Assessing/improving my listening comprehension

[CardinalGuy724]

Hey everyone,

So so far I've made a few posts here at TJP and the few people I've got to interact with so far have been really nice and helpful! Thanks for that!

As I have only been to Japan once since I first started studying Japanese, my listening comprehension I would say is severely lacking compared to my other skills.

It's difficult for me to assess just how good/bad my listening skills actually are. I feel like when I listen to Japanese I can clearly hear everything that's being said. It doesn't sound like a mesh of random sounds but I can pretty clearly detect words and if needed I could probably parrot back what was said (unless the speaker happens to be a young male who slurs all his words together haha). Nevertheless, even though I can do this I find it difficult to actually understand a lot of what's being said. I can't tell if it's because my vocabulary isn't developed enough or if it's because my brain interprets the words too slowly to keep up or if it's something else.

To put it all in perspective, I recently had to read Murakami Haruki's Kaze no Uta wo Kike for a class and I was able to get through it without too much trouble with the aid of a dictionary and I can see the fruits of my labor when it comes to reading. Not so much with listening.

(Here's a link to a Japanese viral Cloverfield trailer. I was able to understand probably 40% of it well and some of the rest http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iEo6-Sfsqg )

So given my situation, what's the best route to improvement? Do you guys also recommend any materials/tv shows for me to watch? I've never been a big fan of anime and a lot of Japanese tv seems to be of the ridiculous game shows with people screaming at each other variety. So even though I've been studying for several years now I've tended to shun a lot of listening resources and have never really found anything I can reliable watch and enjoy. I would say this is also a contributing factor to my lacking listening skills.

Thanks everyone,

Chris

[NumesSanguis]

Hello CardinalGuy724,

Probably my only good skill with Japanese is listening
That's because I have watched a lot of anime since I first started. I don't know any other listening source than anime or japanese programs, but you said you didn't like anime. You have to know that are a lot of different anime, like there are all kinds of movies. Did you try to watch a single anime but didn't like it or have you tried multiply animes?

If you want you could tell me what for story's you like and I could you advise a anime that suits your taste if you want to try it again? Because there are a lot of bad animes (or bad for you if you don't like that genre), but there is a great possibility that there is a anime you like and that would be a great source to try your listening skills (you can try it with subtitles turned off if you want that).

Let me know
NumesSanguis

[Hektor6766]

You might try the TBS or Fuji-TV news websites. Or, there are many TV magazine show interviews on Youtube. And then there's http://jclab.wordpress.com/ , Japanese Classical Literature at Bedtime audio book collection (The reading of Genji no monogatari is hypnotic).