Why Is Listening To A New Language So Difficult?

When you start learning a new language you will find listening extremely difficult. This is for a number of reasons which I will cover below, but basically when you hear it for the first time, it’s probably full speed native level.

This is basically the equivalent of you trying to race an Olympic sprinter who has spent their whole life training …whereas you are a little new born baby, who can’t even stand up or crawl yet.

Obviously you are not going to win this race, but as you grow and improve in the language you will soon be able to catch up. 

Listening is only difficult in the beginning, it will get easier.

(You can read more about – What Is The Hardest Part Of Learning A Language?)

Your Processing Skills Aren’t Developed

One of the biggest issues you will have to face when you are a beginner is a lack of processing skills, which is going to make things very difficult for you.

When you listen to a language the sounds goes into your ears and your brain has to recognise the words. You then need to try and work out what that each word means, which usually means translating the words into your native language to make sense of things.

This whole process is slow and clunky and it is made worse by the fact that you are doing this on the first word you hear …but the audio doesn’t stop. By the time you have processed the first word, whatever you are listening to may now be on to a totally new sentence and you have missed quite a lot.

You can see how this can be an issue and why it can seem too difficult. It’s like I said at the start, you are racing against an Olympic sprinter and it’s not easy to keep up.

However as you develop, your processing speed will become faster and faster and eventually become automatic, which means it is so fast it happens without you even having to try.

This how listening can get easier, and why it will not be difficult forever.       

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

Listening Anxiety

Stress and anxiety isn’t something every one suffers from as most people are happy enough to listen, but some people can get stressed out about not being able to understand what they are hearing.

If you are getting stressed out this will actually affect your performance negatively.  You will literally make the situation worse by worrying about.

I know it can be difficult to relax, but you will actually understand more if you can calm down. You need to tell yourself if is okay if you don’t understand everything yet, you are still learning. 

This is something we need to do as language learners; we need to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. It’s okay to not understand everything; it’s nothing to worry about.

(You can read more about – How To Overcome The Fear Of Listening In A New Language)

A Lack Of Exposure To The Language Makes It Difficult

The real difficulty with listening is that you just have a lack of exposure, or I guess you could call it a lack of experience.

I think we struggle to understand this, as we have been “listening” our whole lives, the problem is that we have been listening to our native language and this is totally different.

We are not used to the new language we are learning. We are not comfortable with it and just don’t have the experience.

If you think of your native language, you can probably predict most people’s next words or finish someone’s sentence. You can also understand what some one is talking about even if you don’t hear every word they are saying. This is because you are so comfortable with the language you know exactly what to expect next. There really isn’t any surprises, you know everything inside out and you can work out what is what.

In the new language you do not have this comfort. You are not used to the speed, intonation, rhythm and just general pattern of the language. You have not got a lot of experience with it and the only way to change this is to get more exposure.

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

Listening Is In Real Time

A big problem with listening is that it happens in real time. This means you need to go at its pace, not the other way round.

If you think about reading it’s the other way round. You can take your time and pause on a word or go back; everything is very much in your own time.

Of course if you are listening to some sort of audio you can go at you’re your pace, since you can pause or rewind it, so you can get some control, but it’s not quite as good as reading.

However, when it comes to listening to people in real life, you need to keep up or you will get lost. This type of listening really is in real time is quite difficult at first. 

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

Listening Is Fast

As well as being in real time, listening is also very fast …well native speakers are very fast and you need to keep up with them or you will get lost.

Listening becomes difficult when you are trying to process what is being said, but the conversation is just flying on.

It doesn’t take long for you to get totally lost and miss most of what is being said which makes it even harder to understand what is going on.

The good thing is will get easier and you will be able to keep up, but it is difficult at the start!

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

Word Boundaries Get Lost In Speech

Listening is also difficult because speech is messy, it’s not like the textbooks where everything is correct and laid out nice and clearly.

If you listen to people speak you will quickly notice there are all sorts of problems, people drop letters, or even full words and then they make it even worse by just merging things together.

Just think about how in English something like “are you going to play?” can easily become “ya’gonna play?” when spoken.

Speech is fully of things like this and it makes listening hard. This is why it can feel like there is such a jump from listening to beginner material and then listening to an actual pair of natives speak. 

Slang Makes Things Difficult

Slang can also really make things difficult when you are listening. You might know the proper meaning of the words, but if they are used in a slang context, it can become very confusing.

If you look at some simple slang in English like …”I was smashed last night” most of you are going to know that means drunk, but for a non-native speaker, they may take this quite literally and assume something smashed into you.

This is exactly why you need to stay clear of slang as a learner. Once you get to grips with things its fine, but it can really make things more difficult than it needs to as a beginner. 

Accents Can Cause Trouble

Accents are also a bit of curse of language learners. They can just make things a whole lot more difficult. You will find that a lot of regional dialects use a lot of slang as well as merging words when they speak, but even so, the accent can make things tricky.

Just look at your own country, there is always going to be one area that has a crazy accent and even if they are speaking the same language as you …you can’t really understand it.  You can see how this is going to be a problem for someone learning, who already finds the neutral version of the accent hard to grasp.

You Have A Lack Of Knowledge

Really a lot of the difficulty around listening just comes down to a lack of knowledge. If you do not know a lot of words or how grammar works, it is going to be difficult for you.

You might hear a sentence and only understand one word and if you have just heard a number of the words for the first time, this is just going to make it even more difficult.

If we don’t know a word it can sound funny, we are not sure if it’s a real word, two words or what. It’s also just a noise and it’s just harder to listen to.

This is exactly why we need to listen to more, so that we can reduce this and instead have a wider knowledge of the language.

(You can read more about – Common Mistakes People Make When Listening To A New Language)

You Have A Lack Of Context

Context is huge when it comes to listening. If you have a rough idea of what someone is talking about, it can help you sort of work out what is going on.

A lack of context will really make a difference and you will be very lost until you start recognising some words and even then it can be difficult.

This is easily avoided by having some control over what you listen to. Simple things like reading the title of a YouTube video will usually be enough to give you a rough idea about what is going on, it will give you the general topic and something as small as this can make the difference when it comes to listening.   

(You can read more about – What Are The Common Challenges You Will Face While Listening To A Second Language?)

You Lack Cultural Understanding

You may also have a lack of cultural understanding which can make things more difficult. Certain phrases or how something is said can be important and if you don’t know why it’s done a certain way, you will struggle with listening.

A basic example in English would be how we might say “you alright” when walking past some someone you know. This is a very British thing and it simply means “hello, how are you” …we are not actually asking if you are alright.

We expect your reply to be “alright” and then for you carry on. We don’t want you to actually stop and then tell us how you are. 

If you are not aware of this, you may actually try and explain if you are alright or not, which is going to be a bit awkward and shows how important having some sort of cultural reference can be.

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

Conclusion

As you can see there are a number of difficulties you can face when listening. However, the good thing is that none of them are really that serious.

They are all little things you can easily tweak and correct. Basically the more you practice, the easier you are going to find listening, as you will have overcome a lot of these issues.

Just keep practicing and you will see the results. Listening is not difficult forever.

(You can read more about – How To Overcome The Fear Of Listening In A New Language)