How Important Is Listening In Language Learning?

When it comes to actually learning a new language, listening may actually be the most important aspect.

If you could only focus on one part of the language and tried to make the most progress, I think listening would be the option to go for.

There can be a misunderstanding that you just need to sit and listen and you will learn the language, its maybe a little more than that, but I do believe if you put a lot of attention on to your listening, you would be surprised how far you could go, it really is the backbone of learning a language.  

Listening Is Input

The reason why listening is so important is because it is a form of input. When you know nothing, you need to get the language into your brain and this is exactly what listening can do for you.

It allows us to acquire the language in a natural way. Listening is very much “here is the language” and then it is down to us to make sense of it and remember it.

Of course that is far easier said than done, but in principle listening is a form of input that allows us to take on board the language.

(You can read more about – What Is Comprehensible Input In Language Learning?)

Listening Is Experiencing The Language

One of the beautiful things about listening is it allows us to actually experience the language in the way it should be used. You can literally hear how it is used in daily life and see that it is a large part of communication.

You could learn a dead language, where you can study a language that is no longer spoken, but the biggest issue with this is that you can not really listen to the language and you miss the magic of hearing it. Hearing a language can really bring it to life.

It also gives us a blue print of how it’s used; you can hear the intonation and the speed in different situations, which you just don’t get from reading.

Having this experience can really allow us to become very comfortable pretty quickly with the language.

We can hear it for what it is and get close to it, which I don’t think happens with reading. You bring too many of your own influences into reading, such as pronouncing things wrong as you read, or getting the tone wrong,  listening is just such a much more powerful and real experience.

(You can read more about – Common Mistakes People Make When Listening To A New Language)

You Are Exposed To Grammar Through Listening

Listening is also important as it is going to show you endless examples of grammar. Every sentence is going to have some form of grammar and more importantly you will hear all the strange quirks and errors that are just accepted in speech.

You are going to see how words are merged, or certain things are ignored completely and this may not be explained in the textbooks.

I think studying grammar separately is always a good idea, but it is also extremely important to listen to the language and actually hear how the grammar is being used. Being able to hear it in action is going to be much more beneficial than just understanding the theory of it.

(You can read more about – How Much Listening Do You Need To Do When Learning A Language?)

Listening Exposes You To More Vocabulary

One of the best ways to learn new words is through listening. You are always going to stumble across new words and the best part is that they are both relevant and in context.

Learning words in isolation isn’t ideal; they don’t really have any meaning when you learn them in this way and you may never see them again, making it pretty pointless.

If you are learning words you are actually encountering when listening, then you at least know that this word will appear again, as you are probably going to listen to the same audio again.

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

Listening Also Helps With Your Existing Vocabulary

Listening also helps to strengthen your current vocabulary. Every time you hear a word that you recognise, you will be forced to recall its meaning, which will strengthen your memory.

Basically listening allows you to get practice with what you already know. This may not seem important but most of the reason why we are so strong in our native language is because we have heard the same words millions of times.

Every time we listen to our new language we are slowly building up that level of exposure and making ourselves very comfortable and efficient with what we have already learned.   

(You can read more about – How Can You Improve Your Listening Skills In A Second Language?)

Listening Helps You Process Things Faster

One of the biggest issues you will face when listening is trying to process what you are hearing, quickly enough to keep up with the conversation. Usually we are slow and by the time we have worked something out the conversation has moved on and we have missed a large part of what has been said.

This can quickly result in us getting lost and frustrated. The only way to fix this is to listen more. The more we listen, the faster we will become.

We will get used to hearing the same words over and over again and will eventually we will not need to translate them, we will just understand them automatically.

This basically means that we are now thinking in the language. It may only be one word, but that is one word our brain just recognised as a word and we knew what it meant just as it is. We didn’t need to manually process it and work out what it means.

The more we can do this with the language, the easier the whole process will become, we will make the whole things automatic. Listening is going to be the best way to achieve this, which is exactly why it’s so important. Without this our progress would be extremely slow.     

(You can read more about – How To Get Faster At Listening In A New Language) 

Listening Exposes You To Culture

Listening is also important as it is the gateway to culture. Culture and language are very closely intertwined, so if you get one, you get the other.

Being able to listen is so important as it is going to let you watch videos and listen to music and podcasts, which is of course where you are going to experience the culture.

You will still get culture from books, but being able to actual hear it in action is just so much stronger, it is like it is actually alive and there in front of you. 

Conclusion

Hopefully now you can see that listening is really important when it comes to learning a language, it is something you need be doing and you need to be doing a lot of it.

It really is going to give you so much of the language. While it may be the best way to learn, you should not forget the other areas too, reading, writing and speaking all play their part too.

Language learning is all interlinked, so it is hard to say that part of language learning is the best, but it is safe to say that you will make a lot of progress if you just sit and listen, it is a very powerful technique and something you will be thankful of if you do a lot of it.    

(You can read more about – Listening Resources To Help You Learn A Language)