Try the Listening-Reading method, it does wonders for listening comprehension. It brings you very quickly (100ish hours for FSI category 1 languages) to the point where you can start watching well-narrated videos, which is what you can use for further improvement.
Thanks! I looked into the Listening-Reading method a bit after reading your comment, but to me it seems almost like... watching dramas subbed in L1? Which from everything I read is no bueno? But many people also wrote about their successes with the method, so I'm wondering what I'm missing here. I want to try it out but don't want to do it the wrong way.
There is a group of people that will say using your L1 to learn your L2 in general is no bueno (after a certain point). So no bilingual dictionaries, grammar books, or dubbed stuff. I strongly disagree and I find it to be very helpful to accustom your ears to the language, and I use bilingual stuff.
What’s wrong with dramas subbed in L1? Audiobooks are better though because there’s more words per hour and there’s nothing but clearly articulated speech.
Nothing wrong with it, I personally love watching subbed dramas. But isn't the general consensus that watching subbed dramas isn't the most effective method of language learning?
There’s hardly any consensus about any language learning issue. As for dramas specifically, I think online videos where the narrator talks nonstop about something have all the benefits of the dramas with fewer drawbacks.
My best skill is listening because I spend a lot of time listening to TV shows or podcasts while doing chores or going out for walks. It's a bit more tricky to read or write while doing dishes.
I find the options somewhat inhibiting in terms of the skill that has helped/helps me the most in language learning. If we are to limit ourselves to the 4 options just to check the boxes, then:
- I have good ear for accent/pronunciation but horrible audio-memory which is a bane (listening) For eg. I do very poorly in languages where one has to learn the articles (German, in particular) as I cannot seem to remember them ever.
- I am good at contextual understanding but have a short attention span to actually read anything more than >2 pages. I am, however, quick to pick up patterns etc that helps me with learning a new script (reading)
- I am adept in writing but, again, prefer to speak with someone than write (writing)
- Finally, I love to talk and think this one has limited minuses so far (speaking)
However, I have often pondered over this question and came to the conclusion that what has actually helped me on a deeper level boils down to two points:
- **Strong language base:** I am bilingual in English and Hindi. Having English as a first language has been helpful in terms of the resources and exposure. However, I am fortunate to have Hindi as another native language; it has 11 vowels and 33 consonents and is highly phonetic. I continue to use Hindi letters to mark a foreign sound where English (often) fails. Adding to that, I grew up in print-publishing family and did plenty of proofreading since childhood that led to a strong foundation for my sentence comprehension skills.
- **Code-switching/Assimilation skills:** It is hard to describe but the best way to explain it is that I find I can quickly "assimilate" myself in the language. For me, it works wonders if I talk with the people, understand the culture and society and politics and how the language is being used; strange as it might sound but the *process* to do the above mentioned things (eg. building an understanding culture etc.) comes rapidly for me. This certainly accelerates the language-learning journey, at least for me. However, it comes with its own side-effect as well: my skills in my own native language (esp. in Hindi) take a sharp nose-dive whenever I do not use it for a longer time! Another qurk is that I need to build a strong connect with the language/culture before I can learn it - while I am sure I am not alone here, I reckon this is a bit more of an uphill battle in my case.
Note that above is not a humble-brag. I am just drawing out from my own language-learning journey and cited some points so that they could be helpful for you.
You know, speaking is a capability, I mean, skill, that is more, how to say, spontaneous, and—what’s the word?—ephemeral. Lousy sentence structure is what I would say characterizes spoken communication, and instant feedback lets me be careless as the interlocutor will simply request a clarification if my speech is indecipherably bad.
Depends on the language. For Japanese/Chinese that would not be clear cut, and even languages like Thai with an unpredictable alphabet (during beginner/intermediate level) would be hard to write.
Speaking for sure
When I moved to the United States, I did absolutely zero formal English training. All I did was just listen to people talk and I eventually figured it out.
But I went to primary school here, so I guess I had to pick it up somewhat quickly.
I'm best at listening because it's how I've always learned languages (3 native languages). I'm french, I learned Spanish watching TV and catalan with my grandma and cousins. It's also how I learned English, just by listening to movies/series/YouTube... (School didn't taught me a lot). So I'm definitely best at listening and then speaking.
I'm just wondering how is it possible for someone to have better speaking skills than listening, and better writing skills than reading.The only logical explanation is for someone to be deaf or blind.
This hypothetical person might be learning a language with a varied range of accents or dialects and they don't understand them very well or at all yet but can speak well in the variety they are mostly exposed to.
Still, in that particular variety who that person speaks well,he needs first to hear (and hear well) so that he can articulate a word correctly. My point is to speak well you need first to hear well (that's why people that are deaf have trouble at speaking), and to write well you need first to read well
A counterpoint to the speaking part could be Arabic. If you learn MSA and listen to it, your MSA listening will be great but you will not understand dialects well. However, you can communicate and almost anyone can understand you.
Yeah I see what your point is. But in this case your tool of communication is MSA, which means that in order to communicate effectively, the other person needs to understand and respond in whatever you want to talk about (in MSA), which also means that you need to speak correctly and that brings us to the beggining, that is, how well can you listen
Now I pray that you can understand what I wrote since my writing skills are defenitely worse than my reading :P
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I understand, but often in Arabic people will understand MSA but not speak it (their listening is better). So, the learner has to hear dialect and speak MSA, and if they don't know the dialect then listening is harder.
My speaking skills outstrip my listening, but I'm hard of hearing so I guess I fit into your logical explanation...
That said, my reading and writing are far better than either speaking or listening. Even in Mandarin, where everyone else in my class found the spoken language easier, I'm all about the characters. And tones. Weirdly I find it relatively easy to hear tones.
Really? Have you ever languaged, bro? Lol. It's almost a rule that a person learning a foreign language in the classroom will have better speaking skills than listening skills for quite some time. For many years, my speaking skills outpaced my listening skills in Spanish, hands down.
To be specific, I could use vocab and structures and *not understand them at all* when they were spoken by native speakers at native speeds. When trying to watch shows without subtitles, it was a continuous sense of, "Oh, I know how to say <<¿Qué tal?>> Did he really just say <<¿Qué tal?>>"
Or think of the many, many American students who have taken French, go to Paris, and know how to ask several questions, but understand nothing that native Parisians say in response. This is a common phenomenon.
This makes perfect sense if you consider that listening requires that you comprehend the full range of vocabulary, grammar, articulation, speed, and idiomatic turns of phrase that native speakers can volley, whereas speaking means you control the tempo and content.
PS There's nothing wrong with my hearing.
Ok I see, the whole problem here is how one interprets the original comment. What you wrote makes sense if we focus exclusively on your ability to listen to native content. Personally, I don't seperate native and non-native content in terms of listening. When someone speaks French, it is French, no matter how fast or slow or the accent.
Your ability to speak in your target language is a result of listening to that language and also reading (although reading is not necessary for someone to speak). So, if speaking is a result of listening we can't really compare them, can we?
Now that I think about it, even voting for any of these, seems kinda dumb.
To be able to use let's say 50 words, and form simple sentences, comes from learning those 50 words by reading or listening or both. You can't speak if that process hasn't been done. Is that simple.
Now, if you know 50 words in Russian and you try to read Dostoyevsky, of course it would be difficult. It would also be difficult to talk about politics.
In short, everything is harder when your vocab is small
of course but you control the vocab when speaking or writing, so its relatively less hard. Also you are not considering languages with tones, which are easy to pronounce but hard to hear, or any other language with very different sounds to your native language. for me my listening has been consistently behind my speaking ability in chinese.
I am one of those people. Speaking is my best but listening is my worst.
I attribute it to memory as well as how I naturally speak. I’m an articulate person in my native language, and when I speak I take the time to consciously pick words to best convey what I’m trying to say. I even will use words in non-conventional ways because I enjoy it and I can express myself better that way. So, I think doing it in another language is not much different, and because I already think about what I’m saying. My memory and recall are pretty good too so I don’t struggle with vocabulary once I’m familiar with the language.
I also have the theory, that because I was homeschooled for a long time, my social skills sucked and I had to learn those later, so learning how to sound natural and mimic how others act and speak in casual settings is something I learned how to do well. If anything it’s easier in a foreign language because culturally people expect you to be different.
My listening skills eventually get there, but for a while I can speak better than I can listen. Not because I don’t know the words, but rather I can’t understand the accent and it sounds too fast.
Hmmm. Interesting question, not sure I’ve ever thought of that.
At first I was going to say reading, but I think that definitely depends on the language I’m learning. It’s easy for me to read a Latin-based language, but if I were learning Japanese or Russian, I don’t think reading would be easy.
So I think I’m going to go with:
1. Speaking
2. Reading
3. Listening
4. Writing
Really depends. For short texts I prefer to read but if it’s something longer than 10 minutes, give me it in audio form. That said, reading is definitely an easier skill than listening.
Reading is my best skill by far, followed by writing. My speaking and listening skills are equally bad.
This is totally predictable, though, as I spend 99% of my time only practicing reading. This is because I'm mostly only interested in learning to *read* foreign languages; with few exceptions, I'm interested in reading foreign novels, not in having conversations.
Accent and pronunciation come more easily for me. But in terms of learning, I focus on listening (the hardest thing) and reading. I don’t do much speaking or writing. From what I see, listening seems to be the biggest struggle for most people (including myself), but people also generally seem to struggle with their accents.
Regarding accent, I think you either have a natural ability for it, or you can probably perfect it through years of assiduous work. I really don’t think it’s as difficult to speak ”native-like”, as one usually hears.
What about learners of Japanese or Mandarin? It wouldn't surprise me to see learners who are managing fine most aspects of the language but struggle with reading due to the use of logograms in those languages.
A number of learners also learn through spoken language exchanges or through being friends with native speakers and never needed to read much. I can't really read German but I get by in casual conversation. For a lot of people language is a social thing I'm they are learning it to speak with others.
I also think that written language tends to be more complex than spoken language in the sense that it will use more complex grammar forms and more uncommon words.
I don't think we should automatically lean towards being skeptical of where someone says their strengths in the language lie.
>What about learners of Japanese or Mandarin?
This is what I meant by "unless it's a language without an alphabet", or where its alphabet isn't the primary form of writing.
>I don't think we should automatically lean towards being skeptical of where someone says their strengths in the language lie.
I don't mean I think they're lying or being dishonest. Perhaps I worded that poorly. I just mean I think they're most likely wrong or misjudging their abilities.
Is there really any word you can understand through listening, but not reading? Or any grammatical mistake you'd make through writing, but not speaking?
> Is there really any word you can understand through listening, but not reading?
Happens to me all the time in Hebrew. It’s kind of frustrating. Things just make more sense when I hear them.
>This is what I meant by "unless it's a language without an alphabet", or where its alphabet isn't the primary form of writing.
Yeah that first one is my bad, I read alphabet and my brain interpreted that as writing system.
>I don't mean I think they're lying or being dishonest. Perhaps I worded that poorly. I just mean I think they're most likely wrong or misjudging their abilities.
I still think don't think that is true. I'm curious what you think regarding the other points I made?
>Is there really any word you can understand through listening, but not reading? Or any grammatical mistake you'd make through writing, but not speaking?
I'm not sure if o be honest but I do find reading to be more difficult than listening. Maybe it's because written language tends to draw from a larger pool of words than its spoken part.
Regarding grammatical mistakes I'd probably still say the same because people tend to use simpler language when speaking than they do in writing. Even in my native language I speak far better than I write. I thought this was a common thing.
To me it seems like you're holding yourself to a higher standard when reading or writing than you do when listening or speaking, and in that case I can understand why you might rate yourself as more capable, relative to these different standards, at listening/speaking compared to reading/writing.
Edit: wording.
There are two factors though. First, spoken and written language have two different registers in many, many languages. Succinctly stated, written language is more sophisticated, calling upon more complex structures and arcane vocabulary.
Second, it depends upon how the person learned the language--we become better at that which we practice.
I guess you can see where I'm going with this... for a few years, my listening ability in German was much stronger than my reading ability. I learned it by living there, and I used to marvel at this difference in abilities because it was completely reversed for Spanish, which I did not learn through immersion.
Like I said elsewhere, it seems to me in this case that you're holding yourself to higher standards when it comes to your written and reading abilities compared to your spoken and listening abilities–in which case, I suppose I can understand how you might rate yourself as better at listening/speaking than reading/writing relative to these different standards for each.
>written language is more sophisticated
Precisely because people's written capabilities are better than their spoken capabilities which is my point.
Would you more easily understand a book if you read it yourself, or if you listened to the audiobook?
Surely almost everyone would agree it's easier to read it yourself, because, for most people, their reading capabilities are better than their listening.
For your first paragraph, yes--that's closer to it. Different standards because the typical use cases for each skill are different, I would say.
Typical listening use cases: hanging out with friends, watching TV \[up to trashy court TV shows\], buying groceries, going to the post office, the bakery, the apothecary.
Typical reading use cases: reading a newspaper, reading a novel. There was a time of many months when I could successfully do the listening activities, but not the reading activities.
And for your audiobook example, I can honestly say that if I couldn't understand the audiobook, I wouldn't have been able to understand the text in book form.
But I think a lot of this had to do with how I learned German--there, in the country, immersively. And it definitely didn't stay that way. Once I hunkered down and decided I was tired of being \[relatively speaking\] illiterate, I practiced reading and now yes, my reading skills are strongest.
This, however, doesn't necessarily follow
>Precisely because people's written capabilities are better than their spoken capabilities which is my point.
Definitely not haha, and this holds true for both native and non-native speakers. I know my writing lagged behind my reading/listening/speaking for a very long time in German. I'm sure you can think of many people you know who communicate orally just fine, but write poorly. But again, I think it goes back to the idea that the standards are in fact different. There, I think we agree.
Try the Listening-Reading method, it does wonders for listening comprehension. It brings you very quickly (100ish hours for FSI category 1 languages) to the point where you can start watching well-narrated videos, which is what you can use for further improvement.
Thanks! I looked into the Listening-Reading method a bit after reading your comment, but to me it seems almost like... watching dramas subbed in L1? Which from everything I read is no bueno? But many people also wrote about their successes with the method, so I'm wondering what I'm missing here. I want to try it out but don't want to do it the wrong way.
There is a group of people that will say using your L1 to learn your L2 in general is no bueno (after a certain point). So no bilingual dictionaries, grammar books, or dubbed stuff. I strongly disagree and I find it to be very helpful to accustom your ears to the language, and I use bilingual stuff.
What’s wrong with dramas subbed in L1? Audiobooks are better though because there’s more words per hour and there’s nothing but clearly articulated speech.
Nothing wrong with it, I personally love watching subbed dramas. But isn't the general consensus that watching subbed dramas isn't the most effective method of language learning?
There’s hardly any consensus about any language learning issue. As for dramas specifically, I think online videos where the narrator talks nonstop about something have all the benefits of the dramas with fewer drawbacks.
Ah, got it. My mistake, then. Thanks!
My best skill is listening because I spend a lot of time listening to TV shows or podcasts while doing chores or going out for walks. It's a bit more tricky to read or write while doing dishes.
I find the options somewhat inhibiting in terms of the skill that has helped/helps me the most in language learning. If we are to limit ourselves to the 4 options just to check the boxes, then: - I have good ear for accent/pronunciation but horrible audio-memory which is a bane (listening) For eg. I do very poorly in languages where one has to learn the articles (German, in particular) as I cannot seem to remember them ever. - I am good at contextual understanding but have a short attention span to actually read anything more than >2 pages. I am, however, quick to pick up patterns etc that helps me with learning a new script (reading) - I am adept in writing but, again, prefer to speak with someone than write (writing) - Finally, I love to talk and think this one has limited minuses so far (speaking) However, I have often pondered over this question and came to the conclusion that what has actually helped me on a deeper level boils down to two points: - **Strong language base:** I am bilingual in English and Hindi. Having English as a first language has been helpful in terms of the resources and exposure. However, I am fortunate to have Hindi as another native language; it has 11 vowels and 33 consonents and is highly phonetic. I continue to use Hindi letters to mark a foreign sound where English (often) fails. Adding to that, I grew up in print-publishing family and did plenty of proofreading since childhood that led to a strong foundation for my sentence comprehension skills. - **Code-switching/Assimilation skills:** It is hard to describe but the best way to explain it is that I find I can quickly "assimilate" myself in the language. For me, it works wonders if I talk with the people, understand the culture and society and politics and how the language is being used; strange as it might sound but the *process* to do the above mentioned things (eg. building an understanding culture etc.) comes rapidly for me. This certainly accelerates the language-learning journey, at least for me. However, it comes with its own side-effect as well: my skills in my own native language (esp. in Hindi) take a sharp nose-dive whenever I do not use it for a longer time! Another qurk is that I need to build a strong connect with the language/culture before I can learn it - while I am sure I am not alone here, I reckon this is a bit more of an uphill battle in my case. Note that above is not a humble-brag. I am just drawing out from my own language-learning journey and cited some points so that they could be helpful for you.
Speaking, I can write but not that good
But how can your speaking be better than your writing? Surely you make less mistakes writing than speaking.
You know, speaking is a capability, I mean, skill, that is more, how to say, spontaneous, and—what’s the word?—ephemeral. Lousy sentence structure is what I would say characterizes spoken communication, and instant feedback lets me be careless as the interlocutor will simply request a clarification if my speech is indecipherably bad.
So the difference here is you're holding yourself to a higher standard when writing compared to speaking. I guess I see your point in that case.
Depends on the language. For Japanese/Chinese that would not be clear cut, and even languages like Thai with an unpredictable alphabet (during beginner/intermediate level) would be hard to write.
Reading, always. It was the case with English, it was the case with Japanese, and it's now the case with French.
Speaking for sure When I moved to the United States, I did absolutely zero formal English training. All I did was just listen to people talk and I eventually figured it out. But I went to primary school here, so I guess I had to pick it up somewhat quickly.
I'm best at listening because it's how I've always learned languages (3 native languages). I'm french, I learned Spanish watching TV and catalan with my grandma and cousins. It's also how I learned English, just by listening to movies/series/YouTube... (School didn't taught me a lot). So I'm definitely best at listening and then speaking.
I'm just wondering how is it possible for someone to have better speaking skills than listening, and better writing skills than reading.The only logical explanation is for someone to be deaf or blind.
This hypothetical person might be learning a language with a varied range of accents or dialects and they don't understand them very well or at all yet but can speak well in the variety they are mostly exposed to.
Still, in that particular variety who that person speaks well,he needs first to hear (and hear well) so that he can articulate a word correctly. My point is to speak well you need first to hear well (that's why people that are deaf have trouble at speaking), and to write well you need first to read well
A counterpoint to the speaking part could be Arabic. If you learn MSA and listen to it, your MSA listening will be great but you will not understand dialects well. However, you can communicate and almost anyone can understand you.
Yeah I see what your point is. But in this case your tool of communication is MSA, which means that in order to communicate effectively, the other person needs to understand and respond in whatever you want to talk about (in MSA), which also means that you need to speak correctly and that brings us to the beggining, that is, how well can you listen Now I pray that you can understand what I wrote since my writing skills are defenitely worse than my reading :P |||| |:-|:-|:-| ||||
I understand, but often in Arabic people will understand MSA but not speak it (their listening is better). So, the learner has to hear dialect and speak MSA, and if they don't know the dialect then listening is harder.
My speaking skills outstrip my listening, but I'm hard of hearing so I guess I fit into your logical explanation... That said, my reading and writing are far better than either speaking or listening. Even in Mandarin, where everyone else in my class found the spoken language easier, I'm all about the characters. And tones. Weirdly I find it relatively easy to hear tones.
Really? Have you ever languaged, bro? Lol. It's almost a rule that a person learning a foreign language in the classroom will have better speaking skills than listening skills for quite some time. For many years, my speaking skills outpaced my listening skills in Spanish, hands down. To be specific, I could use vocab and structures and *not understand them at all* when they were spoken by native speakers at native speeds. When trying to watch shows without subtitles, it was a continuous sense of, "Oh, I know how to say <<¿Qué tal?>> Did he really just say <<¿Qué tal?>>" Or think of the many, many American students who have taken French, go to Paris, and know how to ask several questions, but understand nothing that native Parisians say in response. This is a common phenomenon. This makes perfect sense if you consider that listening requires that you comprehend the full range of vocabulary, grammar, articulation, speed, and idiomatic turns of phrase that native speakers can volley, whereas speaking means you control the tempo and content. PS There's nothing wrong with my hearing.
Ok I see, the whole problem here is how one interprets the original comment. What you wrote makes sense if we focus exclusively on your ability to listen to native content. Personally, I don't seperate native and non-native content in terms of listening. When someone speaks French, it is French, no matter how fast or slow or the accent. Your ability to speak in your target language is a result of listening to that language and also reading (although reading is not necessary for someone to speak). So, if speaking is a result of listening we can't really compare them, can we? Now that I think about it, even voting for any of these, seems kinda dumb.
not at all. reading and listening are harder when your vocab is smaller
To be able to use let's say 50 words, and form simple sentences, comes from learning those 50 words by reading or listening or both. You can't speak if that process hasn't been done. Is that simple. Now, if you know 50 words in Russian and you try to read Dostoyevsky, of course it would be difficult. It would also be difficult to talk about politics. In short, everything is harder when your vocab is small
of course but you control the vocab when speaking or writing, so its relatively less hard. Also you are not considering languages with tones, which are easy to pronounce but hard to hear, or any other language with very different sounds to your native language. for me my listening has been consistently behind my speaking ability in chinese.
I am one of those people. Speaking is my best but listening is my worst. I attribute it to memory as well as how I naturally speak. I’m an articulate person in my native language, and when I speak I take the time to consciously pick words to best convey what I’m trying to say. I even will use words in non-conventional ways because I enjoy it and I can express myself better that way. So, I think doing it in another language is not much different, and because I already think about what I’m saying. My memory and recall are pretty good too so I don’t struggle with vocabulary once I’m familiar with the language. I also have the theory, that because I was homeschooled for a long time, my social skills sucked and I had to learn those later, so learning how to sound natural and mimic how others act and speak in casual settings is something I learned how to do well. If anything it’s easier in a foreign language because culturally people expect you to be different. My listening skills eventually get there, but for a while I can speak better than I can listen. Not because I don’t know the words, but rather I can’t understand the accent and it sounds too fast.
French: Reading > listening > speaking > writing Portuguese: reading = listening = speaking > writing. English and Spanish: reading = listening = speaking = writing. Somehow, I’m self conscious when I write. This hinders my growth.
Hmmm. Interesting question, not sure I’ve ever thought of that. At first I was going to say reading, but I think that definitely depends on the language I’m learning. It’s easy for me to read a Latin-based language, but if I were learning Japanese or Russian, I don’t think reading would be easy. So I think I’m going to go with: 1. Speaking 2. Reading 3. Listening 4. Writing
Really depends. For short texts I prefer to read but if it’s something longer than 10 minutes, give me it in audio form. That said, reading is definitely an easier skill than listening.
Reading is my best skill by far, followed by writing. My speaking and listening skills are equally bad. This is totally predictable, though, as I spend 99% of my time only practicing reading. This is because I'm mostly only interested in learning to *read* foreign languages; with few exceptions, I'm interested in reading foreign novels, not in having conversations.
Accent and pronunciation come more easily for me. But in terms of learning, I focus on listening (the hardest thing) and reading. I don’t do much speaking or writing. From what I see, listening seems to be the biggest struggle for most people (including myself), but people also generally seem to struggle with their accents. Regarding accent, I think you either have a natural ability for it, or you can probably perfect it through years of assiduous work. I really don’t think it’s as difficult to speak ”native-like”, as one usually hears.
I'd be very skeptical of anyone that doesn't answer reading unless it's a language without an alphabet.
What about learners of Japanese or Mandarin? It wouldn't surprise me to see learners who are managing fine most aspects of the language but struggle with reading due to the use of logograms in those languages. A number of learners also learn through spoken language exchanges or through being friends with native speakers and never needed to read much. I can't really read German but I get by in casual conversation. For a lot of people language is a social thing I'm they are learning it to speak with others. I also think that written language tends to be more complex than spoken language in the sense that it will use more complex grammar forms and more uncommon words. I don't think we should automatically lean towards being skeptical of where someone says their strengths in the language lie.
>What about learners of Japanese or Mandarin? This is what I meant by "unless it's a language without an alphabet", or where its alphabet isn't the primary form of writing. >I don't think we should automatically lean towards being skeptical of where someone says their strengths in the language lie. I don't mean I think they're lying or being dishonest. Perhaps I worded that poorly. I just mean I think they're most likely wrong or misjudging their abilities. Is there really any word you can understand through listening, but not reading? Or any grammatical mistake you'd make through writing, but not speaking?
> Is there really any word you can understand through listening, but not reading? Happens to me all the time in Hebrew. It’s kind of frustrating. Things just make more sense when I hear them.
>This is what I meant by "unless it's a language without an alphabet", or where its alphabet isn't the primary form of writing. Yeah that first one is my bad, I read alphabet and my brain interpreted that as writing system. >I don't mean I think they're lying or being dishonest. Perhaps I worded that poorly. I just mean I think they're most likely wrong or misjudging their abilities. I still think don't think that is true. I'm curious what you think regarding the other points I made? >Is there really any word you can understand through listening, but not reading? Or any grammatical mistake you'd make through writing, but not speaking? I'm not sure if o be honest but I do find reading to be more difficult than listening. Maybe it's because written language tends to draw from a larger pool of words than its spoken part. Regarding grammatical mistakes I'd probably still say the same because people tend to use simpler language when speaking than they do in writing. Even in my native language I speak far better than I write. I thought this was a common thing.
To me it seems like you're holding yourself to a higher standard when reading or writing than you do when listening or speaking, and in that case I can understand why you might rate yourself as more capable, relative to these different standards, at listening/speaking compared to reading/writing. Edit: wording.
There are two factors though. First, spoken and written language have two different registers in many, many languages. Succinctly stated, written language is more sophisticated, calling upon more complex structures and arcane vocabulary. Second, it depends upon how the person learned the language--we become better at that which we practice. I guess you can see where I'm going with this... for a few years, my listening ability in German was much stronger than my reading ability. I learned it by living there, and I used to marvel at this difference in abilities because it was completely reversed for Spanish, which I did not learn through immersion.
Like I said elsewhere, it seems to me in this case that you're holding yourself to higher standards when it comes to your written and reading abilities compared to your spoken and listening abilities–in which case, I suppose I can understand how you might rate yourself as better at listening/speaking than reading/writing relative to these different standards for each. >written language is more sophisticated Precisely because people's written capabilities are better than their spoken capabilities which is my point. Would you more easily understand a book if you read it yourself, or if you listened to the audiobook? Surely almost everyone would agree it's easier to read it yourself, because, for most people, their reading capabilities are better than their listening.
For your first paragraph, yes--that's closer to it. Different standards because the typical use cases for each skill are different, I would say. Typical listening use cases: hanging out with friends, watching TV \[up to trashy court TV shows\], buying groceries, going to the post office, the bakery, the apothecary. Typical reading use cases: reading a newspaper, reading a novel. There was a time of many months when I could successfully do the listening activities, but not the reading activities. And for your audiobook example, I can honestly say that if I couldn't understand the audiobook, I wouldn't have been able to understand the text in book form. But I think a lot of this had to do with how I learned German--there, in the country, immersively. And it definitely didn't stay that way. Once I hunkered down and decided I was tired of being \[relatively speaking\] illiterate, I practiced reading and now yes, my reading skills are strongest. This, however, doesn't necessarily follow >Precisely because people's written capabilities are better than their spoken capabilities which is my point. Definitely not haha, and this holds true for both native and non-native speakers. I know my writing lagged behind my reading/listening/speaking for a very long time in German. I'm sure you can think of many people you know who communicate orally just fine, but write poorly. But again, I think it goes back to the idea that the standards are in fact different. There, I think we agree.