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Ear training in German?


madteaparty
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I don't even know if this is the correct term but basically DS, who just started studying German, does excellent in the writing work, horrible on listening (where he listens to a word and has to write it down). I realize he doesn't hear enough German. Time is limited here and this is just one more thing, but he identified the problem so I'd like to help...besides duolingo, anything else?

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Would it help to listen to German with subtitles? My learners and myself (all of us in our first year of study) have been watching YouTube videos of some guy (never shown) reading kids early-reader books. Sounds weird, seems weird, but so far so good. We started with the book "Apfel, Brot und Butterkeks" it is about 3 minutes except that I try to pause before each page and read and translate it on our own first. There seems to be a series, same guy, other books.

 

For more audio input, but more advanced, is there a "News in Slow German" like there is for Spanish? (Pause) Why yes, there is. But there is also a free "slowly spoken news podcast for German learners" here:

http://m.dw.com/en/slowly-spoken-news-reports-learning-german/a-1833641

I may try that one myself...

Edited by SusanC
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Would it help to listen to German with subtitles? My learners and myself (all of us in our first year of study) have been watching YouTube videos of some guy (never shown) reading kids early-reader books. Sounds weird, seems weird, but so far so good. We started with the book "Apfel, Brot und Butterkeks" it is about 3 minutes except that I try to pause before each page and read and translate it on our own first. There seems to be a series, same guy, other books.

 

For more audio input, but more advanced, is there a "News in Slow German" like there is for Spanish? (Pause) Why yes, there is. But there is also a free "slowly spoken news podcast for German learners" here:

http://m.dw.com/en/slowly-spoken-news-reports-learning-german/a-1833641

I may try that one myself...

That YouTube is actually exactly what I'm looking for, thanks. Have you a link by any chance? . News in slow way too advanced for us now.
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This may sound crazy, but we were part of LEX America and we would literally listen to CDs that switched languages every few minutes (between French, Spanish, German, English, Korean, Chinese, and Japanese) in the background. Just listening to all those sounds prepares the ear to hear new sounds, even though you don't understand. So I would recommend getting a book on tape in German and just putting it on in the background while doing math. Then, after listening 10 times through or so, start "singing" the sounds. Don't think of it as speaking German, but following the melody. It is really amazing how this can turn on your brain.

 

And, BTW, I love the way Korean sounds.

Emily

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This may sound crazy, but we were part of LEX America and we would literally listen to CDs that switched languages every few minutes (between French, Spanish, German, English, Korean, Chinese, and Japanese) in the background. Just listening to all those sounds prepares the ear to hear new sounds, even though you don't understand. So I would recommend getting a book on tape in German and just putting it on in the background while doing math. Then, after listening 10 times through or so, start "singing" the sounds. Don't think of it as speaking German, but following the melody. It is really amazing how this can turn on your brain.

 

And, BTW, I love the way Korean sounds.

Emily

That's cool. math takes up all of our senses here though. ;)

He is used to dictations in other languages and I wonder if that's actually part of the problem...

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Would it help to listen to German with subtitles? My learners and myself (all of us in our first year of study) have been watching YouTube videos of some guy (never shown) reading kids early-reader books. Sounds weird, seems weird, but so far so good. We started with the book "Apfel, Brot und Butterkeks" it is about 3 minutes except that I try to pause before each page and read and translate it on our own first. There seems to be a series, same guy, other books.

 

For more audio input, but more advanced, is there a "News in Slow German" like there is for Spanish? (Pause) Why yes, there is. But there is also a free "slowly spoken news podcast for German learners" here:

http://m.dw.com/en/slowly-spoken-news-reports-learning-german/a-1833641

I may try that one myself...

 

Thank you for posting this. I had not heard of News in Slow Spanish. 

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You've gotten some good ideas, but I will add that listening to songs sung in the language could help.  If I were you, I would search for lists of good German modern or folk music, and then look for them on Spotify.  Music listening is nice when you don't have a lot of spare time, because it is something that can be done in the background during another activity.

 

For the benefit of anyone reading this thread who has younger children, I can recommend these traditional German children's songs.

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