As I focus more specifically on ear-training, I’m noticing stages of progress in my ability to unpack the noise into recognizable chunks, but how many stages should I expect on this journey? And what do they look like?
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After doing some research, I’ve assembled a checklist that I’m calling the Noises To Nuances Progression. It’s not scientific. These are just the most common stages I found cited in the literature and anecdotal accounts.
And just to be clear, the names of the stages are my own. This is not widely accepted terminology.
| Stage | Learner Experience | Key Ability Gained |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Noises | Speech is an undivided stream; too fast, no segmentation | Detect rhythm, tone but not meaning |
| 2. Shapes | Familiar bits flicker through; islands in noise | Recognize recurring phonetic patterns |
| 3. Words | Catch isolated words; gaps everywhere | Mapping sound → known vocabulary |
| 4. Phrases | Meaning emerges in pieces; can follow simple events | Process multi-word units, not just words |
| 5. Predictions | Can guess what comes next; real-time sense-making | Top-down inference and context prediction |
| 6. Flow | Follows narrative comfortably; unknown words ≠ derail | Automatic parsing with occasional slips |
| 7. Nuances | Feels like native listening; nuance, humor land instantly | Integrate sound + context + culture seamlessly |
So, where am I today? I can pick out most of the words, so Level 3 is pretty solid, but I’m not unpacking their meanings at speed, so I haven’t reached Level 6, nor have I caught myself guessing the next few words, so I’m not at Level 5, either. But I’m definitely extracting multi-word chunks of meaning. Familiar phrases, common constructions, and stuff like that.
So taking all that into account, I’d estimate that I’m in the early stages of Level 4.
I’ll keep a list here and try to update it as I make more progress:
2025-11-14: 3.3
2025-12-01: 4.1
Every language course I’ve ever taken began with how to have a simple conversation, but I don’t think I’ve ever been taught what to do when those conversations break down. And they do break down. All the time. Especially for beginners.
This post recaps a conversation I had with ChatGPT about what I think is a crucial - yet often missing - first lesson in language learning: How to keep conversations moving when the bottom falls out.
I call it The Rip-Cord Protocol.
There are a cluster of words I’ve been more or less ignoring in norsk; words like “jo” and “vel.” They seem to come scattered randomly in sentences, shifting the nuance somehow, but I’ve been so busy focusing on what the nouns and verbs are doing that I haven’t unpacked all those dangly bits.
Today I decided to take the plunge, in another installment of Useful Conversations With ChatGPT…
Join me for another installment of my “Conversations with Robots” series.