Why Listening is SO Important – Even If You Don’t Understand a Word!

I just saw this via Ramses’s twitter feed and although I could’ve just retweeted it I felt compelled to at least make some short comments on it that would be too long for twitter, so I’m turning it into a short blog post.  What I’m referring to is this study by Victoria University in New Zealand [corrected--thanks, Jennie!] that proves just how exceptionally important exposing yourself to a language is, even if you don’t understand a single damned word!

Y-E-S, listening to TV shows, songs, and radio broadcasts in the language you’re trying to learn is enormously helpful to you learning the language regardless of how much of it you understand – if you can understand most of it but miss the occasional word, great, just note it and look it up later, if you only understand 1 in 100 words where that 1 is an English cognate, then that’s fine, too and you don’t even need to worry about looking up words at that point: you know why?  Because if you keep listening to this stuff long enough (you’ll notice progress after just a few hours worth of listening!) then you’ll rapidly make progress in understanding what’s being said, and that’s presuming that you’re not ever using a dictionary or anything else to look up unknown words. From the article:

Dr Sulzberger has found that the best way to learn a language is through frequent exposure to its sound patterns—even if you haven’t a clue what it all means.

“However crazy it might sound, just listening to the language, even though you don’t understand it, is critical. A lot of language teachers may not accept that,” he says.

“Our ability to learn new words is directly related to how often we have been exposed to the particular combinations of the sounds which make up the words. If you want to learn Spanish, for example, frequently listening to a Spanish language radio station on the internet will dramatically boost your ability to pick up the language and learn new words.”

I think the specific noises and patterns of a language and learning them (which can only really be done by a large volume of repeated exposure to the language) is something critically important that’s often overlooked by people.  You need to get used to, to learn, the tempo, beat, the rhythm and vibe of a language–I’m sorry that doesn’t sound very concrete, but it’s the best way I can explain it.  Every language has its own unique rhythm and pattern to it, and if you’re not used to it, no matter how many words you’ve memorized (are you happy now, Randy? ) you’re not going to be able to understand the language when it’s spoken at a normal conversational rate of speed even if you know every single individual word used (that is, a sentence spoken to you at a conversational rate of speed will not be understandable by you even if you know every single word in that sentence).  I should make it clear that I don’t think everyone should quit using SRS/flashcards, hell, I use SRS and think it has its place, but there are far, FAR too many people who rely too heavily on memorizing vocabulary when trying to learn a new language and it certainly needed to be addressed, so frankly I’m glad he did it and suffered the shitstorm from it instead of me

Also, I should note that if you’d like to start listening to Spanish language TV, music, radio, and movies I’ve got several posts that will be of ENORMOUS help to you, starting with my exceptionally long and completely vetted (every single link was checked to make sure it worked!) list of free sites to watch Spanish TV online, and also my post on the ‘Telenovela Method’ which covers something a bit different (intensive listening where you look up every word as opposed to extensive listening where you don’t) and shows you exactly how to do it plus where to get the scripts and translations you’ll want for the TV shows and movies, and my recent post where I actually went through a Shakira music video with you, translated it, and analyzed the Colombian Spanish used in it with a fine-toothed comb.

The secrets of how to use free online resources to teach yourself Spanish, from home, in just a few months - Also: Here are the internet's Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources

I run a newsletter entirely about how to learn Spanish online for free where I send out every cool new tip and technique that I learn to my subscribers and not only do they get it before anyone else but frequently they get things that no one else ever does. Additionally, I've spent a great deal of time putting together a 3-part series of articles for you on the internet's best free resources for the Spanish-learner that you'll get when you sign up for my newsletter--in addition to all of what you get below, I'll be sure to send you any updates about cool new sites, resources, and learning tips and techniques that I come up with:

Part 1: An article called “Spanish Learning Systems: Should you bother?” about whether or not you should even bother with a pre-packaged Spanish-learning system (e.g. Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur) and, if you do decide you want to, where you can go online to find programs that are literally 1/10th the price of older, more common systems like Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur but actually work even better. Also, at the same time, you’ll get a separate e-mail with a very long list of my favorite Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources (tools, references, sites with free lessons, articles, blogs, forums, etc.) that's far to long to include here, especially with all the other stuff I've got below that's just on this site alone, and I'd like to offer it to you (completely free, you don't have to do anything other than sign up) right now.

Part 2: I explain what language exchanges are (essentially they allow you free access to an unlimited number of native speakers to practice your Spanish with), why they're absolutely essential if you're teaching yourself (I'm serious when I say this: it's impossible to get fluent without them if you're learning a foreign language on your own), how to use them, and which ones are the best.

Part 3: I cover chat rooms which are specifically devoted to connecting you with native Spanish speakers who want to learn English so you can chat with them in Spanish (and they'll help and correct you) and then you do the same for them with their English (these are completely free to use, but rather hard to find, but I'll tell you where the best ones are!). Sign up below!



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Cheers,

Andrew

Related Posts:

• Fascinating Report from the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute: “Lessons learned from fifty years of theory and practice in government language teaching”
• The Awesome Language-Learning Resource that is Children’s Books
• Friday Linkfest: Cool Language-Learning Links of the Previous Week of 3/20/11