Should You Focus On Listening When Learning A New Language

When you start learning a new language it can be difficult to know what to focus on. Listening is often something people ask about, and honestly, it is absolutely what you should focus on.

Listening can be tricky at first, but you can quickly get to grips with it and you will learn a lot from it. It really is one of the best ways to learn a language and is something I would highly recommend doing when you are starting out.

Input Is Key To Learning A Language

When you want to learn a new language you need to focus on input activities. You have to see yourself as en empty vessel that needs filled p with the language.

Luckily listening is a form of input, (so is reading) which means you need to be doing a lot of it as learner.

If you listen to a language you are going to learn everything you need. You will see how the language works, as well as how it sounds and you will just hear exactly how it is meant to be used.

You really cannot learn a language to a high level without listening. 

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

Listen From The Very Start

Listening is definitely something you should focus on extremely heavily right from the start. It can be good to take some lessons and look at how grammar works and of course learn some words, but I would still really suggest that you focus a lot of your time on listening.

The real secret to making a lot of progress is to listen to things that you can comprehend. So long as you can get a basic idea of what is going on, it will be helpful for you.

You may feel like you are out of your depth, but your subconscious will be absorbing so much information. It is really important that you do this, it will make the difference.

If you look at how children learn their native language, they just sit there and listen for a long time. You can of course argue that their brains are not as developed as an adult, which is true, but it still doesn’t mean they are not doing a lot of listening in the beginning. 

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

Listen A Lot

If you really want to make progress you really need to listen to a lot of the language. I think we really underestimate how much we need to listen to, and I commonly see people think they are listening to a lot when they are really not.

You need to spend hours and hours listening, everyday. It can almost be a full time job but the more you do, the better you will become.  

Listening is extremely good for acquiring the language, which is why you should focus on it, but at the same time you need to really do a lot.

You will often here this called “immersion” which basically means surrounding your whole life with the language. Your brain will decode things on a subconscious level, but you really need to give it a lot of exposure, which is exactly what the immersion aims to do.

If you are going to focus on listening …go all in. 

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

Listening Is Better Than Just Reading

Reading and listening are both types of input and you will often hear that people say you can do one or the other. I would argue that listening is more effective, however, you are really wanting to make progress you should be doing both.

Listening is better as it is the language in real time. You can hear exactly what it should be like, you can hear the pronunciation and you will become aware of the silent letters and will just generally get a grasp of how the language flows. This is all going to help you a lot more if you want to speak the language, which is usually most people’s goal.

Of course you can say there are things reading will offer you, that listening cant, which is why I say do both, but If I could only focus on one, I think I would make more progress with listening.  

Use Reading and Listening Together (text with audio)

You can also combine reading and listening, which can be extremely effective in the beginning. This is something I like to focus on.

Really it is very simple, you just need to listen to something that has a transcript, or watch something that has matching subtitles.

This means don’t listen to Spanish and read English subtitles …listen to Spanish and read Spanish subtitles at the same time.

When you do this you are getting the best of both worlds. You are hearing everything, but also seeing the words at the same time. There is something very powerful about this and I cannot recommend this highly enough.

This increases you reading ability as can now learn how words should be pronounced. It also increases your listening ability as you can have more clarity in what you are listening to. The words are on the screen, so if something is too fast or you are just not sure about it the words on the screen and give you a sort of second angle where you can confirm exactly what you heard.

This will make things easier and you will make progress faster. You really will notice the difference when you do this.  A lot of people will try and say you shouldn’t do this as it’s like using a crutch, but you really should be doing this. Using a crutch is fine and as you develop you will learn to walk without it as such, so don’t worry, use this as much as you want. It is worth focusing on this.  

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

Don’t Bother With Passive Listening

You’ve probably heard of passive listening, which is basically just having something on in the background. Many people think this is helpful as you are subconsciously listening to the language.

This is true, but the problem is that it is not helpful. You brain is sort of listening in the background and is filtering out all the noise.

The second it hears something it thinks is important, it alerts you to it. Just think about how you ears perk up when you hear you own name mentioned in a busy room, this is that process in action.

The problem is that you do not know the new language yet, so nothing is going to get through your brains filter. It will all be seen as white noise and if you are not actively engaging with the language it is pretty much going to go in one ear and straight out the other.

Passive listening will not help you, so do not focus any of your time on it. 

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

Conclusion

As you can see listening is definitely worth focusing on, right from day one. Listening is the gateway into the language and it will give you pretty much everything you will need to learn it.

You should of course still focus on the other areas of language learning, such as writing, reading and speaking, but you should always remember that listening is going to be the most beneficial for you early on. The more you listen, the more progress you will make.

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