How to Improve Your Listening Comprehension Skills in a Language

One of the most difficult roadblocks that many language learners have is knowing how to effectively improve their listening comprehension skills. Understanding audio input, whether it be listening to podcasts, videos, watching movies, or talking to native speakers, is one of the most important foundational elements that will help you start thinking in, and understanding the basics, and the complexities of a language.

Why are listening comprehension skills so important? The answer is simple. If you do not understand the majority of what you hear, all of the words that you will hear will sound foreign to you. In other words, your brain will block any words that it does not understand, making it difficult to make substantial progress. Luckily, it is easy, and not time-consuming to learn how to become a good listener. As the video above says, the most important factor is consistency, as well as quality of audio input. You cannot expect to do well in your high-school language class, or in your independent study if you only work on grammar, writing, and reading skills. What make languages a real experience is that you can use them to communicate with others, and to express your thoughts, opinions, and ideas.

Below, I will give you a few tips on how you can start improving your listening comprehension skills:

1. Listen to audio input as frequently as possible

Consistency, and repetition is key when starting off learning a language, or when you want to significantly improve your comfort level when speaking in, or understanding a language. Despite all of the commitments that we have, I recommend to listen to audio input every day for at least 5-10 minutes a day, especially when you are a beginner. Even if you are learning a language that is distantly related to your native language, you will slowly start to pick up words that you learn, or infer what words mean (especially if they sound similar to words with which you are comfortable in another language).

2. Listen to YouTubers

YouTube is a free website that has videos on virtually any topic. What is great about it is that there are YouTubers from most countries around the world, giving you endless possibilities of finding videos about topics in which you are interested (Feel free to read my post titled: “Listen to YouTubers in Your Target Language” if you want to read more about how I use YouTube to improve multiple languages at a time, and to get suggestions of some of my favorite YouTubers in several languages if you want to read more).

3. Buy podcasts, and/or download applications

Most of you probably own electronic devices, as well as smartphones, which allows you to download podcasts, and applications that pertain to language learning. Some of my favorite applications are: Duolingo (Feel free to read my post titled “Review of Duolingo (Application)” if you want to read more), Lingvist, and news applications in my target languages. All you have to do is type the name of your target language in the search button, and read reviews of several applications that could help you improve your listening skills. You can also search for names of good applications for specific languages on Google, or watch reviews of podcasts, or of applications on YouTube.

4. Watch Your Favorite Television Series, or Movies in Your Target Language

Another easy way to improve your comprehension skills is by watching your favorite television series, and movies produced in countries of your target language. I would recommend watching them in their original language, avoiding putting subtitles in your native language when possible. If you do this, you will give yourself an immersion experience, and will be able to focus on comprehending words, and overall main ideas, instead of obsessing over understanding every word. I have found that it has been more rewarding watching television series, and movies in their original language, because they have taught me a lot about other countries’ cultures, as well as idiomatic expressions, and vocabulary. If you did not feel that you are not comfortable enough with your language to do this, I would recommend watching them in their original language with subtitles in the original language, so that you can follow along with what the characters are saying.

I hope that you learned that what is most important about improving your listening comprehension skills is being consistent, and finding resources that are authentic in the original languages, or that are specifically designed for language learners.

Being Afraid of Making Mistakes in Another Language

Ironically, I believe that what hinders, and discourages most people from continuing to make progress with a language is making the mistake of not making mistakes. By the end of this post, I hope to convince you that what has kept you from moving from one level of language learning to the next is the fact that you have been too scared of being wrong. Believe me, I used to be one of the shyest girls in my grade, and rarely voluntarily raised my hand to volunteer, or to ask questions. Many people often discourage others to raise their hands, or to ask questions unless they know the right answers. In school, I always wanted to be right, and wanted to impress my classmates by answering complex questions.

This is where I went wrong. I was always expecting perfection. I gave myself unrealistic, and high expectations. I would easily become frustrated, and would tell my parents that 10, or more years of French had been useless. If this situation sounds similar to yours, do not be worried. Luckily, I have learned that we cannot expect perfection, not even those of us who are OCD, or are perfectionists. If we expect to not make any mistakes when speaking, or dealing with aspects of our target language, we will automatically fail. Even though I am technically considered a native English speaker, English was my second language, and I rarely ever speak it at home, putting me at a disadvantage from most of my classmates. But even so, I have clarified grammar points, or how to spell words to people who are native English speakers. This shows that even native speakers can make mistakes. That is the beauty of being human: learning from our mistakes, and pushing ourselves to our limits.

Instead, what I encourage you to do is to try to speak every time that you get a chance to do so. If you have not already done so, and have studied a language for years, it is never too late to start doing so. What Benny Lewis (the famous polyglot that I have already mentioned) has said is that language is used to communicate and to share ideas with others. If you can write, and read in a language well, that is impressive, but if you cannot understand its native speakers, or speak it, then you have failed to do what a language is meant to do. Let’s compare languages to math (a subject that I was never good at). If you memorize an equation and know for what it is used, but you cannot apply it to real-world situations, then it is as if you did not know the equation. Language-learning requires you to step out of your comfort zone, and to learn from your mistakes.

Being a native Spanish speaker, there have been many times in which my friends have wanted to practice their Spanish with me. In my opinion, those who have done so successfully are not the ones who had perfect grammar, or who used complicated vocabulary to try to impress me. Instead, those who made grammar or vocabulary mistakes, or who translated words literally from English to Spanish are the ones who were brave. Why? The reason is simple. They were willing to say what they knew, and spoke to me in a natural way. Native speakers also pause, and sometimes have to think about what they want to say the way that they want to say it, but that is part of communication. What matters is that you are trying, that you are willing to learn from your mistakes, and then correct them. Being fearless is what separates bad language-learners from exceptional ones.

Before ending this post, I will share a small anecdote to hopefully inspire you to start speaking your target language as often as possible, even with native speakers. I started taking German I as a sophomore in high-school, and had hopes to someday reach the AP level. At the time, I was trying to do this on a whim, and forgot about this goal for a long time. When I went to a language immersion camp for a month-long high-school credit program, I was attempting to learn enough German in order to skip German II, and move on to Honors German III as a junior. At first, the task was daunting. I was placed into the third level out of six after only taking German for a school-year, and having little to no writing or speaking practice.

There were several people in my group who had taken German for 2 years, a girl who had taken it for 4 years, and a boy who had gone to the camp for 3 years. I was definitely the underdog in the group, but pushed myself out of comfort zone every day. I asked my teacher clarification questions, and used the little vocabulary, and grammar that I knew. By the end of the session, I had only spoken in German from breakfast through dinner time for 10 days (a language pledge that you could choose to do), something that I would have never imagined of accomplishing. How did I manage to learn so much in such a short amount of time? I was fearless. I was brave, and made many mistakes. I conjugated verbs incorrectly, and blanked on words, but could not freely express myself, and used what I knew.

I had girls in my cabin who had had years of practice with the language, which only pushed me to keep on learning more. The first day of camp, I could barely formulate a sentence. One of my friends claims that she could not understand what I was trying to say that day. However, by the end of the camp, I could easily communicate with girls who had gone to the camp for 10 years. This shows that speaking is the most important aspect of a language. Do not worry, and take a few deep breaths. Speaking is not as scary as it seems. Native speakers are not trying to look down upon you. Instead, we want to encourage you to keep on striving to reach your language-learning goals.