Is Listening The Best Way To Learn A Language?

I am often asked what is the best way to learn a language? and if you ask most people who had had success, listening will be involved in some way.

Listening has a lot of benefits and it certainly could be argued that it’s the best thing a learner could do to see progress.

I also believe it is one of the best things you can do, but of course it is going to be even better for you if you focus on other things too. Listening should play a big part in your learning, but it should not be the only part.

Listening Is Input

To learn a language, you need to acquire it and listening is an incredible way to do this. Listening is a form of input and for me, it is the best way you can learn a language.

Listening allows you to hear exactly what you should be doing and how everything works in real time. Listening is just a real world example of the language and while reading is a great form of input, I think you will make faster progress through listening. 

Listening is easy to copy and start speaking from; I just think you can get the ball rolling a lot easier if you are focusing on listening. 

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

Listening Is Easy to Do

One of the best things about listening is that it doesn’t really take much energy, well it can, but it’s still fairly easy to do.

You just have to sit and listen. The key is to focus and actually pay attention, which can be draining, but it still easier than having to produce the language yourself. 

It doesn’t matter who you are, you can sit there and listen, and process what you’ve heard.

(You can read more about – How To Practice Listening In A New Language)

Listening Exposes You To The Most Common Words

Listening will also expose you to the most common words, over and over again. This is great and exactly what you want. You will find that when people speak they use the same core words repeatedly.

This is the best way to learn them, you could get a large list and go through them, but to just sit back and naturally notice them mixed in with natural speech is just much better.

Your brain can start to notice the words and more importantly, notice when and how they are used. The context is there, which is what is missing when you learn them in a list format.

Listening Exposes You To Grammar Naturally

Listening is also going to naturally expose you to grammar. Every sentence will contain grammar and you are going to hear it being used over and over again.

You will hear it in its simplest and most extreme forms and everything in between. It can be a little intimidating since it is coming towards you at speed, compared to reading you can take your time to study each sentence slowly.

However, listening is still a very good way to be exposed to actual working grammar and you will quickly adjust to the speed and be able to process the language faster.  

Listening Exposes You To New Vocabulary

One of the best things about listening is that you can very quickly and easily expose yourself to new words and phrases.

One of the best ways to increase your vocabulary is to just listen. The beautiful thing is that the new words are going to be surrounded by other words you do know, meaning they have context. This often means you do not even need to look words up, you can sort of get their meaning from everything else you are hearing.

Of course it’s always sensible to double check, but you will usually find that you where along the right lines when you do look up a new word.

This does not happen in you just learn words from a list, where the word is on its own and doesn’t really have any meaning until you look it up. 

You Will Hear How The Language Is Used In The Real World

Listening is also one of the best ways to learn the language as you will hear it as it should actually be used.

Listening shows you how it works in the real world. Books can do this to a degree, but it’s not quite the same. A lot of books are written in a way that are not quite as natural and free flowing as actual speech.

You also have the fact that listening is going to give you the pronunciation, intonation, speed and rhythm of the language. This is vital and really helps you start speaking.

Listening gives you a blue print of how you need to sound and how you need actually use the language, which you will not get from anywhere else.  

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

Listening Makes You Process Things Quickly

Listening is one of the best ways to get your mental processing speed to be faster.

You need to be able to process what you are hearing quite quickly or you will get lost. Basically the more you listen, the more you get comfortable with what you are hearing and eventually the process will become automatic. You will hear something and just understand it, you will not need try and translate it in your brain to your native language, and you will just understand what you hear as a language you understand.

Listening is difficult at first because people talk so fast, but if you can struggle through this stage you will find you are able to process your thoughts a lot quicker.

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

Listening Exposes You To Culture

Listening is one of the best ways to learn as it can really open the doors to the culture of the language. 

Language and culture are often closely intertwined, and while reading will show you a lot there is something just magical about hearing a language.

It just seems so much richer and more alive in this format.

Listening Can Be A Confidence Booster

People will always tell you that you get the most confidence when you manage to produce the language yourself, and while there is plenty of truth to that, you should not underestimate the power of listening.

I still remember the first time I managed to watch a whole video in French and understood it. I got to the end of the video and it just hit me. I had just spent 10 minutes watching a video where a woman was totally talking French …and I knew what she was talking about and I didn’t really need to do much for that to happen, I just had to listen.

It felt incredible. I felt like I was actually getting somewhere. What was once just noise and clichéd French sounding noises …now made sense to me.

I really felt like I had managed to decode some sort of secret message. It really was a big confidence booster.

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

Conclusion

Listening is great for your language skills and I would say it probably is the best way to learn a language.

You can really absorb so much of the language and it’s all done in a very natural way. Of course you need to do a lot of listening; by if you can commit to this you really will see the results.

Listening really is the gateway to the language and it is worth your effort.

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