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Listening Practice

Moderators: MoniqueMaRie, Cifi

speakergeo
United States of America

Listening Practice

Post by speakergeo »

Hello All,

So I am just over 250 days into learning German on duolingo. I started because work was going to send me to germany to live there for a couple years. Fast forward to now and I'm here, in Germany, and I just finished my second castle in duolingo.

My problem is that, even if I know all the individual words the local germans are saying, they speak so fast and differently than the app that my brain just kind of blue-screens when they talk. Anyone have any resource to practice listening skills more?

Thanks!
Geo

Cifi

Re: Listening Practice

Post by Cifi »

For me it has been really helpful to watch local news or other tv formats with subtitles on (You might turn them off later on, but I would have had more frustration without them in the beginning).

Especially in the news, the vocabulary will repeat over a few days, and they will usually speak slower and more clearly than "out in the wild", while there still may be some of the local accent present.

This would be the local bavarian TV as an example:

https://www.br.de/mediathek

Formats that offer subtitles are marked with [UT]

Apart from this, which would require more or less active, focussed listening/reading/watching, I'd turn on the radio e.g. when doing housework, not so much actually listening, but rather to get used to the way they speak where you are located.

And for one-to-one communication, make sure to memorize "Ich lerne deutsch. Können Sie bitte langsam sprechen?" ;)

Last edited by Cifi on Fri Apr 15, 2022 4:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Native: :de: Intermediate: :uk: Lower intermediate: :es: Beginner: :fr: Absolute beginner: 🇬🇷
(If there are errors in what I'm writing in either language, please do correct me - I'll never take it as offense or something like that.)

Deleted User 1400

Re: Listening Practice

Post by Deleted User 1400 »

First I would like to add that Germans have a wide variety of dialects and some even don't understand each other - this occurs even within families! And it's very common to shorten a lot of words, especially prepositions, in spoken German, e.g. "eine" can be pronounced as "ne" or "en" or "a", depending on your location. So don't worry too much about that at this point of your learning journey ;-)

Since news may require advanced vocab, I'd recommend to start watching a TV show for children with German transcription and subtitles in your native language, most streaming providers have some.

User avatar
g-heike
Germany

Re: Listening Practice

Post by g-heike »

Some poeple recommended in addition to Duolingo this course with audio practice: https://learngerman.dw.com/en/overview

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