How best to improve Listening comprehension?

All Languages
21

Any you can link?

Speaking of which, while some can be grating, Vtubers can be a great source, and they usually have full subs (hardcoded tho)

I love Drama CDs a lot - particularly if you’ve already consumed it in another form (anime, manga, etc)

If you mean this one - she speaks very articulately, but also on the faster side (which is also good practice). I’m tempted to watch now… But I need to continue with flowers and 空の軌跡

4 Likes
22

I just search for ニュース and pick a region that looks interesting. Kinda helps if you’ve been studying prefectures as well :smile:

4 Likes
23

Recordings of vtuber streams usually get automatically generated Japanese subtitles after a bit, and if it’s not multiple people talking over each other (or singing) they are often quite decent. And those aren’t hardcoded, so if you have a browser extension like Yomitan, you can hover and get dictionary entries.

This message was brought to you by someone who does maybe a bit too much “Listening comprehension training” by way of Hololive…

8 Likes
24

Good answer :blush:

Yep she’s the one.
She speaks kinda fast but not compared to other streamers. They usually talk really fast and are kinda screamy, and it’s hard to understand when they aren’t talking normally (which isn’t often :joy:).

One of these days I might need a beginner’s guide to Hololive… I’ve tried random streams but I don’t have any context for anything so it’s easy to bounce off of… I’d love to have streamers that I am looking forward to watching rather than making it a chore to try and get into it… :sweat_smile:

5 Likes
25

I had a post about Hololiver streamers I recommend over in the WK forums, and since this is basically listening comprehension I guess it can’t hurt to copy it here. It’s not much of a beginner’s guide I guess, but I feel like the best way to find a vtuber you enjoy doesn’t need much of that. You just:

  1. Find someone whose voice/model/content you think you might enjoy, either by getting a recommendation or by looking around.
  2. Look through their archived live streams (the “Live” section in their profile). Any games you think would be fun to watch? Watch one of those.
  3. Still enjoying them after that first stream? Maybe subscribe, but either way, the YouTube algorithm will take care of you from now on. The trick is to find one vtuber you like, and then you’ll slowly get to learn about others when they collaborate or when YouTube recommends clips of them to you.

Content types you will find:

  • Let’s plays.
  • Singing streams.
  • Talking streams.
  • Any of the above collaborating with others, either in a really small group or because a bigger event among lots of Hololive members is going on.
  • …and the occasional stream that doesn’t fall into any of those categories, e.g. a variety show, a vlog, a cooking stream and what have you.

Anyway, here are my recommendations from that WK post:

  • Korone: Energetic and delightfully weird. She’s just such a joy to watch.
  • Okayu: Playful, chill, comfy and sometimes a fair bit flirty. Can sometimes get NSWF-ish. I especially love her singing.
    • Korone and Okayu together are known as OkaKoro and make for a fantastic team.
  • Botan: Also super comfy and chill! Really good at FPS and fighting games if you like those, but she also plays roguelites and the like (which is more what I’m into).
  • Koyori: Super clear pronouncation with plenty of variety in her content, from games to collaboration talking streams. And if you like her, you will never run out of content: I think she has streamed almost every single day since she started 3 years ago, and sometimes even streams multiple times a day?!

A few specific streams that I have especially enjoyed to watch completely:

As you can see I really like adventure-type game playthroughs, since they are interesting to follow even if you don’t understand everything, but also since the streamers mostly talk about the game itself, so you have lots of visual context.

And for those starting just out: For something easier I can recommend collabs between an Hololive English and Japanese - which means most of the time they will talk in Japanese, but it will be easier and slower than all-Japanese videos. Examples:

8 Likes
26

Oh, also Hololive has a (much smaller, sadly) all-male branch: Holostars!

I don’t watch them yet, but I tangentially discovered and want to watch when I get better at listening:

  • Roberu: Let’s plays & a collab talking stream called BAR ROBEL. I’ve seen a few clips of him and he seems a lot of fun.
  • Oga: Mainly because I love his voice from the few clips I saw. So deep and soothing.
6 Likes