Continuing on our challenge to ourselves to boost our listening skills, the November 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
All languages welcome!
This post will be a wiki so you can add and update your own hours.
When I signed up for October, I was only planning to do 1 challenge month to kickstart my listening to some kind of content, but now with that goal more-or-less met, continuing on with November feels like the natural thing to do. Having October off work gave me the time to explore different options for listening, and being back to work in November means that I’ll have a more structured routine to work on building those listening options into.
I’m setting a concrete goal for Japanese this time, along with another vague goal like last time:
Goal #1: Finish watching カードキャプターさくら S1 | L20 (Cardcaptors S1), with subtitles. Depending on how much of it I finish by the end of October, I should be able to reach this easily, as long as I can carve out a comfortable routine for watching. I don’t normally watch TV or anything at all, so integrating regular anime-watching time into my schedule is going to be the most challenging part.
Goal #2: Find something I can listen to while commuting and add it to the routine. I only have a 10-15 minute walk to and from work, but I might as well fill that time with some sort of Japanese listening. Unfortunately I don’t listen to music, I have no interest in podcasts, and things like audiobooks are far above what I can follow, so simply finding something I’ll dependably want to listen to that has enough content to last more than a day of walking is a gargantuan task for me
Keeping my goal at 30 hrs Upping my goal to 50 60 hrs for November. Anything that’s audio with text (audiobook + book, anime w/ JP subs, etc) counts, as does pure listening. Anime eps are counted at 20 min per ep, unless I watched OP & ED. Also yayyyy, I got 3 again
I was debating whether I should join again but this time focus on audiobooks with physical book read along and maybe start doing shadowing to build that habit in I have found some things in October to be a bit of an overload but I think the challenge is forcing me to do more listening which has been helping me to improve both listening and also my understanding in general.
I think this time I’ll just focus on building the habit rather than going all in like I have this month to the detriment of other things
I think I will work on 30 day Mastery series (10 books) and start listening to ふしぎ駄菓子屋銭天堂 series from book 1.
Focus for each day will be to complete a chapter of each of the 30 day Mastery audiobooks (each chapter is only a few minutes long) and at least a chapter of the current ふしぎ駄菓子屋銭天堂 book starting from book 1.
That should give me around an hour minimum of listening each day.
For shadowing, I have two Shadowing books and an app so think I will use the app to start with and try a minimum of 10 minutes Shadowing per day.
That should allow me enough time to still get a chapter of the textbook completed since I’ll be going back over some of the Blue みんなの日本語 textbook once I’m done, and also should leave enough time for reading since I want to get back up to speed of reading a chapter a day for study as well. All in, it should be enough for me to manage without burning out or taking days off and if I don’t want to do more, there’s no pressure
I’m not sure how much I want to attempt for November yet, so I’ll come back later after I’ve thought about it.
EDIT: Ok, I’ve thought about it. I foresee November being…a rough month and I want to dedicate more time to languages than political doomscrolling. Since I’ve hit 15 hours in Japanese for two months in a row now, I want to do 20 hours this time. Maybe I’ll try 10 hours in other languages again, even though I failed that goal in October.
I think I’m gonna do a daily goal and not an hourly goal this time around. I’m gonna try and listen to something every day and not worry about how much that ends up being.
Edit:
I finalized my November goal: non-tv show listening content for 20 days this month (time doesn’t matter). This can be podcasts, YouTube, audiobooks, whatever, but tv shows don’t count.
If I was watching something like Terrace House or other reality shows I might fudge this more, but I haven’t been watching anything like that recently so I don’t think I have to carve out additional exceptions
Tracking
月
火
水
木
金
土
日
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13✅
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
stolen from @eefara who copied it from a WK challenge
I’m already doing the listen every day challenge over on WK, so may as well record here too. My goal is approximately 30 minutes on week days and 1 hour on weekends, which works out to 20.5 hours, so I’ll round that to 20.
I’ll be joining since October went much better than I thought, but I’ll still reduce the challenge to 7h as I feel I’m more inclined towards reading lately, and don’t want to force myself to listen & burn out.
First day tomorrow!
Doing the listening challenge last month did push me to listen far more than I was before. I also managed to find some listening materials that I don’t mind.
I’ll join again this month with the same goal: 10 hours. Last time it was actually a challenge. Now that I’ve worked out a better schedule, it should be smooth sailing. This time, my main goal is just to establish consistency.
I’ve been translating my reviews on here into Japanese, as part of my JP lessons, and my teacher told me I should watch News videos to absorb more of the phrasing/style you’d use for stuff like this… which is great, expect I hate watching News (exception for things related to my interests)… So I’m on a quest to find stuff I can tolerate.
This isn’t all News, but it is stuff that’s (probably) formal or interesting (or both) enough that I can stand listening to it. Some are courtesy of @cat 's post in the October thread. Some are just things I found through searching/clicking through:
チー牛速報 - anime & entertainment - speech is pretty fast
First time here. I’m probably N5-N4ish in reading—my main thing—so this seems really motivating to actually get into other stuff. Not a fan of how listening is the only way to get better at listening but if I feel the improvement over time that will be really nice.
Not sure what I’m going to count as “listening” though. I just thought it was solely non-visual stuff… I’ll try to get in an episode of Kamen Rider in every now and then (big jump from me). My main source of hours will probably be this spreadsheet of podcasts I found from a Youtube video. I usually watch Comprehensible Japanese but I need to get into more advanced stuff
Originally thinking 10 hours but I’ll start low for now.
Realizing now that all the Kamen Rider shows are listed as the same level… ack
Same here Learned the hard way that the bigger the gap between your reading & listening skill, the more frustrating listening gets, so it’s good you’re trying to get on top of it early!
You’re free to do it however you want, tho fwiw at N5/4 level, listening with text (subtitles, book, articles, games, etc) will probably be more beneficial for you, imo. Reason: you get feedback on what you’re hearing (did you recognize that word correctly?), and have a way to understand new vocab (rather than just being a blob of sound, you can connect it with its kanji/kana and maybe infer the meaning), as well as link known vocab to kanji/kana, or realize “that word I just missed is xyz”)
So I’d recommend counting anything with audio, regardless of text. (I count just about everything with audio besides music)
It won’t improve your audio-only comprehension as much
There are a number of intermediate Japanese YouTube channels that are probably good for where you’re at. What I remember off the top of my head:
They might be a bit challenging at first, but you’ll probably get a lot out of them. As an aside, Miku Real Japanese has an excellent shadowing course with lessons based around grammar patterns, and plenty of vocab. It’s a bit expensive, but very worth the money, imo. You can sample it here, if it’s of interest - you just need to give your email.
These podcasts are a great stepping stone between CI videos and native content. They generally talk more clearly and use simpler vocabulary, but will get you used to listening to the types of speech you’ll find in other media. I especially recommend the interviews that they do from time to time. Often they will talk a little more casually* and will speak over each other and these are all things that you will need to get used to in order to watch more advanced shows.
A super big +1 for YUYU日本語. I still listen to him all the time because I just like him a lot. He somehow after 10 or so years of doing his podcast/streams still comes up with interesting topics. And it’s also nice to just listen to something in Japanese where I only miss things if I zone out
*Not necessarily politeness-wise, but less like a presentation and more like an actual conversation
I’m going to stick to 60 hours of listening as my goal because I am shooting for a major reading push in November. I started today with 2 hours of Hajime no Ippo. Nothing special, but I got a bit lost in some details on injuries which is normal as I don’t really know medical-related terms.
I kind of miscalculated, the 30 day mastery series is only a minute or so long for each chapter so I ended up having to add in 2 short stories to make up the 1 hour (comes to just over an hour for listening only).
Listening:
型ぬき人魚グミ - 29:37
All 10 30 day Mastery chapter 1s - 11:08
青森ねぶた祭 - 9:19
どうして日本語 - 10:12
Shadowing:
3 minutes (the app I was using kept crashing so will be using CDs from tomorrow)
Welcome to the shadowing club I hope you can get it to work with CDs!
(If you want an app I also recommend one called “booco”, you can purchase tons of Japanese textbooks digitally within it and it’s set up for shadowing easily with options to cut and loop audio…)
That sounds pretty cool. I’ll look into it after I get paid.
The one I was using basically had all the stuff from the 2 books I had and it was split into short sections but it kept crashing whenever I paused it (I was struggling with the longer sentences for saying them out loud a second or two behind what I was hearing). I have a few other apps or the files with the textbook audio from the textbooks I already have, except the 2 shadowing books.
I can probably get their audio online but doubt it would be in a format where I can actively do anything except listen at the speed it’s set (I still don’t have an app I can use to convert audio files to be able to loop them or change the speed etc).
Day 2:
Listening:
All 10 30 day Mastery chapter 2s - 10:32
猛獣ビスケット - 23:22
ホーンテッドアイス - 22:07
I know I’ve listened to the 銭天堂 book several times before but this time does seem easier to follow the story without looking stuff up. There’s still times I’m not understanding certain words or parts if I accidentally zone out, but I am able to keep pace with what’s happening and understand quite a bit more than I did before.
Shadowing:
シャドーイング - 1 section.
I followed the instructions in the book, shadowing the same part 3 times (first to practice, second for paying attention to pitch accent and third time to see how much had stuck after answering the questions).
I’ve decided to mark the Shadowing as book sections as the times are a little difficult to figure out, but if I can do at least 1 section per day, I’ll be happy. Also means that as the sections get longer as I progress, It kind of builds in the habit as well as helping me to increase my tolerance of it.
︎ 34/34 
I have found some things in October to be a bit of an overload but I think the challenge is forcing me to do more listening which has been helping me to improve both listening and also my understanding in general.
Date
Name
Type
Amount
Time
ゆるキャン２
Anime
3 Episodes
1h15m
二ノ国
RPG
4989 American Life
Podcast
のんのんびよりS1
ガヴリールドロップアウト
ガールズ&パンツァー 劇場版
Anime Film
I hope you can get it to work with CDs!