The Value of Transcription Exercises

[ZhuoMing]

I've often read in posts here that transcription exercises are the best way to improve listening ability. By transcription exercises, I mean listening to an audio source and taking as much time as necessary to write down every word that you hear, using a dictionary if necessary.  I am wondering, is there any reason why this is better than, say, simply listening to audio, and rewinding parts you don't understand over and over until you can listen to the entire clip easily with 100% comprehension?

 

Is it just for the sake of writing practice? Is it because it helps you to internalize the sentence structures so that production in the form of speaking and writing becomes more fluid? Or does the transcribing process help you to really understand the words that are said as opposed to just getting the general meaning from what is heard? Perhaps there are other reasons I can't think of? i am interested to hear people's opinions on transcription exercises. 

[Shelley]

It has often been said that the act of writing down something moves it from temporary memory into more permanent memory and the more you do the more ingrained it becomes.

Personally I think this is true. I also think this is why pen and paper, real world writing of characters is the best way to learn and remember characters by adding muscle memory to the skill set.

[imron]

5 hours ago, ZhuoMing said:

I am wondering, is there any reason why this is better than, say, simply listening to audio, and rewinding parts you don't understand over and over until you can listen to the entire clip easily with 100% comprehension?

Because it's easy to convince yourself that you did understand it, when perhaps you didn't - and there's no hard evidence for that, it's only based on your perception.

 

By comparison, the act of transcribing creates hard evidence about exactly how much you understand (and can retain in your mind) while you were transcribing.

 

At first you might only be able to listen to a second or two of audio before needing to pause to write things down.  As your ability to hold and retain the Chinese in your mind improves, you'll be able to listen to longer and longer segments of audio before pausing to transcribe, and that reflects a higher grasp and level of understanding of the Chinese language.

 

[ZhuoMing]

4 minutes ago, imron said:

 At first you might only be able to listen to a second or two of audio before needing to pause to write things down.  As your ability to hold and retain the Chinese in your mind improves, you'll be able to listen to longer and longer segments of audio before pausing to transcribe, and that reflects a higher grasp and level of understanding of the Chinese language.

 

I am glad you made this point. I have tried doing transcriptions a few times in the past, and it was just like this, I had to pause very 3 seconds or so or else I would forget what was said. This is surely related to something else I recently noticed - I have trouble understand long amounts of speech at fast speeds, even though I am fine at understanding a bunch of short segments.  Sounds like I gotta get going on my transcription exercises!