The benefit of listening

Good evening.

As I mentioned in my previous posts, there is a lot of listening in my schedule of learning a new language. I think that makes up a total of about 70% of my learning time I listen to swedish material. Or english ones when I learned to speak english. And there are several reasons to do so, and there are several ways how to do so!

There is a huge amount of websites, audio courses, music, movies, radio stations, etc. out there which provide you a great bandwith of audio material you can listen to. 

When you start learning a language, listening gives you a "feeling" for the new language. You hear the new sounds, maybe different accents like in japanese or albanian, you hear the different tones like in mandarin chinese. It offers you also a great way to get to know all the different changes in endings if words come together. A good example is the use of "a" or "an" in the english language and how it changes depending on what sounds follow. 

When you are already used to the sound of the language, you can concentrate on your own pronounciation and (sometimes even more important) the intonation!

You need to know how the pronounce the different sounds. But you also need to know how to intonate the sentences and words. An example there for is the german language:

"Ich gehe heute ins Kino." (I go to the cinema today.)

Your voice goes down when you say "Kino".

But if you change it to a question:

"Gehe ich heute ins Kino?"

Then you go up with your voice in "Kino".

This is a feature of language you can achieve by learning rules on how to intonate, but it is way more easy and efficient to learn it by listening, isn`t it? Because your brain is able to absorb that subconsciously while doing something else.

In many languages there are irregular words in terms of pronounciation. For example the swedish word "kör" is pronounced in a different way than "kör".

Confused? 

Another example: The english word "though", "thought" and "tough" are pronounced in totally different ways, even though there are written so similarly. 

Still confused?

I was too.

Here is a little story:

There was an old man. He learned english by his own and after a year he was able to write really well. He wrote letters to friends, to former collegues, to former mates. Totally perfect. No errors and mistakes in spelling and grammar and a huge knowledge of vocabulary. But when he tried to speak to a english friend visiting him, his friend did not understand a word, and far worse: he did not understand a word too! Because he knew the word, but not the sounds. He did not know that the "th" was pronounced different to "t".

And that is something done in many school classes. The pupils write texts and they read texts. They do exercises and they speak (in their mother tongue) about the target language. Many times there is a teacher who can`t speak the language properly (like I had many when learning english in school). 

How can those people learn to speak a foreign language? That is impossible!

Another benefit of listening:

It is easy. You do not have to do anything but listen. And what is most important: you mostly do not have to concentrate on what you are hearing. Just hear it in the background.

So how can you listen during the day? The answer is quite simple. For me there are four types of listening:

• Listening while reading:
• You listen to a spoken text (like a dialogue) while reading a decoded text. You can also just read the text in your target language. That will provide you a good understanding of the text. You will automatically learn the sentence structure, the grammar rules and the vocabulary. Concentrate on what is similar and what is different to languages you allready know.
• Passive listening:
• Listen to a source in the background. Turn on the radio or the TV while doing whatever else you want to do.
  It is very useful to listen to something you are familiar with, for example texts you listened to actively or intensively before.
  Listening passively will make you familiar with the intonation, pronounciation, the change of endings and beginnings of words etc..
• Intensive listening and concentrating:
• In This case you try to listen to a foreign audio and try to understand the content. Everytime there is a word, phrase or idiom you cannot figure out, stop there and look it up in the dictionary. There are also many softwares like the VLC media player that allow you to slow down what is said, if that might help you. Then listen to the idiom/word/phrase again and continue. Doing this will increase your understanding of the language and will increase your vocabulary and the knowledge of idioms. If you struggle with an audio the first times, it will be easier the more you listen to it.
• Listening to the content:
• In the fourth type you just listen to the favour of the content. You want to know what is in the news? Go and listen to the radio! You want to know what other people are saying? Go and listen to them! Many people forget to do this, but it is the exact reason why you are learning a language and it should be the case every time you listen to a text.
  I will repeat it as often as possible: Listen to content you  like and that excites you.

Just do that whenever you have got the time for it. You will mostly just listen passively during the day, but when you have got the time (5 Minutes ARE enough!), go and listen to something. Do it on the toilet, do it while having breakfast or lunch or dinner.

"The art of effective listening is essential to clear communication, and clear communication is necessary to management success" 

- James C. Penney 

I hope that this will inspire you in your way of succeding. You will! I am sure.
Thank you for reading,
Alex.