NORsk LEARNING
Listening
To improve your listening skills I suggest that you expose yourself to the language as more as possible on an everyday basis and from the beginning. Even if you can not understand what is said, you will be familiarized with the sound and, consequently, this will lead to improvement both in understanding and in speaking.
At the end of this page, I give you a useful tip on how to understand everything you hear.
Here are my recommendations to achieve that.
Radio
Listening to the radio can be very helpful since people talk clearly and relatively slowly. Following I give you the link to the web page of NRK P2 Radio, which is my favorite but there many Norwegian radio stations to chose from.
An other way to have all the Norwegian radio stations available is to download and install the "TuneYou" extension on your Google Chrome browser.
Many times we want to go back and re-listen to something that was interesting. In this case, you can use "Soundtap"streaming audio recorder. Below you can find the link to for downloading and installing the application. Then you can capture the live streaming audio and listen to it off-line whenever you want.
Another way to capture sound internally from PC goes as follows:
- Go to control panel on your PC
- Open "Sound"
- Go to "Recording tab"
- If "Stereo Mix" is visible on the list, right-click on it to set it as "default device"
- If you can not see "Stereo Mix" on the list, right-click on the list, and choose "show disabled devices". Then "Stereo Mix" will become visible on the list and by right-clicking on it you can set it as "default device"
- Close these "Control Panel"
- On the "Search bar" on Windows bar, on the bottom of your screen, type "Voice Recorder". The Voice Recorder application comes up.
- Turn on what ever you want to record on your PC, from whatever site or application and then hit record (the microphone icon) on the Voice Recorder and it just starts internal recording.
Note that you can add markers to your recording, trim it and of course save it.
Podcasts
You can find many podcasts in Norwegian. I use Spotify and below are the links to the channels of norsklærer Karense and Lær norsk. There are way more podcasts on Spotify which are helpful. All you have to do is type "norsk" on the search bar and start picking between podcasts.
There also tones of podcasts on NRK Radio, about all kind of topics, which you can listen either online or off-line by downloading them.
Songs
The more fun something is, the easier it is to learn. So I can not think of anything more fun than listening to music. Here are two playlists on Spotify that provide Norwegian songs which are rather easy to understand by beginners. Lyrics of course can be found on the web with one click.
More playlists can be found on YouTube by searching "norsk" or "norske sanger".
Movies and Series
To train in everyday speaking one can watch movies and series. For those already in Norway this is easy to do. Since NRK TV is not available (as far as I know) outside Norway, a solution is to watch shows on Netflix.
Two series that I watched lately are "Hjem til jul" and "Ragnarok".
Books for practicing listening
Here is a book available on Google Books, to practice listening. It offers parallel text both in Norwegian and in English. I'm sure there are more if someone does some digging.
It must be stressed though that Google Books come with a "read-aloud" feature which practically transforms them to audio-books (though the quality is lower than an actual audio-book).
A useful trick
I have struggled many times with understanding what is being said on the radio or on podcasts. I came with an idea that proved to be working miracles. Here's what it is about.
Step one: Turn on Google Translate on your PC.
Step two: Turn on the microphone on your PC.
Step three: Turn on the radio or podcast on your smartphone or your PC.
Step four: Turn on voice recognition on Google Translate.
Everything that is being said is going to be written and translated while you hear it.
If you choose to keep the audio (see the Radio section above) and keep the text as well you have created a useful resource.