ways to improve listening skills?

what are some good ways to improve listening skills?

I've been learning Japanese for about 11 months now, but my listening skills is quite average. I know I will definitely improve if I talk to more Japanese people, but that option is not always possible where I live.

I went to Japan last week, went to Sendai and Tokyo, had a really great time there, just loved the snow at Sendai, absolutely beautiful. I tried to use as much Japanese as possible, but I just couldn't catch what people are saying. I can only catch words that I've learnt, and not the full sentence.

I really want to improve my Japanese, so any suggestions is really appreciated, well apart from telling me to watch more animes/dramas and listening to j-pop/rock, cause I'm already doing alot of that

anyway, please help me out

Eric

Hey man.
I had this SAME problem when I was in Japan over christmas break.
I got a buncha nice replies on my thread I made a couple weeks ago. jref.com/forum/showthread.php?t=28627
Go there and check out the replies - try finding online Japanese audio (japanesepod101 etc) / coversations / radio shows, they're everywhere
Also, see if you can get into Skype cause it's free and you can hear Japanese with that as well.
What it all comes down to is just a lack of experience, you'll get fluent if you keep studying and practicing active listening.

thanks, Torebaa, can you give me more information about Skype?

thanks

Skype is a free chatting program you download. If at least one person has Skype they can call another person on their cell for free. At least one person needs skype though, which means that they need to be able to chat through their computer (mic, webcam mic, etc)

You can find tons of info about Skype if you look it up. Best thing though is it's alll free.

Just my two cents, but I think that after only 11 months (less than a year) of studying Japanese, it's unlikely that your "listening skills" are the problem. Rather, the main reason you're not able to catch 100% of what people are saying is probably because they're using a whole bunch of words -- and even more importantly, grammatical constructions -- that you haven't learned yet.

Using Skype and the like to talk to native speakers, as well as watching TV and listening to music and such can be invaluable for getting your ear used to the sounds of Japanese, as well as reinforcing what you've already learned. But keep in mind that (at this point, at least), you still have a lot to learn about the language before you can reasonably expect yourself to be able to understand the Japanese of native speakers... whether it's spoken or written.

yeah I know I still have a lot to learn

I'm watching a lot of dramas right now, trying to improve my listening skills lol

thanks for your suggestions

First, study your vocabulary... being able to pick up vocabulary in the conversation will obviously help you in understanding it. Listen to Japanese newscasts, listen to Japanese podcasts... (I have itunes set up to download the aforementioned japanesepod101 automatically... Wherever I am, I can listen to some Japanese audio blogs or different levels of conversation.

What's good about japanesepod101 is that for the beginner levels at least they enunciate the conversations at a normal speed, and then at a speed that allows you to pick up pronunciation you might have missed the first time...

I'm not a fan of learning materials who expect you to simply learn through immersion by rattling off a lot of Japanese phrases at you and then interspersing them with an English speakers usually rough translation, with no translation notes whatsoever.

Generally speaking, learning Japanese is a cumulative effort, all the parts of learning combine to make listening and speaking easier.

Thanks alot for that podcast link site.
Its really good!

Im only just starting to try and learn, and the beginer and newbie lessons on there, are so good at explaining things I first was a tad bit confused about!

thanks for the podcast101 link

the site is really good, the intermediate series is really helping my listening skills and putting everything I've learnt together, great site

thanks guys