How Much Listening Do You Need To Do When Learning A Language?

When you start learning a language you will want to know how long it is going to take and how much listening you will need to do to see results and this is often what I get asked about the most.

These types of questions are fine to ask, but they are extremely hard to answer. There is no magic number I can give you and even If I say how much listening I did, you may get totally different results listening for the same amount of time. 

There are so many different factors at play that it is too hard to measure, but basically the more you do, the better.

Focus on just doing as much listening as you can, rather than “how much should I do” and you will see results. 

Listening To Your New Language Is Important

Listening really is one of the most important things you can do when you start learning a language. When you are starting out, you know nothing and everything seems so alien, the only way to ease this feeling is to just expose yourself to as much of the language as possible.

Listening is going to be the best way to do this as you are hearing the language being used in a natural way.

You are hearing how the words sound and how the language flows. The most important part is that you don’t influence this. If you read for example, you may do it wrong; you might not know how a word is pronounced or get the pace wrong. When you are listening you don’t have to worry about that, you just need to absorb everything and let your brain decode what it is hearing.    

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

You Will Have To Listen More Than You Think

Language learning is a long, slow process and it’s not easy. It is completely possible to learn a new language, and listening is a big part of this, but no matter what you think, or what any one tells you …it will take you more effort than you realise.

When I first started out I wanted the answer to this, I wanted to know how much listening I needed to do to become fluent. You can read people’s stories and you can even look at the learning institutions guidelines, but these are still very much vague figures.

You can use these figures as a very rough guideline, but really there are just too many factors to say exactly how long it will take. It depends what you are doing, how often you do and a million other things than can affect your results.

If you hear some figures being thrown around, such as it takes 300 hours of study to learn French …use that a rough guideline. This is 300 of study, but what percentage of that is listening and what percentage is other things, is impossible to know.

Just use that 300 hours as a benchmark …but don’t be upset if you reach that and you feel like you have made no progress.   

You may need double that, you may need half that …or maybe you do 300 and feel you are doing pretty well.

The main thing to do is just do something.

Don’t Focus On A Number

Focusing on a number is not ideal as you will see it as a sort of finish line and then when you reach it, you might not be at the level you expect and will become frustrated.

You need to tell yourself that this whole language thing is now just a part of your life. We seem to get an idea in our head that we will spend X amount of time learning the language and then I guess just using it after.

The reality is that this line is very blurry, you will still probably be learning for the rest of your life …but you will also be using the language along the way.

Of course at some point you are going to be using the language a lot more than you are learning it, but when exactly this happens is pretty blurry. This is exactly why it is a waste of time trying to focus on how much listening you need to do.

Just dedicate yourself to putting the effort in, and naturally over time how you use the language will shift from a more learning perspective to just sort of using the language naturally. You will always have weaker and stronger areas so you will always be learning new things or mastering others.

It’s more about the long term lifestyle and relationship you have with the language, rather than a short term sprint to achieve a certain level.    

(You can read more about – What Is The Optimum Amount Of Language Immersion?)

Focus On A Daily Goal

If you really want to focus on something, focus on today.

Set yourself a daily goal to listen to a certain amount and just make sure you achieve that. Even if it is as small as just one hour of listening a day it will all add up.

If you can you understand that it can take months, even years to get decent at a language, then only focusing on today is all that matters.

Eventually 6 months will pass, then a year, then two. You won’t even realise this has happened as you are only worried about today …however, all those days add up and you will have made a lot of progress.

Don’t Neglect Other Areas Of Language Learning

Listening is of course an important area in language learning and you can get pretty far with this alone, especially if you are doing a lot of immersion, but it’s not the only thing you can do.

You need to do other things like read and learn new words on top of listening, so this is another reason why you can’t really say how much listening you should do, as these other activities are all going to influence your results.

You could try and only listen …but then you would be limiting yourself and slowing your overall progress down by avoiding the other ways to learn, so why would you do that to yourself.  

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

Be Consistent With Your Studies

Really the most important thing to do …is be consistent, both with your listening and other language learning activities.

If you can do this, every day, like I already mentioned, you will see progress. The amount of time does not matter, it is all about the consistency. If you can dedicate yourself to doing this every day and making it a part of your life you will see results.

Staying consistent is one of the hardest things to do. Other things in life will try and take you away from studying and think this is why we want to know how much we need to do. We know we will get distracted and want to know how long we need to focus for before we can stop.

The reality is that this focus should just be a part of our life now, it will not end. If we want the language, we need to block out the distractions. 

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

Conclusion

Hopefully now you understand that the time needed is not important. It’s more about just doing the work and it will take as much listening as you need. 

Of course the more listening you do the more you will benefit from it, but how much is enough is really only something you will know after the fact and even at that point you will probably feel like you could do more. 

Just listen to as much as you can, whenever you can and as often as you can and the results will come, just give it the time.

(You can read more about – Why Is Listening To A New Language So Difficult?)