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.

Switching Your Phone to Another Language

To start off this blog, I want to write posts about easy ways that you can start incorporating languages into your everyday life. I know how busy we can get, and how little free time we have, so I want to write about realistic changes that you can start making today. Since we live in a technology-oriented society, most of us have smartphones, or own our own laptops. The easiest, and fastest way to start thinking in a language is by changing your phone, and or your laptop to your target language.

There are many reasons why this change is very beneficial. The first is that it allows you to start thinking in your target language. When you wake up and check the weather app, or simply check your phone for updates, you will automatically start reading the words in your target language. It will take a little getting used to at first, and you may have to translate a few words into your native language, but it will not be as hard as you may think. Most of you have probably owned your devices for enough time to be familiarized with where all of your applications are, and where everything is located on your devices. This means that you would do everything that you had been doing prior to changing your language setting, but simply in another language.

No matter if you are a beginner, an intermediate learner, or an advanced learner, you will expand your knowledge of your target language. Your Facebook, your Instagram, your emails, and even YouTube will automatically switch into your target language if you change your language settings, but do not panic. If you ever run into a situation in which you do not know what you are reading, simply copy and paste the words onto Google Translate, or look up any unfamiliar words (I do not recommend being reliant on Google Translate, because it is very rarely a hundred percent accurate, but it can make your transition a little easier, especially at the beginning).

Another reason why this technique is helpful is because it is free, and takes no extra effort. Eventually, you will become so used to reading everything in your target language that you will no longer have to translate everything. This allows for a complete immersion experience, which is a great way to make a lot of progress in a short amount of time. A lot of people tend to overlook the benefits of doing this, but I promise that it will help you strengthen your skills. I have had my phone in German for a few months now, and have learned a lot of words by simply making inferences on their meanings. I have also looked up any unfamiliar words, which has helped me expand my vocabulary.

Bonus: If you want to have an even more immersion experience, you can organize your device by creating folders that contain applications of a particular topic (for example: current events, social media, or music). Instead of labeling each folder in English, look up the translations of those words. This way, every time that you use your device, you will only be reading, and pronouncing these words in your target language. In no time, you will be able to say words like “network failure”, or “delete” without even thinking about it.

Below, you can see what my phone currently looks like in German.

I hope that this post was helpful! If you have any suggestions on posts that you would like me to write, feel free to comment down below.