Video Message for Benny The Irish Polyglot: Passive Listening

http://www.fluentin3months.com/passive-learning/

"When learning occurs, neuro-chemical communication between neurons is facilitated, in other words a neural network is gradually established. Exposure to unfamiliar speech sounds is initially registered by the brain as undifferentiated neural activity. As exposure continues, the listener (and the brain) learns to differentiate among different sounds and even among short sequences of sounds that correspond to words or parts of words..."
- Fred Genesee of McGill University

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Passive
• Listening
• Benny
• The
• Irish
• Polyglot
• Language
• Learning

[BaddestJournalism]

you look like leo dicaprio

[Codylangaugesblog]

@BaddestJournalism LOL, I get that a lot.

[gildedmonk]

I played the cd from one of my language books (in the background while I studied) every day for for about a month. Now, months later, I can still recite many parts of these 'conversations' without even trying!

[Codylangaugesblog]

@gildedmonk I can recite many of my dialogs as well.

[MrScotchpie]

I think this debate about passive v active learning misses one vital point: Where the learner lives.

Like myself, Benny is European and if we are learning say French, we are only a short distance from native speakers. As such speaking straight away, throwing yourself into the language and surrounding yourself with it, is easy to do and probably the best way to learn.

If however, you live further away, passive learning is sometimes the only option, and therefore the best option for you.

[froekenlivisa]

I think passive listening is the most useful if you want to learn things like pronunciation and intonation in a certain language. Much better than trying to learn phonetics.

[gaoxinglangblog]

i do heaps of passive listening to memorise words and phrases. i listen to these heaps to learn them

[mowgli123456789]

the way i understood what benny was saying about passive learning is this..

that it is helpfull if you combine it with some active time of reviewing what you've heard.

i dont think he disscredits it as much as you think. I think he just got so sick of people thinking they could learn without putting any active reviewing time in that he went the complete oposite way with it.

[Stealthanugrah]

@gildedmonk I did the same thing as you, but as I said, I listened in some parts. It's like when u download a torrent, it comes in bits and pieces in no particular order, but in the end you get the 100% mark. I can still recite certain dialogues. I did passive listening too.

But there's a difference, listening is paying attention, passive listening is just hearing, when u pay attention, then that isn't passive anymore. Catch my drift? I'm with irishpolyglot on this one.

[gildedmonk]

@Stealthanugrah But it's not memorization, certain parts simply stick. The conversations come with translations, and after repeated listening many things like word order and phrases start to click in and make sense.

[Stealthanugrah]

@gildedmonk Think about that logically. If you play it for about a month, I think you would at least catch yourself listening to one part of it every once in awhile. and soon after listening to each of these parts, you would have compiled them and memorized the whole thing. But I think what we need to learn is how to speak a language not memorize a dialogue, which would be the equivalent of memorizing a physics lecture. One can memorize and learn nothing.

[irishpolyglot]

@storebror21 agreed!