This has probably been posted before but I need desperate help for my listening. Basically if I’m a reading a book, no problem my biggest issue is sometimes getting a grammar point mixed up or not knowing a few words. If I’m watching anime with JP subtitles? No problem, easily understand most of it. As soon as you turn those subtitles off I’m basically a beginner again who can’t understand anything. It all sounds like word soup to me. I’ve tried audiobooks, podcasts, shows, social media and I genuinely cannot understand a word anyone is saying without subtitles. This is a problem for me in English (my native language) sometimes but no where near as often as it is for Japanese. Anyone got any resources or advice that could help?
Genuinely, the only way to practice listening is by listening. Stop allowing subtitles. If you need to level down your content a bit, do it. I’ve found doing listening crams on Bunpro very beneficial as well.
Listening is a different skill than reading and most need to practice it seperatly. If your reading level is already good enough to follow along with subtitles and audiobooks, it shouldn’t be a vocab or grammar issue. Are you maybe overly relying on kanji? Relying on their picture instead of the sound they make?
In any case, it seems it’s only the missing experience for you. You can look for easy anime on natively or listen to graded easy japanese videos on youtube. A lot of folks also seem to like easy podcasts.
If your tolerance for not understanding stuff is not very high, it’s probably better to start with graded listening exercises at N5 or N4 level, even if it’s not for natives. There are tons of those on youtube. Or you could rewatch an anime you’ve already seen (or read the manga), so you already know the story. Though for me, not knowing the story is what keeps me motivated to keep watching.
Maybe take a week trying different method and sources to find something that feels like Good luck
Kikikata is good app for listening. have a good trail of N5 to practice. Just add some sentences and give it a whirl.
I used to have this problem too; when I first started learning, I concentrated way too much on reading and writing. I think I now listen just as well as I read and write
For me, I think the thing that helped my listening the most was audiobooks with the playback speed turned down a bit to give my brain time to get used to what it was hearing and actually comprehend what was being said rather than just getting overwhelmed. I started at .80x speed and worked my way up to standard 1x over time. I started by listening to books I already knew in English, ones that were available in Japanese on UK audible (mostly Murakami’s novels, Harry Potter). Also, I started watching almost exclusively Japanese TV/films/anime and covering the subtitles so I had to listen. I found covering them was better than turning them right off for me because, when I did miss something, it was easier to back up by ten seconds and just remove the paper or whatever was covering the screen, so I could figure out what it was I’d missed.
Good luck!
I’m going to disagree from my personal standpoint with turning off subtitles. I’m a weak listener even in English, like you say. I watch shows with subtitles even in English or I often miss things. One of the most helpful things for me in Japanese was to watch with subtitles–BUT I’m going to recommend listening with Japanese subtitles. It requires knowing a fair bit of kanji, but if you’re at the level of reading books, you’ll be able to read subtitles. You might be able to do this best on Youtube as I’m not sure how easy it is to watch anime subtitled in Japanese on streaming services.
It trained my ears to pick out what was being said, and I have better reading comprehension so it kept me able to follow what was going on. You could also try a video game in Japanese with Japanese subtitles as another option, though those typically have a little more limited speech.
A REALLY good source of subtitled listening is Japanese news as it’s always subtitled. If you have cable you might be able to get NHK. One of my friends was able to through her cable provider. The more immersion you can do the better, but if you’re a good reader, I do think being able to read while you listen is immensely helpful.
Ooh, another good one is Todai Easy Japanese. It has a play button that lets you listen to it being read and you can follow along, or just listen to it as well.