Phonetic and Phonemic Awareness Lately I have been thinking about a potential reason some people struggle with listening comprehension. It has to do with phonemic and phonological awareness. I feel that, possibly, a percentage of those who struggle with listening comprehension may do so because of poor phonemic and/or phonological awareness.
Interesting article because I think I definitely fit in with this group. Ever since I was a child, I struggled with spelling and sounding out English words. After I started learning German and Korean, my listening comprehension skills have been a struggle to develop in these languages. It feels like most of the time when I'm listening the words, they go over my head. If I hear a word I'm familiar with but can't comprehend it at that moment, my brain focuses it's attention on that one word and I don't comprehend the rest of the sentence. I noticed that I often have to visualize the word if I can't comprehend the word right away as when I try to manipulate the sound in my head, it's meaningless. I'm trying to find a way around this but I notice the best way for me to learn listening comprehension skills is to find a patient teacher to listen to and slowly breakdown and comprehend the sentence.
Interesting article because I think I definitely fit in with this group. Ever since I was a child, I struggled with spelling and sounding out English words. After I started learning German and Korean, my listening comprehension skills have been a struggle to develop in these languages. It feels like most of the time when I'm listening the words, they go over my head. If I hear a word I'm familiar with but can't comprehend it at that moment, my brain focuses it's attention on that one word and I don't comprehend the rest of the sentence. I noticed that I often have to visualize the word if I can't comprehend the word right away as when I try to manipulate the sound in my head, it's meaningless. I'm trying to find a way around this but I notice the best way for me to learn listening comprehension skills is to find a patient teacher to listen to and slowly breakdown and comprehend the sentence.
Thanks for sharing Brandon. You definitely aren't alone here.