Spanish listening skills is one of the toughest sets of skills I ever had to develop. It took a lot of pain over a number of years for me to work out the secret.
When you are reading written Spanish to improve vocabulary or grammar, you have time to assess word meaning, sentence structure and context.
If you recognize a word but can’t remember the meaning, you can stop and think about it. You can think back to when you first learnt the word. You can think of any associations you made to remember it. If you haven’t seen a word, you have time to assess context and guess meaning. And if worst comes to worst you can look the word up in a dictionary.
When you first start to train your listening skills you have to start over.
First, you need to hear the sounds of the language. Then you need to associate those sounds with words you already know and understand on paper.
It could be that you hear an entire sentence of which you understand nothing. But, if that sentence was written down you would understand every word.
Second, once you have established a base of words you recognize in sounds, you need to develop an ability to process those words at native speaking pace and determine meaning as the speaker is talking.
It could be that despite your understanding of every individual word there is still a delay before you can process meaning.
Third, once you have heard a few sentences and understood them, if required, you will have to respond quickly in return.
Without doubt, listening is tough and I envy the students for which this skill comes easy. But, for those that struggle there are ways to improve.
What approach could you take to improving your listening comprehension?
A common recommendation is passive listening. A lot of courses and texts recommended passively listening to a recording or audio. The technique implies that over time you will improve.
Passive listening recommends that you listen while you drive to work, in bed, or doing the dishes.
The idea is that through the process of prolonged exposure you will gradually get used to hearing the sounds and over time begin to recognize them.
This did not work for me.
Before my first trip to Spain in 2010, I had spent a lot of time passively listening to recordings of music, news, movies and dialogue.
I remember getting off the plane in Madrid and asking an official for directions into to town. I asked in Spanish and so they answered in Spanish. And as I had practiced over and over again, I passively listened and hoped that the meaning of what was said to me would sink in.
It didn’t.
I must have stood there staring at the official for 30 seconds before I realized how awkward the situation was. So I thanked him and walked off.
My next awkward encounter was in a tapas bar. I knew from context that the waitress was asking me if I wanted something to eat or drink. This was, of course, because I was standing in a restaurant. But when she spoke, again, I passively stood there. I thought I had time to absorb what was being said and that eventually it would make sense.
It would have been better if I had just said ‘no hablo español‘ than just sit and stare and hope for the best.
Passively listening is doesn’t prepare you for Spanish conversation. You can’t afford to stand and stare while the other person waits.
What is active listening?
Active listening is the process where you hear something and take an action based on what you have heard. It forces you to interpret what you hear and respond, as you would in a conversation.
When you actively listen you are not sitting and hoping the sounds will make sense. You are actively looking for meaning. You are pushing yourself to take a role in interpreting the sounds. So that you can take action as soon as you hear them.
You are not relaxed or multitasking, driving or out for a run. You are focused. You are in the moment and ready to respond.
The best form of active listening practice is actually having a conversation with someone in Spanish. You are actively engaging in an exchange of information and you are forced to take an active role in the direction of the conversation.
If you aren’t ready to take the leap and start practicing with someone in Spanish then you should try Fluent Spanish Listening. It’s a program in the Real Fast Spanish School that is designed to improve your Spanish listening skills through active listening exercises. Every day you will get access to a new Spanish audio. After each audio, you will be tested and asked to answer a set of multiple-choice questions. This forces you to actively engage with what you are listening to. It also doesn’t matter if you make a mistake.
Whether you are ready to start conversing with someone in Spanish or not if you want to improve your listening skills you need to focus on active engagement in what you are listening to. If you are listening to Spanish while you fall asleep or driving to work you might find, as I did, that this kind of practice does not prepare you for interacting with another person.
When you start out, make sure when you are listening that you are always looking to actively engage. Make sure you are looking for meaning and specific pieces of information in which you can make a decision or act.
If you are listening to audio look to write something down. If you are conversing always look to be able to say something back. This active practice will prepare you for the situation where you are asked something that you didn’t expect and be better prepared to respond.
How else can you use active listening to improve your Spanish listening skills?
Ask 100 language learners what they struggle with most, and many of them will say ‘speaking with a native speaker’.
I say: this is misleading! Because if you dig a bit deeper, you’ll often hear that the speaking bit is only part of the problem. The bigger problem is “I can’t UNDERSTAND anyone during these conversations!”.
You see, during conversations in your target language, most of the time you can get your point across. Maybe not always with perfect, eloquent sentences, but with both verbal and non-verbal communication, you’ll probably be able to say what you want to say.
But if you don’t understand the other person, then you have a problem…!
Not understanding someone can make you feel dumb and frustrated. Especially because the language learning materials you used often contain very slow spoken dialogues – nothing like what you find out there in the real world! Faster speech and a high-stress conversation environment are a recipe for disaster if you’re not trained for it.
There are no easy fixes for this. But there are ways to improve, so you’ll start understanding natives and conversations will go much smoother. And I’m going to lay them all out here in an easy-to-follow Perfect Listening Practice Framework!
Sound good?
Then let’s dive in…
Step 1: Before you start listening
Why is understanding native speakers so hard?
Understanding a language takes a lot of ‘ear training’. You see, when you don’t speak a language yet, everything a person says just sound like blabber: a disorganized pile of sounds.
A couple of months later, most of these sounds will have come together for you and have meaning now…
How?
Just because you’ve put your attention towards them, your brain became aware of them and you’ve given it lots and lots of practice!
That’s the only way to go forward.
Now, in some languages that might not be enough, because you just won’t hear the difference between some sound. For example, in Japanese there is no difference between the ‘l’ and the ‘r’ sound. Because their brain never had to distinguish between these sounds, they just can’t hear the difference… which means that they can’t pronounce it either!
This can be fixed through a lot of deliberate practice, of course, but it might take longer for some languages with specific sounds [like click sounds in some African languages] or tones [like Chinese].
Don’t worry, though, most of this can be fixed… through MASSIVE exposure!
That’s really the only way to go forward.
No quick fix, it will take some time… but it’s not difficult and can be quite pleasant!
The two listening goals
You can practice your listening skills for two reasons:
- To improve pure comprehension + conversation skills [casual listening]
- To build your vocabulary [intensive listening]
You can do both at the same time, but for effective practice, you better focus on only one of them at the time!
For example, if you’re having a conversation, you’ll already have a lot on your mind so it might not be the best idea to look for a lot of new vocab to learn [except during tutor/tandem sessions maybe].
Step 2 – How and where to find listening materials
What should I listen to?
We’re circling back to goal-setting here. Just like with reading, speaking and writing, you need to ask yourself the questions: in which situations do I see myself using my target language? And what am I interested in? These are the things most of your conversation will be about anyway.
Once you have that list, you can look for specific listening materials about these topics [more on that later]. This will be very high-value practice material that will give you a lot of useful vocab.
On the other hand, to improve pure comprehension + conversation skills, it’s not a bad idea to just listen to as many things as you can get your hands on, about a variety of topics! Radio, podcast, news broadcasts etc. are excellent for this. If you’re learning Spanish, I have some good overviews of Spanish podcasts or Spanish YouTube Channels.
Go for comprehensible input!
It’s no use listening to something if you don’t understand a single word. The input you need is what linguists call comprehensible input. That means: texts or audio that you understand for the biggest part, but that’s still a bit challenging: there are still things you discover, new vocabulary that you had to deduce from context, etc.
This is the input that’s really helping you make progress. It’s easy enough so you enjoy reading it, yet difficult enough so you learn new things.
I can’t tell you what comprehensible input is for you, of course. It depends from person to person. But I can tell you it’s something you feel. It’s also how textbooks like Assimil work. If you’re a complete beginner in a language and you open an Assimil book on lesson 85, you’ll probably be completely overwhelmed.
Go through lesson 1-84, though, and lesson 85 will now have become perfect for your level: some new grammar and vocab is introduced, but you understand most of the dialogue.
Now, with listening skills, there are some other factors that come into play! For example, a dialogue that was completely incomprehensible for you at first might be very much at your level if the speakers just slow down a lot.
Having a transcript or subtitles at your disposal might also make incomprehensible input much more accessible.
My advice?
If your focus is on listening comprehension:
Start off with authentic material [so made for native speakers, not for language learners] without any aids [so normal speed, without subtitles or a transcript]. If you notice that you don’t understand anything, then add subtitles/transcript. If you do so, keep paying attention to the spoken word! Try to hear everything you see written.
The only exception here is if you’re a complete beginner in a language. Authentic materials will probably be completely incomprehensible to you, so you might need to use some slower material made for language learners.
If your focus is on vocab acquisition:
You can start off immediately with subtitles/transcripts. Podcasts and audio from language courses that’s a bit slower is perfect for this in the beginning.
Find speech with text!
Building on the last point; you’ll make much faster progress if you have a transcript of some sort with your listening materials. So series with subtitles [series are better than films because there’s continuity, you’ll have more context which will improve your comprehension], Netflix, YouTube with captions, podcasts with transcripts.
Especially if your focus is on vocabulary acquisition, transcripts are almost indispensable! If you rely purely on your listening skills, you might still misunderstand a lot of things. With a transcript, you just look up the right word, right spelling, right grammatical construction, and you can add it to e.g. a flashcard easily.
Bonus tip: if you’ve found a useful piece of audio but can’t find a transcript anywhere, just go to fiverr.com and hire someone to make a transcription for you! It’s very affordable and that way you can make your own, super-personalised language learning materials!
What kind of listening materials are there?
You can get listening exposure EVERYWHERE. I’m building resource lists for several languages. In the meantime, here’s an overview of materials you could use:
- Friends/tutors/meetup groups/language exchanges
- News broadcasts
- Interviews
- Podcasts
- Music
- Series [Netflix!]
- Films
- Audiobooks [although they won’t really prepare you for real-life conversations]
- All tv programmes, really
- ….
Step 3 – Effective Listening Strategies strategy
Vocab acquisition [intensive listening]
If you’re practicing listening to build your vocabulary, here’s a strategy you can use:
- Listen first and try to understand as much as possible [without transcript]
- Listen with the transcript/subtitles
- Look for interesting vocabulary, especially collocations, specific expressions, word combinations [so basically chunks: check The Vocab Cycle for more info on this]
- If you’ve found useful vocabulary, write it down in notebook or immediately in app like Anki [use cloze cards]
- Prioritize! Decide if you still want to enjoy the story/content or not. Listening might get a bit boring if you stop every 2 seconds to write down some vocabulary. I personally try to find the balance by setting myself a target of how many chunks I want to find.
Listening comprehension [casual listening]
If you’re practicing listening comprehension, follow this strategy:
If you’re doing pure listening, not in a conversation:
- Listen to the whole thing without subtitles/transcript!
- Do some shadowing [=repeat what’s been said out loud immediately; for more info see perfect speaking practice]. This is not only good for speaking, also for listening skills because it makes you more aware of the sounds.
- Listen for keywords that help your understanding
- Use the [visual] context to deduce meaning!
- Then use the text/transcription to fill in any things you didn’t understand.
If you’re in a conversation:
- Listen for keywords and deduct meaning!
- Use context to deduct meaning
- If you understood something but don’t remember exactly how to say it, ask back
- If you’ve heard sth interesting, REPEAT! Say, oh, … didn’t know you said it like that! By repeating actively you’ll probably remember. and if people know that you’re learning their language they won’t find it weird that you repeat them [if you explain]
- Or just repeat back what they said
- Don’t be afraid to ask back, or tell them to talk a bit more slowly. It’s normal!
- Bonus: try to listen in to group conversations! It’s often difficult and very tiring to try to understand everything, but you don’t get put on the spot if you don’t understand, you can focus purely on listening. I did this a lot when I just arrived in Italy and although it was hard, it helped my comprehension a lot!
Step 4: bringing it all together in your Perfect Listening Practice Strategy!
There you have it: some basic guidelines and specific strategies to improve your listening comprehension, build your vocabulary, find resources and become a listening comprehension master!
Here’s your action plan:
- Incorporate both ‘listening comprehension’ and ‘vocab building’ listening in your routine
- Find comprehensible input with transcript/subtitles [don’t use them from the beginning, though]
- Depending on your focus goal, use either the Vocab Acquisition Strategy or the Listening Comprehension Strategy.
- Become a listening expert!
Again, the real power of listening skills comes if you implement what you learn using your other language skills. Listening comprehension is a passive exposure skill; you’ve already combined it here with the other passive skill, reading comprehension [through the transcripts and subtitles].
If you’ve done some focused studying to internalize everything you’ve learned, the best way to make sure you make fast progress is by now either speaking about the topics you’ve learned about, or writing short texts.