I’ve been wondering about others experience on how their listening skills improved in language learning. Particularly people who have enough listening practice to understand a decent amount of content. Do most people find that their listening comprehension gets better gradually over time, or do they experience sudden “jumps” or should i say breakthroughs where everything suddenly just clicks?
For example, has anyone here listened to a lot of content without seeing much progress, only to suddenly find that they understand a lot more one day? I would like to like to explore the idea of this and the role the subconscious plays in the grand scheme of listening.
It’s gradual, but you will see sudden breakthroughs on how you approach listening in terms of strategy. If you’re looking up every word that you don’t know, and you’re connecting the listening/meaning of the word, it’s gonna be naturally more and more natural and comprehensible. Depending on how many words you know before listening and how many hours of listening will determine how soon you will see results.
I would say it’s gradual. Best is to listen once again to something you have listened a few months ago already. That way you be abble to compare and see improvements by yourself. Something noteworthy is doing a pause in your study may lead to a small breakthrough once you are back from your holidays.
I’m studying Mandarin also. Would you attribute most of your results to active listening or passive listening? Most of the time I spent learning this language I tried to do active, but it’s hard for me to just sit there causing me to keep dropping it. Recently I switched to a more passive approach playing content in the background and randomly tuning in which seems to make it easier for me to spend time with it. I’m hoping that this will work for me. My listening is lagging FAR behind my reading and word pronunciation.
I’ve been thinking a bit about this recently – clear, like others have said, that the correct method is continual listening and gradual progress.
However I’ve had the distinct memory a few times that my listening skill has “leveled up” in a sense.
I think perhaps it’s just sudden perception that our acquisition has progressed without being consciously aware.
At any rate: for me a really effective technique has been to listen while walking, especially something I’ve just been through actively reading, and so have fresh understanding and familiarity with the meaning.
The walking seems to allow my brain to switch off getting bored and distracted – set a playlist to run through and 20 minutes seems to whip by.
In my experience, it’s gradual. I think you sometimes see some “illusionary jumps” occasionally where all of a sudden it seems like you are understanding a whole lot and that you made a breakthrough, but I think most (all) of the time this just happens to be a case where you’ve come across some content where you just happen to know more words for that bit of content than you do another. Or the speaker is a little more “clear” to you. Then you go to another piece of content and you feel nearly as lost as a beginner =).
I would say it’s a gradual process and one that requires patience.
Just today I was discussing how, as learners, we can use listening to improve. Even if I listen to something 20+ times, I often find that there’s something new I notice, which I hadn’t noticed before.
I do both with a 1 hour active + 7 hours passive as a pair
Imagine a water wheel in which it will spin strongly when you active listen and as you wait until the next time you active listen, the wheel will slow down gradually until it stops again, and you repeat the process. Ironically passive listening won’t start/barely dent the water wheel, only active listening
The Passive Listening is there to keep the wheel spinning but it won’t be as rapid or fast as the speed from active listening.
Answer: Active Listening is more effective but Passive brings in little by little which will add up. Do both if you can.
Active = 1x
Passive = 0.25x
4x Passive = 1x Active
It’s a guess but the math is something along the lines of this.
It’s gradual, as others say. I notice sudden improvements when I revisit content from six months earlier, but day to day progress is slow. I generally have problems with particular material, native films, or certain presenters say. At some moment I will realise that, for example, I can understand a given presenter, or that suddenly song lyrics are much more comprehensible. So it can sometimes seem like there are quite large jumps. But in general it is frustratingly slow. My comprehension of spoken French is reaching a level where I can understand clearly articulated speech, but paradoxically that means that I now see how little I know and how much there is to learn. It’s an ultra-marathon.
For me it is gradual. Every 3 weeks or so, I notice that I am understanding more of what I listen to. That can continue for years. Progress is slow, so the difference in 3 weeks isn’t dramatic.
I suppose it could seem “sudden” if you simply didn’t notice for months.
Gradual. If you really focus on one particular accent, depending on your level, you can sometimes see very fast gains though. But generally it is long and slow.
Agreed with everyone who is saying that it’s gradual. In fact, it’s so gradual you can’t tell you’re improving lol. Hence the multiple suggestions to go back six months later.
I find that going back six months later, I’m usually pleasantly surprised at how dang easy something is to understand even when I really struggled with it earlier. In my opinion, the “breakthroughs” do happen because if I listen to a speaker continuously for a while, I don’t tend to feel they get easier to understand… but then going back in six months after listening to other things, the speaker clearly has become easier for me to understand. So whatever I was listening to in the interim was obviously helping my comprehension overall.
I also agree with the comments that you happen to know more words in more types of content over time, that some speakers/content are easier to understand than others, and that eventually you’ll be more successful a higher percentage of the time.
I also think I have good days and bad days with listening comprehension as with the other skills.