Let’s talk about listening, exactly about intensive listening and extensive listening. With some differences, these forms of listening have similarities with conscious and unconscious learning. The last ones are more general concepts. The first ones are special techniques for practicing these general concepts. The specialty, of course, is the kind of reception, the reception by hearing, not by reading. Actually, there seems to exist only these two kinds of reception, or not? Yeah, you can take receiving signals like gesture, mimicry and any kind of actions as particular forms of the learning process. But these ones, I think, cannot be done deliberately. They happen without intentions. Coming back to listening. One of my YouTube teachers, Leonardo, differentiated between these listening kinds, intensive and extensive. Intensive means you should only work with a short part of a movie, podcast, speech, etc. Let’s say, about two or three minutes. And this part you have to scrutinize word by word, phrase by phrase, chunk by chunk, and you shouldn’t miss any piece of meaning. Extensive listening means listen to a longer part, about 20 to 60 minutes, and try to understand as much as possible. Afterwards, you should be able to repeat the essential parts or give a rough summary. Both kinds should be used and work with in continuous change. Both are important, but in a different way. Intensive for better understanding the refinements of the language. Extensive for building up your vocabulary and becoming more fluent, not only in understanding, but also in speaking as a consequence of fluent understanding. There are teachers, such as Steve Krashen and Steve Kaufman, who strongly recommend strengthening your understanding before speaking at all. This viewpoint seems to me a little exaggerated.
und sonstiges