How to improve your listening is a common question language learners ask.

Often when you’ve been learning for a while, your reading and writing are stronger than your speaking and listening because they’re easier and considered less intimidating.

Then your language is starting to get better and you want to start talking to people and you just can’t understand them. It sounds like they’re talking a mile a minute.

And even if you get past that stage you where you can hold a conversation, two natives talking to each other or the television still can seem impossible to understand.

If this is how you feel, don’t worry. You are definitely not alone. Many people think listening is the hardest skill to develop, but there are many who have succeeded so you can too.

 

If it’s too hard, you’re not going to listen

Before you read the suggested methods below, one important thing to be aware of is, if it’s too hard, you’re just not going to be listening to it.

If you’re only A1 Spanish and you’re trying to watch movies completely in Spanish, you’re probably going to have a bad time and it’s also going to be a waste of your time.

The ideal level for me is where I can understand the gist and I can get the majority of the sentences but some words I might not understand or might not catch. This normally indicates that it’s challenging me but I’m still engaging with the subject matter.

You can’t learn by osmosis. Switching on a podcast in Spanish that you barely understand and listening to it while you fall to sleep just isn’t going to cut it.

When something is too difficult for us, we tend to switch off and stop learning. That’s why when you’re looking for the following resources; it’s useful to consider ‘What level am I at? Does this match my current level? Is there something more appropriate graded to my level?’

And while you’re listening be aware of ‘am I actually listening? Or am I trying to learn by osmosis?’ Because if you are, turn it off and find something else.

If someone says I did five hours listening practise this week but they had no idea what they were listening to then they didn’t.

 

You’re not going to know every word

When you’re practising your listening you don’t need to understand every single word, just the gist of what you’re listening to.

If you stop to look up every word you’re just not going to learn and you’ll find it too frustrating. Stop honing in on every words and instead try and relax and use context cues.

If you’re in a restaurant and you can’t catch what the waiter is saying try and think of the process and what would normally happen at this stage of the meal. Listen out for words you know and you can piece the sentence together. A bit of guess work is fine and if you make a mistake and misinterpret something then it can be a funny story for later.

 

Ways to improve your listening

 

Real life conversations

This might seem like the scariest option, but I genuinely believe real life conversations are the best way to improve your listening.

Why?

Because you have to engage with what you’re listening to. When you’re having a conversation with someone they respect a reply. You need to listen to what you’re hearing and form a reply in response to it.

With this in mind, it’s the perfect way to test out your listening skill whilst still working on your speaking skills.

And remember, if you can’t hear someone or you don’t understand, it’s always ok to ask them to slow down or to repeat what they just said.

 

Series

Watch all of your TV and all of your series in the language you’re learning. You want to watch Rick and Morty or Stranger Things. Great! Turn the audio into the language you’re learning and watch away.

Every time you want to watch the television to relax, try watching it in your target language. It might be easier in your native language but immersion this way can make the world of difference to your listening skills.

But remember, you don’t want to be watching something that’s just too difficult. If you’re not taking it in, you’re not learning.

If it’s too difficult for you to understand, that’s ok. You can use subtitles. There’s nothing wrong with listening to Chinese audio whilst you’re reading the Chinese subtitles.

Or if you’re just starting out, try those English subtitles with the Chinese audio.

 

Podcasts + transcripts

Podcasts are becoming ever more popular all the time. And with this popularity leads to an increase in the amount and variety available.

Try using your commute or exercise habits as a way to increase more listening practise by listening to podcasts.

Again you can find podcasts that are graded to your level. And if they’re still too difficult, many podcasts allow you to download the transcripts so you can read along as you listen.

 

FluentU

FluentU is a websit that allows you to watch and listen to clips of native speakers. The only downside is that you have to pay a monthly subscription fee, but it does give you access to hundred of videos. (And their transcripts!)

 

YouTube

 

YouTube is full of videos of people speaking different languages, short video clips and more.

It is also a great way to gain motivation from watching people who are learning and uploading clips of themselves speaking.

 

Music

Listening to music can be a great way to improve your listening skills and also to engage with the language that you’re learning.

If you think about the amount of lyrics you can remember to songs in English, this should be an indication of how helpful it can be to listen to songs in order to improve your listening.

Learn the words to the songs, listen out for them and sing along. If you can’t learn them just through listening then you can look up the lyrics online.

If you have songs you really like, then try translating the songs into English and comparing that to the official translation.

Listening practise exams

This really depends on your language learning goals. If you are wanting to take an exam for your level then I would definitely recommend taking practise listening exams.

And even if you aren’t, it’s still a very useful way to practise your listening as it’s tailored to be at the level you’re studying at.

If you’re only an A2 learner then you will be able to find material tailored to your level, rather than searching through video after video looking for a match.

You can literally choose the A2 listening exam paper.

 

Subtitles

Never underestimate the importance of subtitles and never feel as though you’re cheating while you use them.

There’s nothing wrong with improving your reading while you improve your listening.

It will also help your listening skills as you’ll get used to hearing certain sounds against certain words.

Subtitles are a tremendous stepping stone on the way to be able to listen to your target language.

 

Accents, accents, accents

If you’re reading this as an English speaker then try to remember how different a Scottish accent is from an Australian accent. Or a scouser compared to someone from the USA.

Well you’ll find similar things with the language that you’re learning.

A lot of the time when people can’t understand native speakers they feel disheartened but imagine a Spaniard who speaks B2/C1 English and can communicate perfectly going on holiday to Glasgow. They’re going to have problems.

And this might happen to you too.

Think about who you’ve been practising with. Do you normally speak to people from Paris and now you’re visiting the south of France of Canada? It makes sense that this might give you problems.

To combat this, try to listen to mediums from different regions and countries. If you’re listening to Spanish, it might be useful watching Mexican and Argentinian television, as the accents are so different. Or if you know you’re never going to visit somewhere where the accent is that strong then don’t worry.

I’d also recommend trying to learn some slang or regional phrases from the area you want to visit of live in. This will help you to understand more quickly.

I’d recommend trying to talk to a range of people to get used to more varied accents. The queen’s English is very easy to understand but it might not be that useful to you when you get to England.

 

Things to remember

It’s ok to ask someone to repeat something. Don’t worry about asking someone to say something again. If you don’t hear it the first time just ask them to repeat it. Sometimes they might switch to English for you but this isn’t necessarily a knock back. Just try again with the next person.

If you can’t understand someone it doesn’t mean you’re not good at the language. Natives speak quickly and often have stronger accents than on television.

 

Final thoughts

Listening is hard! But it’s often considered that final hurdle for people.

Stick with it; it’s a useful skill. Keep practising and make sure you’re engaged with what you’re listening to.

We don’t learn passively, if it’s too difficult, you’re not going to listen.

Good luck!

Why I love Duolingo and why you should too

 

It may be no surprise to people that my favourite language learning app is Duolingo and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this.

The popularity of Duolingo is incredible and everyone I talk to who uses it feels a similar way to me. And let’s face it, it’s fun, addictive and the interface is beautiful.

Duolingo is so large now, that there are 300 million active language learners using the platform. There are 21.8 million English speakers learning Spanish alone and 12.7 million learning French.

The app is almost cultish.

What is Duolingo?

 

For those of you who haven’t encountered Duolingo before:

Duolingo is a free app with courses for up to 29 languages (and 3 in beta stage) at the time I am posting this. They are developing new courses all the time so I wouldn’t be surprised if this number changed quickly.

 

There are courses available to native speakers of other languages besides English, although the selection isn’t as large.

Duolingo also offer conlangs as well. These are fictional languages, that are usually created for Television, movies or books. The conlangs Duolingo currently offers are Klingon, High Valyrian and the most famous constructed language: Esperanto.

 

How it works:

Each language course is set up in modules, which you have to complete before you can progress to the next one.

If a module is too easy for you, rather than work your way through all of the lessons, Duolingo offers you the option to test out. I tend not to use this as I like the practise but it comes in useful if you’ve already done the material before or if it’s just too easy.

You work your way through the lessons to complete the module. Once you’ve completed the module the little circle changes colour. You can then redo the module four more times until the circle turns to gold.

 

 

The lessons themselves comprise of different components, to help you practise the four fundamental language skills: reading, listening, speaking and writing (or in this instance typing.)

The lessons start easy and progress with difficult. My favourite aspect of this is that it gives you the tools to construct sentences.

 

Duolingo encourages you to practise, which I’m a big fan of. If you’ve finished a module and redone it until it’s gone gold but you still want to practise that language, you can! It’s very easy and it helps you to go back to vocabulary and grammar that you’ve already learned.

Duolingo motivates you

 

The reason I like Duolingo so much, is that the app is designed to motivate you to keep learning.

When people learn a new language one of the main problems they find is after the initial motivation, they get bored, or they forget to practise and they end up stopping or giving in.

Duolingo has been designed to help combat that and keep you motivated, which is definitely something I need!

It manages to do this through a variety of ways:

Firstly the use of gold circles. When you have completed a module five times, the module turns gold. This may sound like a silly thing but the use of gold makes learners more likely to complete the module

Secondly, Duolingo tells you how many days streak you’re on. There are people now who have been doing Duolingo for over 1000 days and this number is shown to them everytime they log on. No one wants to break a long streak so you’re more likely to do your allocated daily learning.

Duolingo can send you reminders to encourage you to do your learning for the day. This is completely up to you. If you don’t like reminders and emails you can choose not to receive any. But if you’re forgetful and want to take your learning seriously you can choose to receive reminders through text, email, the app or push notifications.

You can join clubs with people you know or complete strangers who are learning the same language as you. In the club there is a leader board with all the members and the xp they’ve done that week. This competitiveness really encourages you to do more exercises. Each week this leader board refreshes and the race begins again.

If you’re not a competitive person then don’t worry. Some groups are set up to see who can do the maximum amount and other groups are a lot more laid back. You can search to see which one works for you.

The best part of this is that you feel like you’re in a community.

 

Duolingo Plus

 

Duolingo plus enables you to access added features for a monthly subscription fee.

The main feature that cause people to download Duolingo plus is that it allows you to download lessons for free and complete them without internet connection.

I can understand why this is appealing especially if you have a long flight or you don’t want to use up your data, but as someone who is always around wifi, this isn’t so much of an issue for me.

My aunty however is a huge fan of this!

Other Features of Duolingo

 

On the website Duolingo has some really cool additional features that are also free.

Discussion – the discussion section is a useful forum where you can ask questions and talk to people who are learning the same language as you. You can also share ideas and book recommendations.

 

Podcasts – Duolingo have released a series of bilingual. I think these podcasts are probably most suitable for intermediate learners but with the English sections you should be able to follow most of the content.

 

 

Stories – The Duolingo stories might be my favourite thing about Duolingo. Duolingo have released a series of interactive stories, which are accessible for any level of learner.

 

 

Events – Duolingo events allow you to connect with other language learners in your area. I haven’t personally used this function so if you try it out, please comment below with your experiences!

Drawbacks of Duolingo

 

For me there are two main drawbacks of duolingo, one which I believe won’t take long to be rectified and one which is unfortunately a feature of the app.

Firstly, Duolingo is better for languages with romantic alphabtets. Personally I only enjoy learning duolingo for languages that use the roman alphabet. I feel the design is best for this and have found the lessons that learn kanji or Chinese characters a bit clumsy.

However Duolingo is constantly being developed and I’ve already talked to people who believe the courses for languages that use other writing systems are improving.

One of the features of the app that I don’t like is the ability to lose lives. It takes five hours to regain one life, or you can do a practise exercise to regain a life. For me this is a problem because if a module is hard

 

Alone it’s not going to help you achieve fluency, but no language learning app should be used alone. Duolingo makes language learning fun and accessible and helps you build your vocabulary and grammar so you can go out and use the language.

My experiences with Duolingo

 

I started my language learning journey five years ago when I downloaded Duolingo and started to learn Spanish. Before that I’d never learned a foreign language and thought it just wasn’t for me.

Duolingo didn’t make me fluent but it gave me the confidence and vocabulary to begin learning properly.

Since then, I’ve used the app for French, Portuguese and I’ve started learning Italian.

For me Duolingo is a fantastic way to start your language-learning journey, but like most people say, you do need to do more to become fluent in a language.

No one should use just one app to try and achieve fluency, you need to speak and live the language.

Final thoughts on Duolingo

 

I would never have learned Spanish, French or Portuguese if it hadn’t been for Duolingo and for that I will always sing its praises.

In my opinion it is the best language learning application currently on the market and I love that it’s free. I have even thought of paying for a subscription to Duolingo just to support it.

I would definitely recommend this app to anyone wanting to learn a language but remember Duolingo alone is not enough.

If you want to learn a language read books, watch movies, talk to people. You need to engage with the language and you need to love it.

 

Best of luck with your language learning journey!

 

There’s a polyglot in us all.