How Do You Balance Listening Comprehension With Other Language Learning Skills In Your Second Language Journey?

When you start studying a new language you will want to end up being pretty good at listening, speaking, reading and writing. If you can conquer these four areas of the language you are going to be in a good position.

However, it can be hard to balance all these different areas of the language, and sometimes that is okay.

I will usually suggest people to actually keep things unbalanced and almost exclusively focus on just listening in the beginning, but this isn’t always ideal, so I will go through some ways you can try and work out what how keep things balanced across your own studies.

Ask Yourself What Your Overall Language Goals Are

When you are starting out with a new language it is a pretty good idea to know what you are aiming for.

For a lot of people it is very much “everything” or “fluency” and for these people, then it makes sense to focus on listening, speaking, reading and writing. Their end goal is to be good across all of these four areas.

However, not everyone has this goal. There are plenty of people who just want to be able to watch movies in their new language and are not really fussed about reading, speaking or writing.

You may also have other people who just want to read, or maybe just speak.

Basically whatever you main goal is, it is probably going to influence what you focus on. If you just want to understand movies and never speak …you shouldn’t waste your time learning to speak, you should focus more on listening.

Likewise, those who want to just speak, they can ignore reading and writing …although they are going to be able to need listen.     

Just asking what you want from the language is going to help you know what to focus on and this alone can help you balance your studies out.

Although, I think it is important to recognise that you can change your goals at any point. Just because you decide to focus on something today, doesn’t mean you are stuck with this forever.

What Are Your Short Term Goals? 

Probably a better way to look at language learning is to ask about your shorter term goals. What exactly do you want to focus on for the next few months?

You may have an overall goal to get good across the whole language, but you may decide to focus the first 6 months to only listening, then when you feel confident with this, move on to speaking.

When you look at your language learning like this, your studies may seem very unbalanced today, since you are only focusing on listening …but this is not your long term plan, so it’s okay.

What Is Your Current Level In the Language?

I think it is also important to recognise where you are in the language as this can help you work out what you should be focused on and how to balance things out.

If you are brand new to a language then you need to consider working out how the language actually works, which means you will do more reading and listening. Some of you may find that doing a little speaking and writing can help you get to grips with the basics and can just make you feel like you are doing something.

Knowing how to write “hello” in something like Japanese is a minuscule part of the language, but it can be very rewarding and you can feel like you are making process.

However, once you get some basics down I would really suggest you lean into listening and tip the balance all in that direction.   

I wouldn’t worry about writing or talking and depending on your approach, I wouldn’t even worry about reading for now.

As time goes on, you can start to switch this balance, lower the listening and start increasing the other areas.

You will reach a point where you are probably going to have to spend a lot of time just talking; you will have to push all your energy into this to help balance your overall skill level out.

You Shouldn’t Underestimate The Power Of Listening In A Second Language

As you have probably noticed throughout this article, I keep saying it is okay to swing the balance heavily towards doing a lot of listening.

Many of you are going to assume that this is actually bad, and that you are going to neglect the other areas. This is partly true, but neglecting them is for the greater good. You really should not underestimate the power of listening and how effective it can be for allowing you to acquire the language.

The more you listen, the more of the language you will start to understand. You are of course going to still have to do some work around this, such as look up words and try to remember them, but overall, just listening is going to give you an understanding of the language.

Once you have this, you can then start thinking about putting more of your time into the other skills and building these up. Having that initial understanding from listening is actually going to help you get these other skills to a higher level a lot faster.

Trying to balance things out and raise all four of the main skill areas is possible, but it is much harder and the majority of people who try this approach struggle compared to those who focus more on just listening.

If you don’t believe me that this works …just look at yourself. As a baby you listened and understood what was going on around you. After about 2 years you started to speak and then by the time you where about 5 you where pretty fluent …but you couldn’t read or write yet, which you then learned at school.

You should not underestimate the power of just listening when you are starting out as you can do this with your new language.

(You can read more about – How Important Is Listening In Language Learning?)

Having A Plan Will Help Keep Your Language Studies Balanced

Once you kind of know what you want to focus on, it can be very helpful to make a plan so you know what you should be doing every day.

If you are just blinding doing bits and pieces as you feel like it, you won’t get a lot done and it won’t matter how balanced or not your goals are …as your daily study will be unbalanced.

Maybe you want to focus on listening, like I suggest, but maybe still do a little bit of everything else just to keep them ticking along. This is fine, but a plan is going to help you and make sure you get everything done that needs done.

Your plan may be as simple as saying something like “I will read for 30 minutes. Watch videos (listen) for 3 hours and then spend 10 minutes on grammar.”

So long as you stick to this every day, your study is now balanced. You are covering everything you want and you have a purpose and an aim.

Your plan may be as simple as “I’m going to listen to podcasts or watch videos for 2 hours a day, every day” it may seem unbalanced, because you are only focusing one thing …but it’s balanced, as you have an objective to aim at and so long as you can hit this every day, you will make progress.

Just waking up and thinking about doing this ….or maybe that …you will get nowhere. This is unbalanced, as there is no structure or direction to what you are doing.   

(You can read more about – The Only Study Plan You Need To learn A Language (For Complete Beginners))

You Can Always Shift Your Focus To Different Areas Of Language Study

I have already mentioned this, but I think it is important to be very clear about the fact that you can change your focus at any point of your studying.

You may have the above plan of “I will read for 30 minutes. Watch videos (listen) for 3 hours and then spend 10 minutes on grammar.” You may feel you are making okay progress, but you want to spend the next 4 months just really pushing your listening and you can then change the plan to “I will just listen for 5 hours a day”

Likewise, you can go in the other direction. After your burst of listening, you may decide to switch things up and make speaking your main objective, with a little bit of listening on the side to keep that skill ticking over.

There are no rules, you can do whatever you want and focus on whatever you feel is right at the time.  However, I would be cautious about constantly switching things up, make a plan and stick to it for a few months, so that you can give it some time to actually get you some results, then when you see success, you can decide to change things up …or not.

Just Study What Feels Right To You

You have probably noticed my general feeling on language learning is to just do what feels right. It is a “journey” and so long as you are doing something, you will be making progress in some way.

While there are no rules, I would strongly encourage you to focus the majority of your effort on listening in the early stages. This will build up your understanding of the language and then you can switch your direction after this.

You have to remember that language learning is a long, slow process and when you zoom out and look at your journey over 10 years, you will probably find that things balance out over time. You may spend a lot of time listening at the start, but eventually the other areas will get more focus and catch up.

So long as you are balancing things so that they align with your goals and the areas you are currently trying to develop, then your studies will be balanced.

Also don’t try and look at what anyone else is doing as they may be at totally different stage or they may want to reach a different end goal.

Just do what you feel is right for you and you will get there.

Avoid Burn Out

Whatever you set out to do, just make sure you are not pushing yourself too hard as this is a very easy way to unbalance things.

You need to try an avoid burn out, as this will ruin your progress. It is very easy to try and do too much. You might say you want to study 5 hours a day, but the reality is that this might be too much for you and this will end up burnt out.

This is annoyingly something you will need to play around with, to find your comfortable limit, but once you know how hard you can go, you should not cross this line.

Staying within your limits is really going to help keep things balanced across your studies and make sure you do not burn out.

(You can read more about – How To Adjust Your Study Habits To Avoid Language Learning Burn Out?)

Conclusion

Perhaps this article was not exactly what you were expecting; maybe you wanted to be told exactly how to make each area of your language skills equal, but the reality is that is not how we learn.

It is okay to focus just on listening and then when you feel confident with that, start trying to improve other areas. So long as what you are currently doing is helping you reach your current goals, then your study is balanced.

All you need to do is occasionally assess things and change anything that you feel is needed and the balance will always be kept. 

(You can read more about – Frequently Asked Questions About – Listening In A Language You Are Learning)