✨ January 2025 Listening Challenge 👂

All Languages
1

Hey all,

Continuing on our challenge to ourselves to boost our listening skills, the January challenge is ready for signups! Set whatever number of hours feels like a reasonable goal for you and feel free to share the things you’re listening to, your successes and setbacks. We’re in this together :muscle:

All languages welcome!

This post will be a wiki so you can add and update your own hours.

Name Language Goal Hours Achieved
@cat Japanese 30 0
暁のルナ 日本語 40/60 21.5
CatDQ 日本語 20 13h 48m
eefara 日本語 30/36/42 31
@neon_kitsune 日本語, Deutsch, 한국어 20, 10, 5
@PrinceSugarBun Japanese 5 1.97
@HopeWaterfall 한국어 10 0
@earwen Japanese 10 0
@araigoshi Japanese 30 26h10m
9 Likes
2

Just calling out that this is the last listening challenge I’ll be hosting, the torch is welcome to any who would like to take it. As I no longer track my own listening I don’t think my heart has really been in this for a bit, but I’d be happy to see it taken up.

10 Likes
3

Starting w/ 40 hr goal, but hoping for 60. December’s challenge. Anything that’s spoken audio (with or without accompanying text) counts.

オーディオブック
Book ch text Time
ソードアート・オンライン1 アインクラッド | L33 八～十 ナシ 72
ADV/VN/ゲーム 動画
ゲーム エピソード 時間
声優ラジオ
Series eps Time
インタビュー
Interview Time
ドラマCD
Series ep/ch Time
マリア様がみてる ドラマ１ 1 29
アニメ
Series eps Time
ストロベリー・パニック S1 | L26 5-12 160
少女革命ウテナ S1 | L31 1-2 40
おにいさまへ… S1 | L26 1-39 780
アオのハコ S1 | L24 14-17 80
薬屋のひとりごと S2 | L34 1 20
五等分の花嫁＊ | L24 1-2 88
シャドーイング
シーリズ eps Time
Random YouTube vids
シリーズ subs time
ニューズなど
ニュースチャンネル 字幕 時間

Post with News & other channels to listen to: 🦃 November Listening Challenge 👂 - #11 by 暁のルナ

Note to self: watch this channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4v8X-lfX5o

Total so far: 1269min (21.5 hrs)

4 Likes
4

Thx for running them so far, it’s been a great influence for me! :slight_smile:

If nobody else steps up, I can make future threads… Tho if there’s someone with a more active interest, by all means feel free to take the torch, as I’m already running a few book club threads

8 Likes
5

I need to get back into listening regularly so thinking I will take this up again and try to get back into the habit of regular listening.

Not quite sure what that looks like though.

Goal for the month, at least 5 hours per week and a total of 20 hours. It’s better than I’ve been doing over the last while.

For content, I’ll include anything comprehensible or with subtitles or with a read along; so podcasts, anime, audiobooks where I have the physical book/ ebook available.

Will update weekly.

6 Likes
6

Alright, let’s go again!

It’s (soon to be) January, which is the time when I feel the most ambitious and get the most done! I’ll aim for 20 hours in Japanese, 10 in German, and 5 in Korean.

Yeah, sure, very do-able.

7 Likes
7

I’ve a goal for next year of 250 hours of listening. This averages out to 20.5 hours a month, but that’s not counting that December and one of the summer months will be limited in study time, so I’m going to aim for 30 hours most months. Including January! So I’ll be in the challenge again this month.

7 Likes
8

I listened to just over 113 hours of Japanese last year, which was awesome! And just under half of that (50 hours) was due to my efforts in just August alone, thanks to the initial listening challenge. :smiling_face_with_tear: I’m going to aim for 360 hours of Japanese listening this year, so about one hour per day, with a bit of leeway for the months (like this one) with 31 days, with stretch goals of 430 hours and 500 hours. Honestly it’ll be a miracle if I get the 360 hours done, but

eefara’s home post

:two: :five: Jan :snake:
月 火 水 木 金 土 日
01 :100: 02 :100: 03 :100: 04 :100: 05 :100:
06 :100: 07 :100: 08 :100: 09 :100: 10 :100: 11 :100: 12 :100:
13 :100: 14 :100: 15 :100: 16 :100: 17 :100: 18 :100: 19 :100:
20 :100: 21 :100: 22 :100: 23 :100: 24 :100: 25 :100: 26 :100:
27 :100: 28 29 30 31
  • :heavy_check_mark: I listened this day, but didn’t hit the hour+ mark.
  • :100: : I listened to an hour or more this day!

(Calendar stolen from the Listen Every Day Challenge on WK.)

Listening Log
Total time: 36h 17m 13s

Audiobooks

01/07:
最弱テイマーはゴミ拾いの旅を始めました。 - 24m 48s

01/10:
最弱テイマーはゴミ拾いの旅を始めました。 - 49m 41s

01/11:
最弱テイマーはゴミ拾いの旅を始めました。 - 9m 39s

01/14:
最弱テイマーはゴミ拾いの旅を始めました。 - 36m 3s

01/15:
最弱テイマーはゴミ拾いの旅を始めました。 - 26m 5s

01/20:
最弱テイマーはゴミ拾いの旅を始めました。 - 1h 22m 59s

01/21:
最弱テイマーはゴミ拾いの旅を始めました。 - 1h 34m 43s

01/22:
最弱テイマーはゴミ拾いの旅を始めました。 - 1h 4m 3s

01/23:
最弱テイマーはゴミ拾いの旅を始めました。 - 1h 45m 50s

01/24:
最弱テイマーはゴミ拾いの旅を始めました。 - 2h 7m 33s

Drama CDs
Podcasts

01/02:
Nihongo con Teppei, ep. 57 - 58: 40m 41s

01/07:
Nihongo con Teppei, ep. 59-60: 40m 42s
YuYuの日本語, ep 1-2: 32m 39s

01/09:
4989 American Life, ep 209: 36m 16s
YuYuの日本語, ep 2-3: 36m 13s

TV/Anime/Movies

01/01:
しかのこのこのここしたんたん, ep 1-2: 48m
ねぇ先生、知らないの?, ep 1-2: 48m

01/02:
しかのこのこのここしたんたん, ep 3: 20m
ねぇ先生、知らないの?, ep 3: 20m

01/03:
しかのこのこのここしたんたん, ep 4: 20m
ねぇ先生、知らないの?, ep 4-6: 60m

01/04:
しかのこのこのここしたんたん, ep 5-6: 40m
君に届け (live action), ep 1: 34m

01/05:
しかのこのこのここしたんたん, ep 7-8: 40m
君に届け (live action), ep 1: 34m

01/06:
しかのこのこのここしたんたん, ep 9-12: 80m

01/08:
君に届け (live action), ep 2: 34m
五等分の花嫁, ep 1: 24m

01/09:
君に届け (live action), ep 3: 2m 30s (Yes, you read that right. It counts. :triumph:)

01/10:
君に届け (live action), ep 3: 34m

01/11:
君に届け (live action), ep 4: 34m
ホリミヤ, ep 1: 24m

01/12:
君に届け (live action), ep 5-6: 68m

01/13:
君に届け (live action), ep 7-8: 68m

01/14:
君に届け (live action), ep 9: 34m

01/15:
君に届け (live action), ep 10-11: 68m

01/16:
君に届け (live action), ep 12: 34m
すばらしきこのせかい The Animation, ep 1: 24m

01/17:
すばらしきこのせかい The Animation, ep 1-6: 144m

01/18:
すばらしきこのせかい The Animation, ep 7-9: 72m

01/19:
すばらしきこのせかい The Animation, ep 10-12: 72m

01/25:
中学聖日記, ep 1: 57m
D.gray-man, ep 27-28: 50m

01/26:
中学聖日記, ep 2: 57m

01/27:
中学聖日記, ep 3: 57m

Youtube

01/02:
このチャンネルについて (桜井政博のゲーム作るには): 21m 48s (watched 3x)

Numbers for calcs

48m + 48m + 40m + 21m 48s + 40m 41s + 1h 20m + 1h 14m + 1h 14m + 80m + 40m 42s + 24m 48s + 58m + 32m 39s + 74m 59s + 2h 21m 41s + 9m 39s + 68m + 68m + 34m + 36m 3s + 68m + 26m 5s + 58m + 144m + 72m + 72m + 1h 22m 59s + 1h 34m 43s + 1h 4m 3s + 1h 45m 50s + 2h 7m 33s + 107m + 57m + 57m

6 Likes
9

Starting off strong today. :muscle: Which is both good and bad: I feel very powerful having met my daily goal easily today, but on the other hand work starts again for me tomorrow so it’s going to be 150% more difficult to hit it from here on out. :rofl: Ah well, days like today won’t be the norm anyway, so the sooner I can get into a workable schedule for myself, the better.

I felt like watching some TV today, so I watched episodes 1-2 of しかのこのこのここしたんたん S1 | L25 and episode 1 of ねぇ先生、知らないの? S1 | L20. しかのこ is unfortunately above my level; I’m catching some stuff here and there, but the visuals are definitely pulling me forward. ねぇ先生、知らないの? S1 | L20 is a much better match for me level-wise, thankfully, though it’s only been one episode.

I don’t often watch TV, so it’s definitely an underused resource for me. One of the biggest things pushing me from watching more stuff is that I’d prefer to use the main living room TV, and I feel awkward watching shows/suggesting shows where my roommates can’t understand a word (since I’d like to avoid using English subs if possible).

7 Likes
10

I don’t want to go crazy on goals for listening this month, since I never manage to do much listening. However, I have 명탐정 셜록 홈즈 1 | L25 to finish and I’m hoping to listen to another audiobook as well. Plus 오징어 게임 S2 that I absolutely want to watch as well, preferably with Korean subs.

So, taking that into account, I’ll set a goal of 10 hours of listening for Korean!

3 Likes
11

How do you guys go about the actual tracking of your listening-time? For me tracking my reading time is easy because i always do it on the same app and I use the time I spend on the app. But listening sources vary , anime (do i even count it? there might not be much actual dialogue depending on the anime), audiobooks, podcasts etc…

One of my goals is to practice more listening and joining the monthly challenges might be a good way to achieve that. But im not sure how practical it is for me to try to track so many different sources.

4 Likes
12

Come on. With the same argument you can exclude mangas if you compare them with a text only book.

2 Likes
13

Eeeh… that’ comparison doesn’t make sense to me. You read on your own pace so I don’t think there’d be a huge difference between words read per hour between manga and novels. There would be some of course but anime eps could have potentially half the ep be non dialogue. So a 1 hour podcast/audiobook and 1 hour anime would have completely different amount of actual useful practice time.
I guess it depends on how accurate you want your tracked time to be, and you could just increase the goal time to “make up” for the time.

I mean I know none of this is that serious :sweat_smile: But I don’t think it’s that unreasonable to not count it either.

edit: I also added a 10 hour goal for this month to start with. Let’s see how it goes with the tracking

3 Likes
14

Ah, you probably read digitally and your view is on words. My view lies on pages, and for TV shows on minutes. In this sense anime and manga are completely similar, compared to audiobooks vs a physical text only book.

4 Likes
15

I track the time with the Toggl app (browser extension on my desktop, mobile app on my phone). Then I periodically copy the stats into my Google spreadsheet of doom which I use to generate various tables and charts. (Toggl has in built charting features, but they weren’t flexible enough for what I wanted).

I don’t do different tracking based on “intensity”, same as I don’t track based on perceived intensity while reading.

4 Likes
16

Anime: 20 min per ep, unless specifically different. Audiobooks: whatever the number says, over in done with the section(s). If you don’t want to count anime, or want to count at a reduced rate, that’s up to you. It’s your own challenge.

I have gotten so much out of listening to/watching anime. The same could be said of TV shows wrt quantity of talking (and the few I’ve tried were way more sparse on the speech) - but it depends what you watch I guess. I don’t get too caught up on that tho.

The fact that some types of audio are typically more word-dense than others doesn’t seem that relevant to me, unless it’s extreme. (I’m also not the type to count characters when reading, tho I do consider pages a useless metric). By the same token, something like ひげを剃る。そして女子高生を拾う。 | L26 has substantially less text and notably slower speech rate than any L30s fantasy audiobook. But both get counted the same.

I routinely skip OPs and EDs, so I default to counting anime at 20 min per ep. Otherwise I calculate OPs and EDs at 1.5 min each (if I didn’t watch both). If I watched the whole episode, I just look at the runtime. (that said, I don’t otherwise count songs, so maybe I should count them here either)

Audiobooks are simple: I don’t log anything until I’ve finished a section (which can be anywhere from 10 min to 1.5+ hrs, depending on the author). Then whenever I’m done, I add up the timestamps for whichever sections I finished. If a section overlaps months, then I log it in whichever month I finished it in.

My pace for a L29 light novel averages btwn 18-30 pgs/hr. It would probably take me 1-1.5 hrs to m finish a volume of an L29 manga (I rarely track mags speed, so I’m guessing). I tend to read manga at a more relaxed paced, plus am actually looking at the pictures and stuff. Also lookups are much faster in LNs. I promise I’ve gone through way more words in 18-30 pgs of an LN. Also the amount of words in manga can wildly vary (to an extent in and the same is true of LNs. Compare 最弱テイマーはゴミ拾いの旅を始めました。 | L23 to 小説 夜のクラゲは泳げない | L28?? to 義妹生活 | L31 and you’ll see what I mean.

3 Likes
17

Started off today with episodes three of ねぇ先生、知らないの? S1 | L20 and しかのこのこのここしたんたん S1 | L25, so I’m halfway through the latter at this point. I watched 桜井政博’s opening このチャンネルについて video, and while it’s quite helpful he has baked-in subtitles for it, I’m definitely going to go back and pick out the game development-specific vocab and watch it again. His thoughts on this topic are definitely up my alley, so I want to pull as much language learning as I can out of it.

I’ve officially started work for the new year today, but if I’m lucky and everything’s quiet today, I’m going to aim to do more listening so that I have a surplus of hours for the inevitable days where I’m short. :crossed_fingers:

I had a notebook where I’d jot down my times, but that’s pretty much just shifted to logging it all on these threads (my home post, for example), honestly.

I certainly do, for the simple reason that my listening is so poor and I need so much input that the job would be one million times harder if I cut anime out as a source of input. I’m not too worried about words per minute or whatnot; sure, you technically get more w/m out of an audiobook or podcast or something, but anime still fills its own niche imo in terms of voice-acting styles and norms, unusual vocabulary frequency, and just straight up entertainment.

I think I’m with @mic on this one. It’s been a point of discussion in the past about the differences between manga and novels, and I personally don’t believe it’s nothing but text density. Manga can be more difficult to understand than a novel (and vice-versa, of course), and you can end up getting very different things out of them at very different reading paces.

5 Likes
18

Finished episode 4 of しかのこのこのここしたんたん S1 | L25, putting me 1/3 of the way through, and finished ねぇ先生、知らないの? S1 | L20 this morning! I’m not watching with subs with either, and I’m a bit sad to see that my comprehension of ねえ先生 was not where I’d prefer it to be, even though it’s such an easy drama. :smiling_face_with_tear: Like, I could tell while watching it that it’s supposed to be easy and I’d understand every word if I could just read the subs. :rofl: If I can keep up the good listening habits, these easier January shows would be fun to go back to some months down the line to see if they feel any easier or not at that point.

I’m going to attempt to have both an anime and a live action show going at once so I’ve got some variety, I think. Now that ねえ先生 is done, I think I’ll move on to Eye Love You S1 | L23 next. Still need to finish the last episode of プリンスオブレジェンド S1 | L29 at some point… :thinking:

4 Likes
19

I have been tracking anime episodes but the ones I was using for this were quite dialogue heavy and short over all.

Usually I track podcasts, audio books or YouTube narratives with the time I spent listening based on how long the file was and only deviate from that if it’s got large gaps or there is English included. In those cases, I either didn’t track or took a tough guess at how much was just Japanese.

4 Likes
20

this might be an underappreciated point. I’m over in spanish, doing really well with my audio comprehension, but I’ve never really spent time with cartoons and everytime I try, no matter how supposedly simple they are, I become deeply frustrated with the voice acting. Spongebob square pants breaks me. this carries over into everything else … I’m awful at non standard delivery: whispering, children, children whispering, goofy voices, unusually high or low pitched voices … not just movies but in real life.

all input is good input, the broader the better. and there is no harm in undercounting either. on my spreadsheet, I undercount by 25% across the board regardless of source, type, comprehension level.

4 Likes