How To Improve Your Listening Skills In A Language You Are Learning

Listening plays a huge role in a language, if you can’t understand what someone is saying you’re never going to be able to properly communicate with them.

Improving your listening skills is something you should focus on at the beginning of your learning, as it will really help you with the other areas of your language learning.

Improving this skill is pretty straight forward and I will go through some of the ways I like to practice my listening.

(You can also read – Can You Learn A Language By Just Listening?)

Active Listening Will Improve Your Language Listening Skills

Active listening is where the real action happens. This is when you actually pay attention to what you are hearing and try to understand it.

Active listening is a great way to consolidate what you have already learned elsewhere and will also help you identify new things that you need to learn.

Comprehensible Input

It doesn’t really matter what you listen to, so long as you can roughly understand what is being said.

This is extremely important and if you don’t do this, you are wasting your time and will not make progress.

Roughly understanding what you are listening to is going to help you to acquire the language. Your subconscious is going to take the parts it can understand and use this to try and work out the parts it does not. You are not going to be aware that you are doing this, but this is what will be happening and why listening is so powerful.

As a beginner you are not going to understand a lot of what you are listening to and you will have lower levels of comprehension. However, keep trying to learn new words and you will see your comprehension levels increase.

As you progress in the language you will find you will start to understand more and more. This takes time, but it will happen.

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

Pick Out Words You Don’t Know and Learn Them

An easy to too increase you comprehension is to pick out the words you do not know and actively try and learn them.

A lot of people will take these words and add them to their Anki flashcards so they can come back to them again to study them.

Trying to actively learn these types of words can be a little boring, but it is very effective. The fact that you have also heard the word in the context of a real sentence is very helpful. It is better to build your flashcard like this, rather than pick words at random from a list to try and learn.    

Listen A Lot

It is also important that you do a lot of listening, this is really how you improve. The more you listen, the more you are going to hear the same words over and over again.

This allows you to be exposed to the language a whole lot and this is exactly what you need. The more you come into contact with it, the more comfortable you will start to become.

This is also why it’s important to be able to comprehend what you are listening to. You are basically going to be hearing what you know over and over again, which just really helps you get comfortable with what you know and it will strengthen your current knowledge as well as exposing you to a lot of new words.

Repeat What You Listen To

It is also a very good idea to listen to the same material over and over again. This is going to make sure you are exposed to the same words time and time again.

If there is a word that you do not know the first time you listen to something, re-listening to this material is going to make sure you are exposed to that unknown word multiple times, which will help you remember it.

You will also be surprised at how much more you can pick out the second time you listen to something. I know it can get a little boring, but going back over old material and listening to it again is useful and is something you should do until you get really comfortable with it.

Listen and Read At The Same Time

Listening to the audio while reading the subtitles or transcript can also be a really helpful way to improve your skills, especially in the beginning.

You will really notice that you can pick up so much more when you are able to read at the same time. Language can be fast spoken and it can be easy to miss parts, but if it’s written there on the screen, you will notice the sounds a lot easier.

Many people say this is cheating, but it’s not, it’s just helping you out. As you improve you will find you need the assistance of the text less and less.

It’s also important to note that the audio and text should match. Don’t listen in one language and read in another, this is pointless. The whole point of the text is that it should help you hear what is actually being said, not just have it translate it for you into your own language.

Listen and Write What You Hear

Listening and writing is a really tricky thing to do and it’s a great way to improve your listening.

It’s a pretty simple thing to do, you just have to listen to something and write down exactly what you hear. This seems easy, but trust me, you will find this hard.

This is really going to make you listen, but it will also make you think about creating the language yourself. You are going to get good practice writing the language and having to write it down and it will quickly show you how weak you are at things like spelling or grammar.

This activity is hard work, but it will really benefit you a lot.  

(You can read more about – How To Develop Your Listening Skills Through Transcription)

What Should You Listen To, To Improve Your Language Listening Skills?

Ideally you want to find audio or video that you can get the transcript for and as discussed above, you want it to be comprehensible.

This means that things like scenes from TV shows or movies are an excellent choice, which you can find a lot of on YouTube.

Podcasts can also be great, but it can be a little trickier finding the transcripts for these. These are probably better if you are a little more advanced and can get by without needing to also read what is being said.

Songs are also really good to use. Obviously singing isn’t quite the same as speaking, but you can still get a lot out of this with songs. 

(You can read more about Why You Should Use Songs To Help You Learn A Language)

Whatever you decide to use, just make sure you find it interesting.

Nothing will ruin this quicker than if it is boring for you. As soon as you get bored you will switch off and stop paying attention. If you’re not paying attention, you’re literally wasting your time.

If you’re not actively listening and focusing you are not practicing.

Some Listening Suggestions        

If you are a beginner, or not sure about what audio to start with, try the ‘Easy languages’ YouTube channels.

They have whole channels dedicated to learning different languages. There videos are designed to help with listening. They go out on the streets and interview native speakers. This gives you great exposure to different topics and you get to hear different accents and hear different voices.

The best part about these videos is that they are aimed at language learners, so all the conversations are going to be useful and are going to compliment topics you are learning about elsewhere on your language journey.

YouTube is also full of other videos you can watch in your target language and you can read my post about how to use YouTube to learn. It is an excellent tool for practicing listening and much more.

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

Use Passive Listening To Improve Your Overall Language Listening Skills

Passive listening is basically just having noise on in the background. There are some people who argue that this is a waste of time. Which is fair enough, as you are not actually going to learn anything from doing this.

So why bother? …well you need to train your ear to be comfortable with the sounds of the new language. 

When you first hear someone speak a new language it just sounds like noise. The more you listen to it, the more you start to differentiate sounds and individual words. You will still have no idea what’s being said, but the more you listen the more you will be able to hear.

This even works for your own language. If you have ever moved to an area with a different accent, it just sounds so strange at first, but after a few months it becomes normal again.

I recently moved back to Ireland after about 15 years of living in England and it took me a few months to get use to hearing the accent again. Even though they were all speaking with the same accent as me!!!

Weird right! But it goes to show you that the more you hear something, the more normal it becomes.

When you are first starting out it is a good idea to just have the language on in the in the background as you go about your day.

I find music and podcasts are the best for this. Put them on and go about your business, you are not going to learn anything, but your brain is going to get used to hearing the language and can help when you actually go to actively listen to it.

The best part about this is that as you learn and study in other ways, it will help with your listening.

Your ears will prick up when you hear a word you recognise being said in the background. The words will come out of the background noise. Kind of like how you react when you hear your name being said even in a room full of other people speaking. 

It shows your brain is sort of listening, and can at least register certain words as language. So while its effect may be minimal, it all helps in the beginning.   

(You can read more about – Is Passive Language Listening Helpful?)

Conclusion

Listening can be difficult at first, but I promise you, the more you do it the easier it will get.

If you follow my techniques you will see even quicker results. I know it’s a lot of work, but that’s the nature of language learning.

Put a solid effort in each time you do this and you should really start to see the benefits rather quickly.

Listening really is the key to the language. The more you listen, the more you will learn, so it is really worth it.

(You can read more about Signs You Are Making Progress In A Language)