be bothered to listen anymore, and my mind turns off. LoL Is there an easier way? I know I need to speak more Thai with my friends... some of my friends only speak Thai, but many of them still speak English to me, especially in public (of course they want to impress people, I know).

I need something around intermediate level listening.. what might that be?

[SoftWater]

The hard part is finding good material.

Yeah, but luckily 'anothertorres' just promoted your site right before you posted!

Haha...anyway, thanks. You've got some good stuff on there, and best of all I found the link to Cambell's 'Fundamentals of Thai'. I've been dipping in and out of this book for years, a knackered old copy like yours that I photocopied of someone else who had a knackered old photocopy of someone else's...god knows what generation mine is from the original. Anyway, I had no idea it was online too. That's a resource I seriously need to get properly 'internalised'.

Edited September 9, 2009 by SoftWater

[Rionoir]

Highly recommended: changkhui.com, the ช่างคุย podcast station.

It has at least a dozen different Thai-language podcasts on a variety of topics.

Here's their page with RSS feeds for each program: http://www.changkhui.com/Thai_iTunes_and_RSS.html

Thanks Rikker, I finally looked this one up on iTunes today - pretty cool... they really do have a lot of different topics to subscribe to... I'm glad I have 16 gb iPhone LoL...

I wonder if anyone knows a program I can use to slow down the playback with good sound quality?  I am using VCL media player, but the sound really sounds like crap when I slow it down, but maybe it's always going to be like that.

[meadish_sweetball]

Audacity is an open source audio editor that has a slow down function too, you might want to try that since it's all free and you can bin it if it doesn't work to your satisfaction.

Personally I have only ever used it for slowing down guitar parts, which works, even though the sound quality does suffer a bit. It might be useful for language learning too.

[Scottish Thailander]

Highly recommended: changkhui.com, the ช่างคุย podcast station.

It has at least a dozen different Thai-language podcasts on a variety of topics.

Here's their page with RSS feeds for each program: http://www.changkhui.com/Thai_iTunes_and_RSS.html

Thanks Rikker, I finally looked this one up on iTunes today - pretty cool... they really do have a lot of different topics to subscribe to... I'm glad I have 16 gb iPhone LoL...

I wonder if anyone knows a program I can use to slow down the playback with good sound quality? I am using VCL media player, but the sound really sounds like crap when I slow it down, but maybe it's always going to be like that.

Save them as "audiobook" format (with Apples own iPod audiobook file type suffix ".m4b", NOT ".m4a") before you dowload to your iPod and then the iPod lets you choose the playback speed from a small number of presets (From memory, I think the presets are something like v.slow, slow, normal, fast, v.fast; but only used this function a couple of times).

ST.

Edited September 17, 2009 by Scottish Thailander

[Gaccha]

Highly recommended: changkhui.com, the ช่างคุย podcast station.

It has at least a dozen different Thai-language podcasts on a variety of topics.

Here's their page with RSS feeds for each program: http://www.changkhui.com/Thai_iTunes_and_RSS.html

Thanks Rikker, I finally looked this one up on iTunes today - pretty cool... they really do have a lot of different topics to subscribe to... I'm glad I have 16 gb iPhone LoL...

I wonder if anyone knows a program I can use to slow down the playback with good sound quality? I am using VCL media player, but the sound really sounds like crap when I slow it down, but maybe it's always going to be like that.

The posts above me about Audacity still stand. In fact, Audacity even has a function to correct the pitch when the playback speed is adjusted (which is why voices sound weird when they are slowed down without correction). The process is complicated but if you look on vidoes for Audacity to adjust playback speed you'll soon sort it out.

I am posting because I think what you are seeking is an alternative media player that controls playback speed. This for me is a no brainer: Gom player has a large number of language-learner friendly options. Just get it for free off the internet. I think it was made by the Korean government.

[Rionoir]

Thanks for the suggestions guys Being able to play it back slower on iPod sounds great - do I have to move it to a new folder to change it to a audio book, or just change the extension?

[Scottish Thailander]

Thanks for the suggestions guys Being able to play it back slower on iPod sounds great - do I have to move it to a new folder to change it to a audio book, or just change the extension?

Depending what format you have the files in now you can just rename the extension (I think .m4a to .m4b was just a simple rename), or (if the rename doesn't work - as your files are not compatable) look for a free file converter on the web. After renaming/converting you then have to add them again to your library so that the new status gets updated.

Good luck, and happy slow listening.

ST

[eric67]

Depending what format you have the files in now you can just rename the extension (I think .m4a to .m4b was just a simple rename), or (if the rename doesn't work - as your files are not compatable) look for a free file converter on the web. After renaming/converting you then have to add them again to your library so that the new status gets updated.

ST

If you have one of the newer iTunes versions, it's actually much simpler:

In iTunes 8 or 9 you can change any audio-track in your library into an audiobook. Just select the track in your library, choose File, Get Info , go to the "Options" tab, and under "Media kind", where it says "Music", change that into "Audiobook". Click OK and you're done

Now the track will appear in the Audiobook section in iTunes, and the next time you sync your iPod you can use the variable speed setting.

Good Luck!!

[Rionoir]

Sweet thanks guys

[Rikker]

I'll have to remember that and try it out.

The other nice thing about the m4b format that I've seen is bookmarking. I usually listen to podcasts on my cell phone (no, not an iPhone), and while it has auto-resume of the last played song, often times I've accidentally started a different track and lost my place within an hour-long podcast (or even longer audiobook file). I borrow my wife's iPod occasionally, but I should really get around to getting myself one.

[Rionoir]

FYI... I just switched those podcasts to audiobook, but I had to upgrade to iTunes 9 first... when I tried to do it with version 8 it didn't do anything.

[Gwindarr]

Ok.. my Thai is an intermediate level I guess (according to Chula), I can read and write on MSN with my Thai friends very easily, and I can speak well too. But... when I listen to a commercial, Thai movie, or someone talks at me full speed... I feel like an idiot a good percentage of the time. I don't know if it's that my vocabulary just still isn't good enough, or what to do to improve my listening. I should say, it isn't total crap... I maybe understand 50% of what is going on, maybe... more or less... but, with something like a Thai soap opera... I don't understand hardly anything... they talk so fast and so crazy... it does me no good to even watch it.

People always say just watch a lot of Thai TV or whatever... but honestly, my brain turns off after 5 minutes of Thai TV because I start trying WAY too hard and I just can't be bothered to listen anymore, and my mind turns off. LoL Is there an easier way? I know I need to speak more Thai with my friends... some of my friends only speak Thai, but many of them still speak English to me, especially in public (of course they want to impress people, I know).

I need something around intermediate level listening.. what might that be?

Audacity is great! Aside from what was mentioned above, what you can do is take a podcast or an audio rip from a movie or youtube video or what not and use audacity to cut it into chunks. So I might take a short story in some language that has loads of words I don't know and cut it into 30sec -1 min pieces and just loop it. I'll occasionally look at the text and possibly look up words now and then until I'm solid with it then I'll go through the other pieces and eventually the entire thing. I know that if I listen to something a few hundred times it will be mine. Obviously, it helps if you can find stuff that you actually want to listen to in the first place.

[SoftWater]

AUA have kindly posted nearly 100 short videos on youtube, about 10 mins each, which provide some excellent listening practice. You can find them here:

listening practice videos

Softwater

[katana]

Nice find Softwater

[RickBradford]

That is superb.

[Rikker]

Oh, good! For the longest time there was only one ALG Thai video on YouTube. This should serve as good advertising for their method, which many are skeptical about. Thanks for pointing this out, SoftWater.

[anothertorres]

wow, what a great find. thank you!

[anothertorres]

oh lord. just got to the part where the student says he doesn't have any money and the teacher says he's farang and that he is telling a lie. sigh...

[Rionoir]

oh lord. just got to the part where the student says he doesn't have any money and the teacher says he's farang and that he is telling a lie. sigh...

ROFLMAO

Hey, why was that student talking anyway... I thought they weren't allowed. *giggle*

[aitch]

AUA have kindly posted nearly 100 short videos on youtube, about 10 mins each, which provide some excellent listening practice. You can find them here:

listening practice videos

Softwater

Thank you for this link Softwater. This is exactly what i have been looking for.

i have the same flash cards they use on 1.1 part 3 (4:30) and am already hearing many of the words that i am reading in Mary Haas "Thai Reader"

Edited October 13, 2009 by aitch