This wonderful technique not only improves your listening skills but also helps to start reading. After you've got aquainted with how the language sounds as a beginner, you can start reading transcripts. It is better than reading alone. Because reading alone without having a native sounding what's written can lead to mispronouncing and bad accent as you tend to transfer your native language habbits to your target language. Listening and reading at the same time is a very powerful technique. It is also very natural and fun to do. I love how you present all your tips in such an inspiring way, Robin! Keep on with languages, everyone!
Transcription is one of my favorite methods! As soon as I finished writing it down I usually I watch or listen to the material over and over again. And with every text I'm finishing I can really feel my improvement right away!! Everytime it's a huge step forward
Every time I watch one of your videos I end up really excited to do a difficult thing, and I love that. I don't think I'm quite at the level where I could listen to 45 minutes without being totally overwhelmed but I'm keeping this as a goal! I'm currently trying to get comfortable with Anki and see how it best (if at all) fits into my studying - it's been a whole learning experience on its own!
I created a tool to correct the transcription that I do during the dictation sessions of smarterGerman. The tool makes it easier to play/pause while writing. Then I listen again and fill the gaps. Then I click compare. The tool corrects my writing, comparing with the original text. I listen again and check what's wrong. I repeat the process. I have plans to make it available as a generic tool where you enter the audio and reference text, and you write your own transcript to be compared. One idea is also to do collaboration with podcasts and make it available directly in the tool. Right now the tool is available as a "plugin" only and is working in the smarterGerman course.
This is my favourite video yet! I like how you're giving us clean shots of the screen and the app you use. Nice edit shot of the split screen where you're live transcribing. However, just 2 more seconds could have been dedicated to an in-focus shot of the flat white. Coffee is important to you so don't be shy about giving it a bit more of the spot light. As a café going coffee lover myself, one of the things I love most about your channel is that you/ it elicits the same unique feeling of comfort, warmth and belly hugs (with the heady excitement of learning something new) that artisan coffee shops give me. The shorter video is much more digestible.
Yes, agree totally. Love the coffe angle (though as I only drink black coffee I cringe when I see milk in there....at the same time as I have to admit it's visually very pleasing). :))
I highly recommend switching Google Translate for Deepl, it is actually using AI-powered by Linguee and gives a much much better translation :) also, the "Learn Languages with TH-cam" chrome extension is amazing at providing subtitles in the original language + the language of your choice. You can save words or phrases and you can even print the transcripts (or save as pdf). I use it for German, and the only downside is that when saving it as pdf, the nouns are not capitalized and there are no commas or periods, but still pretty useful (not for podcasts, but great for video content) Oh and the is also another one for Netflix Insightful video as always!!! Por cierto español es mi primer idioma y wow me animas muchisimo a continuar aprendiendo idiomas. Saludos desde Berlin! (y si, no uso las tildes culpa de mi teclado en aleman jaja)
I agree I tested both with same text (after having authentic translation) I saw that DeepL had the closest to the Native Speaker translation but not by much. It would be a few things that DeepL woudl get it.
A really good video Robin. It shows how important listening is. We shouldn't assume we've heard anything correctly , it could take us down the wrong road completely !
I'm just having a similar experience with a great novel I read in English. I read through it without looking up vocabulary, using the "extensive reading" approach, although I'm far away from understanding 98% of the words. And unkwown words tend to stick together in chunks and bunches instead of being spread plain all over the text. So I finally decided to type one of those paragraphs in my vocabulary trainer (My dictionary) and with copy and paste I made a new vocab out of every unknown word, using everytime the same example text. And added my comments. It turned out that every word was not only very useful (example: "to the contrary" is nothing you will find in frequency lists, but I use the phrase with the same meaning in German thousand times more often than I ever asked where the station is - well, actually, evertime when I had to find my way in an alien city I *came from* the station!). The paragraph also revealed a deeper meaning - and with every repetition of the vocabs the sentence structure was trained, because I do the retrievals as fill-ing-the-gaps test. I totally agree that intensive reading or hearing is worth the effort and extensive reading or listening is also good, but different. And, by the way, I love your channel! Thank you for all those interesting videos!
@@RadicalPersonalFinance Hm, why? First: I found this vocabulary trainer before I heard of Lingq and I like it very much. Second: I like reading books of paper and giving my smartphone a rest sometimes. And so on... But it's very interesting what you wrote. Thank you! I will have a second view at Lingq. Didn't found out that it gives an opportunity to actively work with the new words. I often write a lot in my vocabulary trainer and then check with deepl-translator if my sentences make sense when they are translated back into my native language. (But I normally don't do that with my postings because TH-cam often closes the side and send me to the startpage if I leave.)
@BoboChacha Ho: My vocabulary app's name is "My Dictionary" by Katayikin. It is also on playstore with the name in my native language, but it's the same app. It comes with almost no vocabulary inside, but when you type your own words in it loads a translation, a voice example (computer generated) and examples for use. That sounds terrific, but I have to admit that I prefer to look up the words on the internet at dicc.cc (bilingual for many languages with many examples, synonyms etc.) and if I want more examples I look up on the internet at "Leo" (similar to dicct.cc) and/or Merriam-Webster, a non-bilingual dictionary which also includes many examples. The reason is that English words have often more than one meaning, are used in fixed phrases and so on, and I've come to write often little summaries of that on my flashcards. And the automatically loaded examples are mostly snippets which can't be used for fill-in-the-blanks tests. Meanwhile I started to use the app for pronounciation training (just reading the texts aloud, slowly and with pronounciation) and training of whole sentences, too. It seems to have a translater somewhere, I think it uses a one from the internet. The translation of the "everyday day sentences" I pick from TH-cam works perfectly. I don't have to use a dictionary or deepl translator for that. Deepl translator isn't an app, as far as I know. I use the website. It's easy to find - by the way, with Ecosia to help planting trees while searching. Deepl has many languages and I was told in a forum of Duolingo that it brings better results than google translator. Electronically generated corrections are not perfect, but better than none.
@@GuacamoleyNacho Thank you. I just installed (?) Language Learning with TH-cam. No matter, if it has a problem with Shakespeare. I stick to modern authors.
Such a great video Robin, this video captivates the language acquisition I have achieved with the two languages I'm learning. My mind jumps ahead with putting words together like your example of "ahí fuera" and I discovered I've been getting words that sound the same mixed up as well like your example of "salvo que" vs "salgo que". Looking foward to more methods to increase comprehension and conquer these challenges!
I love the occasional transcription exercise -- it is also RELALY helpful for people studying on their own with a textbook (and therefore missing out on listening/speaking in class). Instead of following the guided method of progressing through a chapter, if you start and end each section with a dictation exercise you can practice listening, spelling, and it's a great way of seeing how much you learned in that section/unit. For example, if you listen to the dialog/audio track of a unit before reading about the grammar points or vocabulary and try your best to transcribe it after a few attempts of listening, you can check your accuracy with the transcription provided in the book and it REALLY helps point out any new vocab/structures (which are usually the most glaring errors in the transcription attempt). At the end of the chapter, you could repeat the process and/or shadow for pronunciation practice. So glad other people enjoy transcribing too :)
Great episode - but the "salvo que" example also drives home another key lesson, which is the importance of learning the "little words" like conjunctions consciously and early in the process. They are usually critical to comprehension, but difficult to decode from the context. There aren't all that many of them, so building a strong foundation is perfectly practical. And they are generally invariable (though as in this case they may be embedded in a pattern like a subjunctive verb) so once you know them you know them. Putting in the effort to pick them up gives you a very gratifying bang for your buck...
I'm using this very same method with two of your videos; the podcast study method and the one where you explain how develop speaking skills talking to yourself.
Thanks a lot Robin! This is super helpful! I am learning Spanish also at this time, and this is gold. And yes, I didn't know about "salvo que" either. By the way, I picked up that most forms of "unless" have the subjunctive afterwards. It's also true of "a no ser que", which also means unless.
Ok, I found you... you're great... I love to watch your videos. I thought I upgraded my coffee experience by getting the French Press however, yours looks so much better. When are we getting a coffee making video.
Hi Robin, just found your videos, great stuff and thanks for putting them out there. One trait of yours that likely gives you a big advantage is your obvious and keen interest and enthusiasm, not only in the language learning process but also in the content you consume. I honestly have trouble finding any content that fires me up ... depression or anhedonia are both real drags. Not sure how to get around that difficulty I have! So I’m envious, but also appreciative of your gift. :-) One request for future vids: I’ve watched a few of them now, and a short summary at the beginning or end would be great. I enjoy watching the rest for the human touch, but as a takeaway a summary in the description would be super. Cheers and regards! Jz
I’ve been searching out content with transcriptions from the content provider to do just this method, but I don’t look at the transcript until after I’ve done my transcribing as a way to check my work. I’ve been trying to stick with short videos because even 5 minutes of content can take a hour or more to transcribe depending on how clear the speakers are speaking. The Easy Language series would be a good source for this if you cover the bottom of the screen so you don’t see the target language transcript and English translation.
I think this method is really useful for short podcasts when you want to learn the ortography of a language. I did it quite a bit for Portuguese, but I was handwriting everything. That works wonders for my memory
And then there are the coloquial spoken words or casual usage or dialects that most people speak native to any language, as stated at the beginning. This I am finding this out more and more with learning the Swiss German versions spoken from Canton to Canton. Fortunately they are based off of the Alemannic Dialectal Language Group and once you learn a few, the phonetic transfers become easier to understand. Now the informal written forms are a whole different story and I am not going to spend too much time learning these, because the formal German Language spellings are official and quite acceptable to use in Switzerland, when communicating with others. I will bet with the Spanish Language being used world-wide in so many places a similar situation exists. I do like your transcription process methodology of learning as have frequently used it myself in many other subject matters. It keeps things categorized and in place for future use as needed. Much like setting up a personal library, it is available when and where needed.
Have you every tried this for a difficult language / Category 5 language / languages significantly different from English? The languages you discussed learning are Category 1 (closely related to English, according to the Defense Language Institute). Chinese or Japanese almost always doesn't have direct translations.
Absolutely! I did this for a long long time with Japanese and also did it with many students back when I was teaching Japanese a lot; and I will soon be doing this with Mandarin Chinese as I am starting to approach that level now.
@@wanderingdoc5075 haha this is so funny - I literally just placed an order from Intelligentsia this morning! Their Black Cat is one of my favorite espresso blends and it’s been a little while since I had their beans.
@@RobinMacPhersonFilms Been in Korea the last two years, so I haven't ordered as much as I normally do. I highly recommend the lighter roasts, esp. from Ethiopia. Richest flavor profile and highest polyphenol content. Going to have to give the Black Cat a try!
Great video, as usual! This channel is one of the most interesting and most useful resource for language learner on the Net. A real pleasure to watch. BTW: Even if I already use Android apps since a long time to help myself in the learning process of german, french and english, I did not know "Live Transcribe". I will try it in the next weeks.
Great video, as usual! Podcasts with transcripts rock for learning! If you have google chrome, you can use the dictation function (in tools) in google docs to transcribe podcasts. Of course, it's not perfect, but it has worked great for me. I also recommend context.reverso.net -- I like it a little better than linguee.
Great video, Robin! I enjoyed hearing your insights. I have to wonder though if this is the highest and best use of time. There’s no question that this intensive transcription method can bear fruit, but I would compare it to something like simply doing more extensive reading. If you spent the time that you’re doing this active transcription in reading novels in Spanish instead, I think you would gain those new words easily and your brain would automatically be trained to hear them. He would be an interesting experiment that you could do: calculate how long it takes you to apply this transcription method to a 45 minute podcast and then count the number of words in your transcription. Then, read a Spanish novel for 45 minutes. And count the number of words read. Then, compare the number of poetic terms and/or uses of the language that you were exposed to in each exercise. I think of the beauty of a podcast is that it’s a great passive exercise. Something to listen to while you are making coffee. It does help train your ear. But when it comes to an active, full focus activity, I think doing more extensive reading of modern Spanish novels will expose you to more words and more language and more grammatical structure than this activity. Keep up the great work! I enjoy your videos very much.
I think that especially if the text contains lots of new vocabulary it can be better to have a vocab list at hand to refer to if you're not sure that you know a word you're hearing. Otherwise transcription is a fantastic method.
I watched this video like a day ago and learned a lot and got the app too, and I’m just realising now that we have the same exact phone and I think the same phone case as well😄😂love you videos☺️😊💞
Que interesante! A no ser que conozcamos la expresión o palabra, es más difícil adivinar como se escribe. Justo cuando mencionaste la aplicación pensaba que tendría que usar algún transcriptor de audio a texto para captar ciertas expresiones que dijiste en este mismo video (me valgo mucho de los subtítulos automáticos de TH-cam). Saludos!
Hello Robin: I have really enjoyed your explanations, thanks for sharing your valuable experience with us, including some technical subtleties. Greetings from the underground.🙋
I do this with news articles, especially about a topic I’m already familiar with. Or reverse the process translating English to Spanish cool phrases I would use. Also, Busuu for Spanish is mostly European Spanish, and my Latin American friends have said they don’t use those phrases. The concepts are good though. I prefer the website over the app.
I'm studying Portuguese, all I could find initially was Brasilian Portuguese which I know is different. But now I have found a couple of very good european Portuguese teachers on TH-cam. So I understand your problem with the Latin American Spanish .
I love this method! It's especially useful for Danish because the Danes leave so much of their pronunciation out in real speech. I wonder if the transcribe app can possibly handle Danish? I might give it a try.
I remember doing this in Romanian, but way too early at the beginning 😂, it did help though, but it killed any motivation I had to do that for a loooong time I think this would be a cool thing to really try. It's a lot more of the creation and struggle that shows us exactly where our holes in our levels are.)) I could see this working for short TH-cam videos as well, and would be maybe a better way to get into transcribing than to try and type out a 45 minute podcast.)
This is very good! But I don't think this is doable, or ideal, for other languages. In my case I'm learning Thai. It's hard to transcribe through a computer since Thai has a complicated script insomuch that I can't spell the word unless I know the word (coz they have 40+ consonants and 20+ vowels, crazy, right!?) Moreover, my Mac has no built-in Thai keyboard and so to do this method, I have to write by hand, which for me is time-consuming. So to enhance my listening skills, I consume lots of Thai content and then turn-on the Thai subtitles. I know it's just one method but so far it's helpful! Thank you, tho, for your thoughts. I always see your contents helpful and interesting 😉
I would say the same about the languages I am learning, Amharic and Tigrinya, which have 231 characters in their alphabet and there is no voice recognition software for these languages. I could see maybe doing a transcription manually with a native speaker like Robin mentioned in the video. Any other suggestions?
@@isame0085 Yes that would work but still it's hard to identify the words especially if you're not familiar with them. You cannot spell out Thai words just based on sounds because, as I've said, there are lots of consonants and vowels plus the tone marks. You really have to be familiar with the word. For example, if you hear "mai" (sounds like "my")... It could be: ไหม, ไม่, หมาย, ใหม่ So you really have to know the context and the meaning of the word. And you'll have to pause many times in order to get the entire sentence. 🤣 It would be very time-consuming. 🤣
@@rejoicemerelos_kku yeah. Maybe it would be better to learn the language more before transcribing. In french (my third language) a lot of times different words have the exact same sound (vers, vert, verre all sound like ”vair”) so you gotta know a lot of words to transcribe. When I transcribe I do it with audio clips that I understand (almost) completely
How long did it take you to transcribe the 45 minutes video, if you don't mind? I've tried to do so with a few youtube videos that I found interesting for japanese, but even much shorter videos (10-25min ) had to be done over a few days because it took me a while.
Hi, thanks so much for this video! Could you please also say where you accessed the transcrip for the Nomadas podcast? It would be super useful but I can't find it anywhere :(
I'd really love to hear your opinion on Language Transfer, if you've ever tried it or even come across is. It's a completely free resource and I'm using it right now to learn Spanish and WOW is it effective, at least for me. So few people seem to know about it, though, which is a shame.
Live Transcribe has almost every language except my target language (Persian). 😩 I feel like resources for Persian are so limited. Even Google Translate doesn’t really know how to translate Persian. I’ve found some good books and movies, but I need to find a good dictionary, and something like Live Transcribe would be so awesome. But I shall live.... and I shall learn.
I’m in University and taking a language class. Due to medical reasons I’ve kept up with the work but I’m not comprehending the language 😣 what can I do, without falling behind?
Would you say that this transcription method helps you to understand other audios upon first listening to them. Basically will the “tuning” of your ears with one audio make listening to others easier upon a first listen?
How long does it take you to transcribe an audio of 3-5 minutes? I think it is extremely backbreaking when starting to do the transcription. I have to spent hours on one short audio and my transcripiton is still not so satisfactory. That is kind of frustrating.
Robin, you have some valuable insights into language learning, but I'm at the four-minute mark of the above video, and I still have not heard a single one of them, other than "make transcripts to boost listening and construction capability". Got it, and it didn't take more than a couple of seconds. You're now telling me why you think what you do is a good methodology. My recommendation is that you just stop banging on about that. If your methodology is a good one, then it will help people, and stand on its own. In brief, Robin, you're losing me in your analysis of your own method. I don't know who's writing the positive feedback below, but I'm guessing at this point that they want emotional support for their language-learning challenges, and if you provide that, then you're helping them, but that isn't a methodology.
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This wonderful technique not only improves your listening skills but also helps to start reading. After you've got aquainted with how the language sounds as a beginner, you can start reading transcripts. It is better than reading alone. Because reading alone without having a native sounding what's written can lead to mispronouncing and bad accent as you tend to transfer your native language habbits to your target language. Listening and reading at the same time is a very powerful technique. It is also very natural and fun to do.
I love how you present all your tips in such an inspiring way, Robin!
Keep on with languages, everyone!
Transcription is one of my favorite methods! As soon as I finished writing it down I usually I watch or listen to the material over and over again. And with every text I'm finishing I can really feel my improvement right away!! Everytime it's a huge step forward
Great tips. Thanks, man. I’ve been studying Italian for the past 19 months. I love it. The first of many languages, I hope.
You should try Spanish too : )
Come è il tuo Italiano?
Every time I watch one of your videos I end up really excited to do a difficult thing, and I love that. I don't think I'm quite at the level where I could listen to 45 minutes without being totally overwhelmed but I'm keeping this as a goal! I'm currently trying to get comfortable with Anki and see how it best (if at all) fits into my studying - it's been a whole learning experience on its own!
I created a tool to correct the transcription that I do during the dictation sessions of smarterGerman. The tool makes it easier to play/pause while writing. Then I listen again and fill the gaps. Then I click compare. The tool corrects my writing, comparing with the original text. I listen again and check what's wrong. I repeat the process. I have plans to make it available as a generic tool where you enter the audio and reference text, and you write your own transcript to be compared. One idea is also to do collaboration with podcasts and make it available directly in the tool. Right now the tool is available as a "plugin" only and is working in the smarterGerman course.
This is my favourite video yet! I like how you're giving us clean shots of the screen and the app you use. Nice edit shot of the split screen where you're live transcribing. However, just 2 more seconds could have been dedicated to an in-focus shot of the flat white. Coffee is important to you so don't be shy about giving it a bit more of the spot light. As a café going coffee lover myself, one of the things I love most about your channel is that you/ it elicits the same unique feeling of comfort, warmth and belly hugs (with the heady excitement of learning something new) that artisan coffee shops give me. The shorter video is much more digestible.
Yes, agree totally. Love the coffe angle (though as I only drink black coffee I cringe when I see milk in there....at the same time as I have to admit it's visually very pleasing). :))
In my opinion, transcription is the most powerful method to learn a new language. I've been used it to learn English.
I highly recommend switching Google Translate for Deepl, it is actually using AI-powered by Linguee and gives a much much better translation :) also, the "Learn Languages with TH-cam" chrome extension is amazing at providing subtitles in the original language + the language of your choice. You can save words or phrases and you can even print the transcripts (or save as pdf). I use it for German, and the only downside is that when saving it as pdf, the nouns are not capitalized and there are no commas or periods, but still pretty useful (not for podcasts, but great for video content)
Oh and the is also another one for Netflix
Insightful video as always!!! Por cierto español es mi primer idioma y wow me animas muchisimo a continuar aprendiendo idiomas. Saludos desde Berlin! (y si, no uso las tildes culpa de mi teclado en aleman jaja)
I agree I tested both with same text (after having authentic translation) I saw that DeepL had the closest to the Native Speaker translation but not by much. It would be a few things that DeepL woudl get it.
A really good video Robin. It shows how important listening is. We shouldn't assume we've heard anything correctly , it could take us down the wrong road completely !
I'm just having a similar experience with a great novel I read in English. I read through it without looking up vocabulary, using the "extensive reading" approach, although I'm far away from understanding 98% of the words. And unkwown words tend to stick together in chunks and bunches instead of being spread plain all over the text. So I finally decided to type one of those paragraphs in my vocabulary trainer (My dictionary) and with copy and paste I made a new vocab out of every unknown word, using everytime the same example text. And added my comments. It turned out that every word was not only very useful (example: "to the contrary" is nothing you will find in frequency lists, but I use the phrase with the same meaning in German thousand times more often than I ever asked where the station is - well, actually, evertime when I had to find my way in an alien city I *came from* the station!). The paragraph also revealed a deeper meaning - and with every repetition of the vocabs the sentence structure was trained, because I do the retrievals as fill-ing-the-gaps test.
I totally agree that intensive reading or hearing is worth the effort and extensive reading or listening is also good, but different. And, by the way, I love your channel! Thank you for all those interesting videos!
Why not just use LingQ, which does all of this automatically for you? That’s where I read all of my foreign language novels.
@@RadicalPersonalFinance Hm, why? First: I found this vocabulary trainer before I heard of Lingq and I like it very much. Second: I like reading books of paper and giving my smartphone a rest sometimes. And so on... But it's very interesting what you wrote. Thank you! I will have a second view at Lingq. Didn't found out that it gives an opportunity to actively work with the new words. I often write a lot in my vocabulary trainer and then check with deepl-translator if my sentences make sense when they are translated back into my native language. (But I normally don't do that with my postings because TH-cam often closes the side and send me to the startpage if I leave.)
@BoboChacha Ho: My vocabulary app's name is "My Dictionary" by Katayikin. It is also on playstore with the name in my native language, but it's the same app. It comes with almost no vocabulary inside, but when you type your own words in it loads a translation, a voice example (computer generated) and examples for use. That sounds terrific, but I have to admit that I prefer to look up the words on the internet at dicc.cc (bilingual for many languages with many examples, synonyms etc.) and if I want more examples I look up on the internet at "Leo" (similar to dicct.cc) and/or Merriam-Webster, a non-bilingual dictionary which also includes many examples. The reason is that English words have often more than one meaning, are used in fixed phrases and so on, and I've come to write often little summaries of that on my flashcards. And the automatically loaded examples are mostly snippets which can't be used for fill-in-the-blanks tests. Meanwhile I started to use the app for pronounciation training (just reading the texts aloud, slowly and with pronounciation) and training of whole sentences, too. It seems to have a translater somewhere, I think it uses a one from the internet. The translation of the "everyday day sentences" I pick from TH-cam works perfectly. I don't have to use a dictionary or deepl translator for that. Deepl translator isn't an app, as far as I know. I use the website. It's easy to find - by the way, with Ecosia to help planting trees while searching. Deepl has many languages and I was told in a forum of Duolingo that it brings better results than google translator. Electronically generated corrections are not perfect, but better than none.
@@GuacamoleyNacho Thank you. I just installed (?) Language Learning with TH-cam. No matter, if it has a problem with Shakespeare. I stick to modern authors.
on the contrary would translate sometimes to doch right? I guess in english it's a more upper class way of saying "yeah nah mate".
Such a great video Robin, this video captivates the language acquisition I have achieved with the two languages I'm learning. My mind jumps ahead with putting words together like your example of "ahí fuera" and I discovered I've been getting words that sound the same mixed up as well like your example of "salvo que" vs "salgo que". Looking foward to more methods to increase comprehension and conquer these challenges!
I love the occasional transcription exercise -- it is also RELALY helpful for people studying on their own with a textbook (and therefore missing out on listening/speaking in class). Instead of following the guided method of progressing through a chapter, if you start and end each section with a dictation exercise you can practice listening, spelling, and it's a great way of seeing how much you learned in that section/unit. For example, if you listen to the dialog/audio track of a unit before reading about the grammar points or vocabulary and try your best to transcribe it after a few attempts of listening, you can check your accuracy with the transcription provided in the book and it REALLY helps point out any new vocab/structures (which are usually the most glaring errors in the transcription attempt). At the end of the chapter, you could repeat the process and/or shadow for pronunciation practice. So glad other people enjoy transcribing too :)
I love your methods! Some of them such as transcription I’ve been using as my best technique for language learning.
Great episode - but the "salvo que" example also drives home another key lesson, which is the importance of learning the "little words" like conjunctions consciously and early in the process. They are usually critical to comprehension, but difficult to decode from the context. There aren't all that many of them, so building a strong foundation is perfectly practical. And they are generally invariable (though as in this case they may be embedded in a pattern like a subjunctive verb) so once you know them you know them. Putting in the effort to pick them up gives you a very gratifying bang for your buck...
I'm using this very same method with two of your videos; the podcast study method and the one where you explain how develop speaking skills talking to yourself.
Thanks a lot Robin! This is super helpful! I am learning Spanish also at this time, and this is gold. And yes, I didn't know about "salvo que" either.
By the way, I picked up that most forms of "unless" have the subjunctive afterwards. It's also true of "a no ser que", which also means unless.
Hah - and I just found out it exists in Portuguese as well
Ok, I found you... you're great... I love to watch your videos. I thought I upgraded my coffee experience by getting the French Press however, yours looks so much better. When are we getting a coffee making video.
Hi Robin, just found your videos, great stuff and thanks for putting them out there.
One trait of yours that likely gives you a big advantage is your obvious and keen interest and enthusiasm, not only in the language learning process but also in the content you consume. I honestly have trouble finding any content that fires me up ... depression or anhedonia are both real drags. Not sure how to get around that difficulty I have! So I’m envious, but also appreciative of your gift. :-)
One request for future vids: I’ve watched a few of them now, and a short summary at the beginning or end would be great. I enjoy watching the rest for the human touch, but as a takeaway a summary in the description would be super.
Cheers and regards! Jz
I’ve been searching out content with transcriptions from the content provider to do just this method, but I don’t look at the transcript until after I’ve done my transcribing as a way to check my work. I’ve been trying to stick with short videos because even 5 minutes of content can take a hour or more to transcribe depending on how clear the speakers are speaking. The Easy Language series would be a good source for this if you cover the bottom of the screen so you don’t see the target language transcript and English translation.
I do this when I study French and I have found it very useful.
I think this method is really useful for short podcasts when you want to learn the ortography of a language. I did it quite a bit for Portuguese, but I was handwriting everything. That works wonders for my memory
I love seeing your Notion setups! It gives me so many ideas for my own. I’d love to see more Notion videos in the future. 🥰
And then there are the coloquial spoken words or casual usage or dialects that most people speak native to any language, as stated at the beginning. This I am finding this out more and more with learning the Swiss German versions spoken from Canton to Canton. Fortunately they are based off of the Alemannic Dialectal Language Group and once you learn a few, the phonetic transfers become easier to understand. Now the informal written forms are a whole different story and I am not going to spend too much time learning these, because the formal German Language spellings are official and quite acceptable to use in Switzerland, when communicating with others.
I will bet with the Spanish Language being used world-wide in so many places a similar situation exists.
I do like your transcription process methodology of learning as have frequently used it myself in many other subject matters. It keeps things categorized and in place for future use as needed. Much like setting up a personal library, it is available when and where needed.
Transcription is a useful tool. Your videos are getting better and better! 🙌🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Have you every tried this for a difficult language / Category 5 language / languages significantly different from English? The languages you discussed learning are Category 1 (closely related to English, according to the Defense Language Institute). Chinese or Japanese almost always doesn't have direct translations.
Absolutely! I did this for a long long time with Japanese and also did it with many students back when I was teaching Japanese a lot; and I will soon be doing this with Mandarin Chinese as I am starting to approach that level now.
@@RobinMacPhersonFilms Have you ever ordered from Intelligentsia.com ? My go-to for high quality single origin coffee.
@@wanderingdoc5075 haha this is so funny - I literally just placed an order from Intelligentsia this morning! Their Black Cat is one of my favorite espresso blends and it’s been a little while since I had their beans.
@@RobinMacPhersonFilms Been in Korea the last two years, so I haven't ordered as much as I normally do. I highly recommend the lighter roasts, esp. from Ethiopia. Richest flavor profile and highest polyphenol content. Going to have to give the Black Cat a try!
If this guy someday do a long video or a live, I'll watch cause he is so comprehensive and it's very comfortable see peoples like him!
Your videos are incredible! Thank you!
Great video, as usual! This channel is one of the most interesting and most useful resource for language learner on the Net. A real pleasure to watch. BTW: Even if I already use Android apps since a long time to help myself in the learning process of german, french and english, I did not know "Live Transcribe". I will try it in the next weeks.
Great video, as usual! Podcasts with transcripts rock for learning!
If you have google chrome, you can use the dictation function (in tools) in google docs to transcribe podcasts. Of course, it's not perfect, but it has worked great for me. I also recommend context.reverso.net -- I like it a little better than linguee.
Reverso is great
Amazing content man. Binged watched your videos this weekend!
I am getting fascinated with learning through videos with transcripts.
Great video, Robin! I enjoyed hearing your insights. I have to wonder though if this is the highest and best use of time.
There’s no question that this intensive transcription method can bear fruit, but I would compare it to something like simply doing more extensive reading.
If you spent the time that you’re doing this active transcription in reading novels in Spanish instead, I think you would gain those new words easily and your brain would automatically be trained to hear them.
He would be an interesting experiment that you could do: calculate how long it takes you to apply this transcription method to a 45 minute podcast and then count the number of words in your transcription.
Then, read a Spanish novel for 45 minutes. And count the number of words read.
Then, compare the number of poetic terms and/or uses of the language that you were exposed to in each exercise.
I think of the beauty of a podcast is that it’s a great passive exercise. Something to listen to while you are making coffee. It does help train your ear.
But when it comes to an active, full focus activity, I think doing more extensive reading of modern Spanish novels will expose you to more words and more language and more grammatical structure than this activity.
Keep up the great work! I enjoy your videos very much.
Love your enthusiasm for learning and life but most of all love your coffee obsession... coffee is life
Your videos are amazing! Thanks for share your ideas and experiences!
I think that especially if the text contains lots of new vocabulary it can be better to have a vocab list at hand to refer to if you're not sure that you know a word you're hearing. Otherwise transcription is a fantastic method.
I used the app to transcribe this video, and really works 😁
I watched this video like a day ago and learned a lot and got the app too, and I’m just realising now that we have the same exact phone and I think the same phone case as well😄😂love you videos☺️😊💞
Good advice!!! I'm learning English so I really enjoy your videos to learn about how to learn and also I can practice 😊
Awesome! If you want we can practice practice English what do u think?
Great tips man, thanks a lot!!
Amaising tips very inspiring, thanks!
Thanks for the great advice, Robin!
Que interesante! A no ser que conozcamos la expresión o palabra, es más difícil adivinar como se escribe. Justo cuando mencionaste la aplicación pensaba que tendría que usar algún transcriptor de audio a texto para captar ciertas expresiones que dijiste en este mismo video (me valgo mucho de los subtítulos automáticos de TH-cam). Saludos!
Hello Robin: I have really enjoyed your explanations, thanks for sharing your valuable experience with us, including some technical subtleties. Greetings from the underground.🙋
"Live Transcribe" looks very interesting, worth trying!
I do this with news articles, especially about a topic I’m already familiar with. Or reverse the process translating English to Spanish cool phrases I would use. Also, Busuu for Spanish is mostly European Spanish, and my Latin American friends have said they don’t use those phrases. The concepts are good though. I prefer the website over the app.
I'm studying Portuguese, all I could find initially was Brasilian Portuguese which I know is different. But now I have found a couple of very good european Portuguese teachers on TH-cam. So I understand your problem with the Latin American Spanish .
Thank you so much! And take care!
Thank you for the great advice!
I love this method! It's especially useful for Danish because the Danes leave so much of their pronunciation out in real speech. I wonder if the transcribe app can possibly handle Danish? I might give it a try.
Happy monday! Es un muy buen video ... Cómo siempre!
I remember doing this in Romanian, but way too early at the beginning 😂, it did help though, but it killed any motivation I had to do that for a loooong time
I think this would be a cool thing to really try. It's a lot more of the creation and struggle that shows us exactly where our holes in our levels are.))
I could see this working for short TH-cam videos as well, and would be maybe a better way to get into transcribing than to try and type out a 45 minute podcast.)
Yeah, I do it with 5 min Kurzgesagt's German videos. And it is awesome. But 45 min, I would drop out immediately.
This is very good! But I don't think this is doable, or ideal, for other languages. In my case I'm learning Thai. It's hard to transcribe through a computer since Thai has a complicated script insomuch that I can't spell the word unless I know the word (coz they have 40+ consonants and 20+ vowels, crazy, right!?)
Moreover, my Mac has no built-in Thai keyboard and so to do this method, I have to write by hand, which for me is time-consuming.
So to enhance my listening skills, I consume lots of Thai content and then turn-on the Thai subtitles. I know it's just one method but so far it's helpful!
Thank you, tho, for your thoughts. I always see your contents helpful and interesting 😉
I would say the same about the languages I am learning, Amharic and Tigrinya, which have 231 characters in their alphabet and there is no voice recognition software for these languages. I could see maybe doing a transcription manually with a native speaker like Robin mentioned in the video. Any other suggestions?
The same here. I'm learning Kurdish (Sorani). What I do is handwrite my phrases.
Maybe it’s easier if you write on your phone and change the keyboard to thai-letters?
@@isame0085 Yes that would work but still it's hard to identify the words especially if you're not familiar with them. You cannot spell out Thai words just based on sounds because, as I've said, there are lots of consonants and vowels plus the tone marks. You really have to be familiar with the word.
For example, if you hear "mai" (sounds like "my")...
It could be: ไหม, ไม่, หมาย, ใหม่
So you really have to know the context and the meaning of the word. And you'll have to pause many times in order to get the entire sentence. 🤣 It would be very time-consuming. 🤣
@@rejoicemerelos_kku yeah. Maybe it would be better to learn the language more before transcribing. In french (my third language) a lot of times different words have the exact same sound (vers, vert, verre all sound like ”vair”) so you gotta know a lot of words to transcribe. When I transcribe I do it with audio clips that I understand (almost) completely
Hi from Colombia
We definitely needed more time on that frothy latte
Eso es genial muchas gracias ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
How long did it take you to transcribe the 45 minutes video, if you don't mind? I've tried to do so with a few youtube videos that I found interesting for japanese, but even much shorter videos (10-25min ) had to be done over a few days because it took me a while.
Great channel!
Enhorabuena, Robin.
But how to find the transcription of podcast. Not easy to find it or write it yourself
Excelente video! Saludos desde Colombia!!
Hi, thanks so much for this video! Could you please also say where you accessed the transcrip for the Nomadas podcast? It would be super useful but I can't find it anywhere :(
He transcribed it himself - at least the first 5 minutes. That was the point of the video.
That’s awesome that you put the times for different parts. But will it work with Chinese?
Hi Robin, could you please share the link on that transcribe app
I'd really love to hear your opinion on Language Transfer, if you've ever tried it or even come across is. It's a completely free resource and I'm using it right now to learn Spanish and WOW is it effective, at least for me. So few people seem to know about it, though, which is a shame.
Live Transcribe has almost every language except my target language (Persian). 😩 I feel like resources for Persian are so limited. Even Google Translate doesn’t really know how to translate Persian. I’ve found some good books and movies, but I need to find a good dictionary, and something like Live Transcribe would be so awesome. But I shall live.... and I shall learn.
Yep
I’m in University and taking a language class. Due to medical reasons I’ve kept up with the work but I’m not comprehending the language 😣 what can I do, without falling behind?
Maybe try Pimsleur? Or italki? Those are game changers for me. Good luck!
Would you say that this transcription method helps you to understand other audios upon first listening to them. Basically will the “tuning” of your ears with one audio make listening to others easier upon a first listen?
Robin, i think you don't use Anki, so how do you revise your carda and how often do you do it??
omg this is soo cool
I’m confused. Did you write the transcript yourself or you downloaded the transcript from the podcast?
Is the live transcribe app just for IPhone? I'm not finding it for Android.
play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.audio.hearing.visualization.accessibility.scribe
I just keep exposing myself to native content and I understand
Me sucede en el ingles pero creo que es cuestión de distinguir los sonidos y afinar nuestro escuchar.
I don’t know that it caught the word, it just has a good autocorrect feature...
*adds "salvo que seas" to notion*
When your hair is short is much more cute than its long in contrast.
Thanks for your feedback :)
How long does it take you to transcribe an audio of 3-5 minutes? I think it is extremely backbreaking when starting to do the transcription. I have to spent hours on one short audio and my transcripiton is still not so satisfactory. That is kind of frustrating.
Die Transcribe App ist echt große Klasse, aber sie kann leider nur 2 verschiedene Sprachen gleichzeitig.
Escucha “Lusito Comunica” tiene vlogs de viaje es un nivel avanzado , a lo mejor puedes hablarle y hacer un video con el estaría cool : )
Sigo Luisito para mejorar mi español.
_Eating their words..._ Hello French.
you know, with long hair you look great and smart.
Don't cut them off :)
Intro is a bit long. 10 minutes into video still waiting for the tutorial
7:00
I heard salmon que.
I heard salgo que.
What does salmon que mean?
My spell checker is up to its tricks again. I wrote salgo que originally, but since it is a foreign language, Spanish, I dont understand that either.
Trt to learn Arabic. You will enjoy .it is the hardest language
Mandarin: r u joking ???
Looking over your Spanish phrases Lots of words on that list just aren't used. And will slow your progress down.
You have an uncanny resemblance with the Bollywood actor Farhaan Akhtar.
Couldn't find live transcript. Lost my time.
Maybe it is me ...but I feel you should be more concise and go to the point without so much background talk...
Robin, you have some valuable insights into language learning, but I'm at the four-minute mark of the above video, and I still have not heard a single one of them, other than "make transcripts to boost listening and construction capability". Got it, and it didn't take more than a couple of seconds. You're now telling me why you think what you do is a good methodology. My recommendation is that you just stop banging on about that. If your methodology is a good one, then it will help people, and stand on its own. In brief, Robin, you're losing me in your analysis of your own method. I don't know who's writing the positive feedback below, but I'm guessing at this point that they want emotional support for their language-learning challenges, and if you provide that, then you're helping them, but that isn't a methodology.