How To Improve Your Japanese Listening Ability

When you are learning Japanese, you should focus a lot of time on listening, it really is an essential skill. However, when you start out this is going to be difficult and quite mentally draining, so let’s look at some ways you can improve your listening ability.

If you keep working on the things I mention below and actually practice, you will improve. Listening really is fundamental to your overall success, so it is very worth your time to put the effort in to make the improvements.    

Just Listen To More Japanese

Really the secret to improving your listening ability in Japanese is to simply listen to more Japanese. Like most things, if you practice that particular skill, you will get better at it and listening is no exception.

You can do this in terms of both volume and frequency. The more you listen to the better, and the more you can do this, is even better.

You will generally see that those who manage to make a lot of progress (especially quickly) in the language spend a lot of time listening, usually multiple hours every day for a good few months.

It’s not always easy and does take a lot of time but the general rule is that the more you listen to, the more your listening skills will improve.  

Make Sure You Are Actively Listening

I think it is also important to note that you can do listening “wrong” and you will not improve if you are doing things the incorrectly. There is no point sitting there for 6 hours if you are just day dreaming …you need to actually actively listen.

This doesn’t mean your brain needs to be going into over drive, trying to translate every word (although sometimes this can be necessary) but really you just need to make sure you are paying attention, trying to follow along.

This is quite a strange thing to do when you are learning, it will feel very forced and awkward at first and this is because it is pretty much effortlessly in your own language, you just follow what is being said and you don’t realise you are actually actively listening.

As you are not quite at that same level in a Japanese it will take a bit of practice, but just keep trying to pay attention and you will be working along the right lines and you then you should start to see that your ability does increase.

Listen In Small Chunks

You may find it easier to listen to Japanese in small chunks, this way you can actually focus and actively listen.

I tend to find that my mind would wonder very quickly. Usually after a few minutes I would catch myself drifting off into a day dream and I guess my stamina for listening to the language wasn’t that strong. 

Breaking things down into little chunks really helped. I was able to really focus and the second that started to slip I would pause the video and take a break for a few minutes. This does slow things down, but it does mean your time is spent more productively so ultimately your overall progress and listening abilities to increase faster.

Pick Out Words You Don’t Know and Learn Them

When you are listening to Japanese, you are going to come across a lot of new words and it is important that you try and learn these.

How exactly you go about this is down to you, but you should make an effort to pick out the words you don’t know. I usually listen to the material all the way through and if I don’t know a word, that is fine. Hopefully the context of everything will help me still know what is going on. 

However, I then usually go back over the same material later, usually pausing quite a lot and rewinding sections and going over the words I don’t know. It is here that I will look them up and make sure I understand them and also add them to my Anki so I can learn them later.

It can be quite a slow process, but increasing your vocabulary is important and the more words you know, the better your listening abilities should become so it is going to be worth your time to invest in this sort of practice.   

(You can read more about – How To Use Anki To Learn Japanese)

Focus On Your Pronunciation Of Words

It can also a be a very good idea to practice your pronunciation of words, which may seem like the total opposite of listening, but it is linked.

When you are able to remember a word, and produce it yourself …it means you are pretty comfortable with that word. You know it and you understand it. This means that when you hear it elsewhere, your brain can recognise it a lot easier.

You will find that what you hear isn’t just some random noise, it is a real word that you know and have heard come out of your own mouth.

Increasing your vocabulary and focusing on the pronunciation will take time and effort but you will find you are able to pick these words out so much more strongly when you do hear them when listening, it does make a difference. 

(You can read more about – How To Improve Speaking In Japanese)

Listen To Simpler Material

While I have already said that you should listen to more, it is important that you listen to the right level, and this may mean listening to simpler stuff.

Ideally you want to be able to understand what you are listening to. It doesn’t need to be perfect, but if you can mostly work out what is going on, you are probably at the right level.

It’s easy to find an anime and then watch it while not understanding a single word. While this can be fine at times, it doesn’t really help you improve. It might make more sense to listen to something designed for beginners. It will be slower and use simpler language and then you can actually start to pick things out and make sense of things.

You can of course go through the anime with a dictionary and start learning the words, so then when you watch it again, you do understand, but this can be a slow process.

Sometimes you just have to realise you are not at a high level yet and it is okay to listen to some basics things. I know it can be a little boring, but you do need to get your experience in, and listening to some simpler material can help with that.  

Listen To The Same Thing A Few times

You have probably already picked up on a theme here, where being able to understand what you are listening to is going to help you and an easy way to do this, is to repeat the same material a few time.

I know it can be boring listening to the same thing a few times, but it can be extremely helpful for a number of reasons.

You are going to hear the same words again, which is always good for your vocabulary, but the fact you are listening to the same material means you are hearing the same combination of words at the same pace, pronunciation, intonation, accent and just the general flow and you can really focus on picking up things you might have missed the first time.

You will be quite surprised how much you can pick up on the second or third time round. You will have also picked up roughly what is going on and maybe even looked up a few words, so your general comprehension of the material will have increased, which in turn can let you focus on just listening and improving on this skill.

Repeating things is a powerful tool for learning Japanese, you should really give it a try. 

Listen and Read At The Same Time

It can also be helpful in the beginning to read and listen at the same time, which really means using subtitles.

It is often said that this will just train your reading ability more than your listening and there is some truth to this, eventually you will focus more on the reading, but as a beginner you will find subtitles hugely beneficial for your listening.

When you listen to something it will just be a blur of words and you might think you caught everything, but you will have missed some things and the subtitles are going to show you this. You will see on the screen what was said and you will quickly notice that it doesn’t match up with what you heard.

Using the subtitles is going to allow you to hear more, although I will admit this is a lot harder in Japanese. If everything is in kanji and you haven’t learnt these characters, it makes this activity pointless and maybe in this instance using romaji might help. I usually don’t recommend romaji, but it can help in this instance.

Subtitles will allow you to see what was being said and it can force your ears to listen out for what should be there. If you can read the subtitles, you will find you can hear more and it will help your listening skills improve.

Write Down What You Hear

A good way to force yourself to listen and to be able to pick up on everything is to write down what you hear.  

This may need to be in romanji, which I hate, but the reality is that you probably can’t write very well in actual Japanese. 

All you need to do is listen to something and write down what you hear. You will very quickly realise this a challenge and you will notice you miss things, or just can’t grasp them. This is going to work better with something that also has a written version, such as subtitles or song lyrics, then you can check what you wrote down to see if you got it right.

This is a tough exercise, but it will really force you to improve your listening skills.

Do Shadowing

A slightly easier version from the above method of writing, is shadowing, which is speaking what you hear instead of writing.

All you need to do is listen to something and then copy what you hear. This is going to really force you to listen very intently, so that you can copy what you hear perfectly and then of course it has the added bonus of getting you talking too.

As I already mentioned, you will recognise words a lot easier if you have said them yourself, so even this speaking practice is going to help your future listening ability. 

Find A Language Parent

Sometimes listening to Japanese can just be too intense and finding a language parent can help take the edge off things.

This is just when you find one person to listen to, and focus all your listening time on them. This works extremely well with YouTube creators who have a lot of videos, you just sit back and watch only one persons videos.

You are going to very quickly get used to their voice and how they speak and this can reduce a lot of the intensity. Your ears will quickly adjust to their accent and speed of talking and this can allow you then just focus on what is being said.

People also tend to use a lot of the same vocabulary when they speak, so you are also going to get very comfortable with the pool of words they use and you will start to get a lot more comfortable with the language.

Your ears will need a little time to readjust when you start hearing other people speak, but it shouldn’t take too much effort for this, since you have probably become quite good at listening now.

(You can read more about – What Are “Language Parents” and Do You Need One?)

Do Narrow Listening

Narrow listening can also be useful way to improve your listening ability and this is simply listening to small chunks of language at a time.

You would find some material, and just repeat it until you basically know it inside out. This can get pretty boring, but it can be really useful. You just keep repeating the video until it becomes clear and you feel like you have mastered it.

You are going to find the words you heard over and over again are ones that you will notice when you start listening to other things. You will have forced yourself to get comfortable with them, so you will be able to hear them more easily in the future. 

(You can read more about – What Is Narrow Listening In Language Learning?)

Passive Listening Can Also Help

Passive listening is an interesting concept. This is when you have things on in the background. Some people say it’s a waste of time and some say it is the reason they made so much progress.

To be honest, it is hard to tell exactly how effective it is, and while I have my doubts, it doesn’t take any effort, so you don’t really lose out.

All you have to do is listen to Japanese in the background as you do other things. I often do this with music, but podcasts also work great for this. The argument is that although you are not listening …your ears are and more importantly your subconscious is and while you may not really be able to measure  the results of this, your subconscious is probably doing something with it and it might help.

You can give this a try and see what you think, as I said, you have nothing to lose so put on a podcast and then go and do whatever you would be doing anyway like walking the dog or going to the gym.

Conclusion

Hopefully you can see that the steps to improving your listening in Japanese are not really that difficult, but you will need to put the effort in. If you can sit down and put the time in, you will see improvements.

Listening is really important, so don’t avoid this. Putting the effort into listening is going to unlock the language for you, so it really is worthwhile and even if it takes a lot of time and effort, it is going to give you the results.

(you can read more about – Common Challenges Faced When Listening To Japanese and How To Overcome Them)