Head Start for Mastering Japanese (2) -How to improve Japanese listening comprehension

The Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) by the Japan Educational Exchange and Services (JEES) is coming up on December 7th. According to the JEES, approximately 524,000 people from all over the world took the test last year, while it was only about 7,000 people at the first time it was administrated in 1984. The contents of the test are as follows; writing/vocabulary (100 points,) listening (100 points,) and reading/grammar (200 points.)

I have met some people studying Japanese who say that improving their listening comprehension is the hardest part of the JLPT. I have some advice to help your listening skills develop. It is not only for the JLPT but for all people who want to improve their communication skills.

In Japanese, which do you think is easier, listening to monologues or dialogues? In my experience, I have found listening to Japanese dialogues is much harder than listening to monologues. Why? For an in depth explanation, please refer my first Article 'Japanese –Indirect Communication-.' In order to help your listening skills progress, please find some Japanese monologue material that is slightly easier than your level, and make sure it comes with a written script. At first, try to listen to it without reading the script and check how much you could understand. Then repeat listening to the recording while reading the script. Repetition is necessary for improving your ability to catch sounds in a new language.

Take me for example; my first English listening material was a movie "When Harry Met Sally…" Meg Ryan used to be the most popular Hollywood actress in Japan and I was her biggest fan. You know Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal talk so fast each other. I could understand 10 % of what they said. I decided to stop messing around, and get serious about enjoying their dialogue. I bought a listening material with an appropriate speed for me. I studied the easier material again and again for couple of weeks. Then I watched the movie again. Behold! I was able to understand what's going on between Sally and Harry (although I could not perfectly follow it word by word)!

Please keep in mind that repetition and persistence is the key to improving your listening comprehension. The more you repeat, the more progress you will make. Every time you practice, please tell yourself that you will catch more sounds than you did last time. Don't try to convince yourself that you won’t understand very much. Just relax and enjoy the learning process and one day you will suddenly notice how much you are actually able to catch.

Listening material recommendation: http://www.ask-digital.co.jp/tadoku/