#the audiobook and audio drama in some ways. so either all 3 actors really got the Same main impression from book ro act similarly

[mejomonster]

Well. Silent Reading chapter 12, where they talk about Fei Du's moms death and how he doesn't accept the conclusion, how Luo Wenzhou advises he at least try to move on emotionally. The way Fei Du is tapping a song on his cup (perhaps his moms), that he stops tapping when Luo Wenzhou hits a nerve and becomes like a statue--revealing his true emotions in a way he doesn't/can't in therapy. The grief talk he probably has needed to hear for a while, but first a very painful talk where there is no seeing eye to eye and no agreeing because they both have their reasons. And Luo Wenzhou turns off the petty conflict for it because Fei Du deserves to genuinely discuss it with Luo Wenzhou as level headed adults with their analysis if Fei Du wants to. And Fei Du is so emotional, and in the end as he puts his mask back up. (A note on the show version: some portions of this changed, the main dialogue stayed fairly true and the function of the scene. In both cases, this scene absolutely cuts up my heart ;-; ):

"Someone once said to me that ‘everything that happens in this world leaves traces,’ but whether you can find them depends on each side’s luck. Is your luck good this time?”

Luo Wenzhou suddenly froze. The blow-for-blow probing, bantering, and hinting vanished utterly from his face. For an instant the corners of his mouth were even pulled a little tight.

Luo Wenzhou subconsciously got his cigarettes out of his pocket, thought of something, and put them back.

Instantly there was deep silence between the two of them. Neither looked at the other. They only sat side by side with a distance of about one meter between them, like complete strangers.

“The windows and doors were locked. None of the rooms showed signs of forced entry. The most advanced security system of the time was entirely untouched.” Luo Wenzhou abruptly opened his mouth to speak, his voice very low and his speech very fast, as if he had already recited these words many times and could smoothly say them without missing a single punctuation mark.

“She had done her makeup and changed her clothes, even put on music. The scene had a certain feeling of ritual. There was a suicide note arranged on the writing desk next to her. It was analyzed, the handwriting confirmed to belong to the deceased. The person who had written the letter showed clear depressive tendencies, which tallied with her daily use of antidepressant medication. The deceased was an adult, with no illness or injury that may have led her to be unable to act for herself. No drugs sufficient to cause unconsciousness were found in her system. There were also no defensive wounds on her body.—That’s all the evidence we collected at the time. You were the one who reported the case. You reached the scene before we did. Unless you want to tell me that you hid some evidence back then, it was without a doubt a suicide.”

Fei Du didn’t speak. His sitting posture seemed very relaxed—legs crossed, upper body leaning forward slightly, one hand casually lying on his knee and the other holding a paper cup that was no longer steaming. His long and slender fingers were tapping out a beat on the rim of the cup, as if there was a melody no one else could hear filling the air.

“I said to you then, ‘Everything that happens in this world leaves traces, as long as it’s real. Without traces to support your opinion, however much you believe in it, it’s still only a dead end of the imagination.’ Fei Du, you may have had a certain intuition, but we can’t do our job based on intuition. My intuition tells me every day that I can make five million.” Luo Wenzhou’s gaze stopped on Fei Du’s fingers. Then, in an almost callously objective tone, he said, “And you know, there’s a theory abroad that says that if a person wants to kill herself, she may suddenly use some means to confess it to the people close to her—you heard her confession back then.”

Fei Du’s fingers suddenly stiffened.

Luo Wenzhou reached out his arm, pulled the paper cup out of his hand and put it aside. “If you really want to talk over this case with me, I maintain my judgment to this day—but it doesn’t matter whose judgment it is. That isn’t important anymore. She’s been dead for seven years. When the coffin is closed, you can judge a person’s life. The relevant evidence has all disappeared. This isn’t going to sound good, but if she’s reincarnated she’ll already be attending primary school. The living can cling on without letting go; it’s a form of emotional sustenance. But there’s no sense in blindly clinging to the wrong course.”

Maintaining his original posture, Fei Du sat without moving a muscle, as if he had turned into a statue.

Just then, Zhang Ting and the lawyer came out side by side, and Fei Du’s gaze moved slightly, giving off a trace of living energy.

“I don’t accept your conclusion, Officer Luo,” said Fei Du.

Hearing this, Luo Wenzhou wasn’t at all taken aback. He only shrugged.

Fei Du adjusted his jacket and stood to meet Zhang Ting and the lawyer. He looked down at Luo Wenzhou. There was no smile on his face; his expression was even somewhat somber. “But perhaps there’s some merit in your heartfelt advice.”

Luo Wenzhou was surprised, but after saying this, Fei Du once again put on his graceful mask and left with Zhang Ting. They didn’t have any further interaction.

[rigelmejo]

July Listening Reading Method Notes

7/9/2021

I’ve mentioned this before, but its worth summarizing for future me to find lol.

How I’ve found ‘Listening Reading Method” most useful lately for improving listening comprehension:

Doing step 3 in Pleco - so Playing “auto dictate” and following the text by looking at the english definitions as I try to listen to the words. (This step I follow the text but don’t actually ‘read’ much chinese). I find doing this first works like prestudying a word list of definitions with the benefit of some repetition, forces me to focus, and I connect definition to Sound first.

Listening to the audiobook chapter on its own (not technically a step in L R method). Either just once, or multiple times while working/working out/playing it in the background. The more focus I can put on it the better though - often I find the last ‘step’ in pleco prepped me by giving me all context and a lot of sound=word info, so when I just-listen during this activity I find myself able to follow every main scene and most detail sentences just by listening. The more I listen, the more words I comprehend. Usually, because I already did the ‘english text-chinese audio’ step, I have enough context to figure out most other unknown words by context through listening alone. I do not always do this activity, but I’ve been doing it a lot more recently. I feel like it reinforces the context, and specifically my english-definition association with the sound of chinese words. And since there is no reading involved, I think it makes me develop my listening skills more to make sure that’s really what got strengthened in the last activity english text-chinese audio. So it’s basically audio-only review. This is optional, and sometimes I do this activity last and I do it AS often as I want since its convenient to just play audio in the background. But I do feel that doing this as part of L R Method activities really helps my listening skills.

Doing step 2 - listening to the chinese audiobook chapter while reading along to the chinese text. This step I sometimes do before or after step 3, it depends on my mood. When I do this step first it can be mentally less draining since this step requires less intense focus. Generally I think I benefit more when I do this step last. When I do it last, I have a good grip on most of the word meanings and on listening comprehension, and can instead focus most of my effort on learning the new hanzi for new words and clicking-definitions for the few words in a chapter I still can’t quite remember. So this activity helps my reading ability most - since it makes me read as fast as speaking speed, and gives me time to match audio to what the text hanzi looks like. Doing this activity first also has some benefits though - when I do this step first it helps my reading speed, helps me practice guessing more new word meanings from context alone, and helps me rely on my existing chinese reading/listening skills and practice them. So when I do this activity first it helps me practice the ‘harder’ skills I need when reading normally - needing to guess new words with no definition or very few, needing to keep my reading pace reasonable, needing to figure out meaning under time limit (like when watching a show). 

So in a way, these activities I do in different orders depending on the day and what I feel like. My shorter routine versions are usually either:

I just do step 3 (chinese audio-english text in pleco), then step 2 (chinese audiobook-chinese text). This takes ~40 minutes but the first ~20 minutes I can start/stop easily if I can’t do it all in one sitting.

Or JUST step 2 (chinese audiobook-chinese text), because I can follow enough of the main plot/details just doing this step and it practices a bit of reading and listening if I’m short on time. This takes ~20 minutes, ~30 minutes if I start trying to regular read without the audio for a while. 

Doing these activities has really helped my listening comprehension a lot. 

I think I started trying L R Method a ‘little’ in December/January, then in the spring I tried to ramp it up to regularly. The bit of L R Method I did in winter noticeably helped my listening skills of things I could already read just could not hear well. These recent months (late spring/summer) I went through chapters 1-20 of Guardian, doing mostly the activities above (and a lot of repeated listening to random chapters during down time).

I have now started picking up some new words, in addition to learning to hear words I can ‘read.’ So yes eventually with L R Method I did start picking up new words after all. For listening skill of the new words, it usually takes a few times hearing them (so doing L R Method ‘step 3′ then ‘step 2′ and listening helps reinforce, otherwise I pick them up after a few chapters instead of one). And a few of times reading them to pick them up (usually this means after reading a few chapters I pick up some common words up, unless I only-read some chapters before doing ‘step 2′ so that I have more time to really look at the hanzi). For picking up new words, the context of the chapter helps a lot, so the more I know the context of the chapter the easier I will remember the new word/phrase since I will be able to associate how it can be used in a scene/sentence. 

 What also helps - using an audiobook that distinguishes voices, settings, as much as possible. Avenuex’s Guardian audiobook is really really good for this because every character has their own voice, Avenuex reads the sentences/phrases according to the tone of people’s emotions and the scene, there’s background music to match the tone of the scene and location, there’s sounds for actions/sipping/slamming etc. Its generally a lot easier to figure out where words/phrases separate, and when I hear a vaguely-just-learned adjective or emotion or descriptor I have a lot of context to guess what it means and help me remember. And again, the voice differences make it super easy to follow dialogues, and the background music makes it easy to tell when a scene has changed location or something big happened during a scene even if I’m just listening to it in the background and not constantly paying attention - its easy to re-figure out what the new scene I’m listening to is. 

I listened to ‘wheat’s’ Guardian audiobook and - while I think their voice is great for shadowing, and its easier to repeat after it (since wheat speaks very level and smoothly they are good for copying after and clearly hearing new word pronunciations), they also barely change their voice for dialogue so it is quite hard to listen to in the background and tell when a dialogue has started. It also has very little additional sounds, so you really need to pay attention to everything said to catch enough context to notice scene transitions and people’s emotions. I think listening to wheat’s audiobook was good practice at really testing how many words I truly recognize versus was using context to recognize in Avenuex’s audiobook, and good for shadowing with (since the parts I did recognize really sounded clear and level and easy to repeat after without losing place of where the audio is once I go back to listening). 

Silent Reading’s audiobook is also Fairly Good for audiobook listening as far as a lot of audio context to help. While Silent Reading’s audiobook doesn’t match up perfectly to the text, the background music and sound effects of opening doors/bells/cars/background radios/whistles/parties etc make it very doable to follow the main scenes and tell which one is happening. Silent Reading is the first audiobook I tried to listen to, on its own with no text, months back. If you know the context already (like from reading the english translation) and some chinese, it is doable to follow. If I listened to those audiobook chapters a few times in a row I could catch a lot of what was going on. 

On that note, audio dramas are also a bit easier to follow with listening only - they tend to have a lot of voice variance for different actors and background sounds to help set a scene. There isn’t always as much context for where things are taking place, but if you’ve read/watched the corresponding story (like in english) then its doable to place what scene is happening as you hear it. And doable to pick up more details each listen. And since its mostly dialogue, the words used (I think) tend to be easier in general and more familiar since you might still remember some dialogue if for example you watched the show. Like I watched Word of Honor a few times, and so the chinese dialogue sticks out to me and I remember at least somewhat, so when the audio drama has bits that remind me of the show scenes I have an easier time placing what’s going on. Or 2ha’s audio drama, certain scenes I really remember what people said to each other, so even with only audio they stick out as a bit familiar. I would guess, listening to an audiodrama with english or chinese subs once, then listening more without, would be a good way to practice listening skill improvement. 

Some final notes:

I think repeated-listening has its place. I think the more I listen, just listen, the more my listening comprehension improves. And in many ways L R Method is like ‘supportive study’ to that goal that works on it too just not as directly, with the tradeoff of more context to make it easier/faster. 

I saw a pronunciation training suggestion that suggested listening to audio sentences one at a time, 50-100 times, and shadowing them, for 30 days. So basically like WasabiJapanese’s repeated-listening exercises with even MORE listening and shadowing. This pronunciation training claimed if you do this, you will have good singing-like pronunciation of all main sentence patterns/phrase pattern sounds in a language. Idk how much I believe that, but if it worked for them then I guess that would also contribute to the idea repeated listening really helps solidify listening skills (and speaking skills if you shadow a lot along with listening a lot). 

I think in general WasabiJapanese’s lessons format is really good for copying and applying to any short study material like short learner podcasts, sections of chapters, flashcards (like Clozemaster). Repeated listening and shadowing has been helping a lot with Japanese - which is what I’ve been doing in Clozemaster lately. I find that a combination of some initial exposure to a word meaning (in intensive reading, or english text-chinese audio, or flashcard translation etc), then a lot of repeated listening, helps me pick up words faster. For me personally, reading and picking up hanzi now isn’t too hard if I already ‘know’ the word from those things - but if I learn the hanzi-word first, then it takes a while still for me to learn the pronunciation and remember. 

I think extensive reading improves reading Speed and reinforces comprehension of mostly-known words, in combination with intensive reading on a regular basis to improve reading vocabulary, helps with reading skills. Intensive reading (for me) does not help reading speed past a certain point and can sometimes keep me from challenging myself - so some extensive reading is necessary. Extensive reading helps solidify what I DO already know/understand and comprehend it faster. So in that way, step 2 of L R Method where I read the chinese while listening to the chinese audiobook is fairly helpful because its extensive reading that’s also at a speaking speed. It helps me consolidate what I know and understand it faster, and helps with guessing skills for new words/things. However, intensive reading is how I pick up vocabulary the fastest initially (vague-recognition) so that the words are easier to fully-learn later in context. So some of the english text-chinese audio step really helps (or likewise some just only-reading where I read chapters intensively to look up all unknown words). Without intensive reading, my vocabulary initial-recognition grows much slower. 

Shadowing helps and I’m trying to do it more, I’m not doing as much as I’d like though.