My ear is far and away my biggest weakness when it comes to Japanese, not to say that everything else is top-notch, far from it, but listening feels like it's holding me back significantly.
I was listening to this short 3min dialog the other night, and I kept trying to translate in my head, which resulted in me missing parts of the dialog, which put me further and further behind.
I tried just listening to it and not translating it, but involuntarily from time to time i would still translate it in my head, resulting in the same problem.
I ended up having to listen to it for 5-10 seconds at a time (multiple times for each block) to understand it.
But after beating my head against that wall for an hour or two I broke out the transcript, and I was able to read along with the dialog with no problems. No mental translating, and the dialog even felt like it was "slower" than when i was just listening.
I have no idea how to duplicate this phenomena without the transcript, so I am hoping someone out there may, or at the least help me with any advice, tips or any way to shut my brain up so it stops trying to translate while i'm listening.
by -Jdzspace-