Monday, September 11, 2017

Overcoming hearing sickness in language learning

I'm now well past over 100 hours of hearing Tagalog on a consistent basis.

Most of it has been music, but I've also listened to a bunch of short dialogues looped over and over. During the weekends I don't want my favorite teleserye because it plays only on weekdays.

I've found myself having a sort of hearing sickness lately. It's like I just get tired of hearing the language.

In a way I think it's a good thing. It means I'm getting a lot of exposure in my ears. So what do I do when I start to experience hearing sickness? I've found a few things helpful.
  • Stop listening.
  • Change the content type.
  • Change my non-language activity.
Most of the time I enjoy hearing/listening to the language. It doesn't bother me to have the language playing in the background constantly. So when I get the hearing sickness bug I just make a slight tweak to whatever I'm doing at the time.

Stop actively listening to the language. I just let it whatever is playing continue to play without devoting any brain power to it.

Change the content type. If music is playing, I might switch to another song or try to find a new song. Or I might change it to the news. On Spotify the commercials are in English so that can give me a quick breather from hearing Tagalog all the time.

Change up the non-language activity when sickness bug comes. If I'm reading a book or something and I start to feel the hearing sickness bug I might go and surf the web. Or I might go for a walk. Or I might sleep. Sometimes just changing the activity helps the bug pass.

Anyway, the hearing sickness bug isn't really a distraction as it is a discomfort. That's to be expected as I expand my comfort zone to include being able to handle Tagalog in my ears constantly, which would be the case if I was in a place like the Philippines.

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