“I would imagine that more than a few hours of listening a day would cause burned-out ears, at beginner and lower intermediate levels.”
How about when a person goes to live overseas?
I have never in my life learned so much as quickly as during my first months living in Germany. I just couldn’t get enough exposure to the language - and there was no hint of burn out for me.
“At advanced levels it’s not much more tiring than listening to your native language, and you can do that for hours, right?”
Helen, no I can’t. Not with some people anyway; I switch off as soon as they enter my room.
Work out how many hours in every day you spend listening to your own native language. (For the average person this would be at least 6 hours, I reckon.)
Jay, have you ever lived with your mother-in-law?
I’m working hard
English - 250
If memory serves, with total language immersion in a foreign country, alcohol helps extend the number of hours you can comfortably listen to your target language.
Your alcohol literacy is high.
“Jay, have you ever lived with your mother-in-law?”
You’ve got me there, Jamie. I hadn’t thought of this scenario! Argh! :-0
I live overseas and especially at the beginning I felt very burned out.
The best mental workout ever is sitting in a group of 10+ native speakers of the language (in this case Spanish), you are the only non-native speaker there, and just trying to keep track of what they are generally saying feels like an impossible game of mental ping pong 0 especially when they constantly interrupt each other, talk over each other, change subjects.
during the first few weeks I had a constant headache, but now, 6 months later, no problem. I am constantly surrounded by Spanisha nd always have the radio on in the kitchen when cooking or eating (when im not talking to my spanish roommate), and I no longer feel burned out.
I agree that constant listening can make you feel burned out, especially in the beginning. PUsh through those initial headaches!
Janna, sometimes, when I get bored on listening, I switch to reading for two weeks or so, and the other way round. It helps me to not fall into routine or being overwhelmed by it.
I have been trying to keep track of my listening for Spanish, Portuguese and Italian.
I set daily goals for myself: 3 hours Spanish, 1.75 hrs Portuguese, 1 hour Italian. The problem is I could complete any of those goals on their own but with all three it’s very difficult and my brain gets tired. Sometimes I just want silence. But I guess that’s the challenge - building good habits so it just becomes automatic!
I think I listened to about 3.5 hours of Spanish today, which is a conservative estimate not including fragments of conversations I hear on the streets. My favorite listening activity is my 1 hour salsa dance class, 3 nights per week. I get to listen to the teachers talk AND move my body, learn a new skill, it’s perfect 
I’m just like Oscar. I try not to do the same things everyday. I listen to the BBC, RFI, the Radio Nacional de España… and when I get kind of bored I just read! But, anyway, I’m always in touch with the languages.
Ok folks, time for an update. How’s everyone going? Here are my stats so far (6 months in).
Total: 474.6
I’ve gained ground since the last update!
Russian: 230 hours
Japanese: 34
German and French: 0.
Total: 264.
Wow, I totally need to speed up!
On the plus side, those 230 hours have really improved my Russian comprehension.
Here is ｍｙ training time (including speaking)
Although I did not use LingQ this month, I tried to use other resources.
29 May-30 June (I restarted to count time from 29 May)
This month, I am concentrating on learning English.
English 103 hours 30 minutes
(I speak a little with many native speakers almost every day.)
Chinese 54 hours 20 minutes
French 51 hours 24 minutes
Total: 209. 14 (for one month)
Here is “My training time”.
I did not count exactly time but I think that the total of this year is over 500 hours.
I hope that I’ll archive the 1000 hours of listening.
English - 505 hours 18 minutes
my goal in july is 100 hours of listening.
we need working hard every day.
All of your numbers are so impressive. Excellent going everybody!!
As for me, I don’t really keep an exact count or accounting of my listening time. I don’t clock in all my hours here at LingQ. Suffice it say, I listen to French all day and throughout the entire night. To avoid sounding crazy (some of you know that I’m crazy for French), I’ll give a rough and round estimate: I listen to French over 8 hours every single day. This month alone I have averaged 240+ hours in June.
June: 240+ (801 podcasts via France Culture, total running time: 19:10:59:00) I just let it rip!!!
I’m on summer vacation, so French is all I do! I’m putting in an insane amount of time. When I talk to my hubby, I’ve got one earphone plugged in— Hahaha :-)) All morning, all afternoon, all evening, all night…My listening skills have definitely improved!
I LOVE the community here at LingQ!! You all inspire me. Hugs to everyone of you!
@skyblueteapot
Does your alcohol theory work for British English by any chance? There’s a nice pub down the road!
I have had a slack month but for July and August i plan to listen for 150 hours. This i hope, will give me a breakthrough in terms of watching German films without subs and keeping up with the pace.
French: 353.1
Korean: 59.3
Total: 412.4
Not quite there but a little better than the first quarter. It’ll be tough to catch up, but the worst thing that will happen is that I will learn more