Hey guys, i’ve been in germany for 8 months now after years of studying on and off german and I was really dissapointed with my listening skills. I can hold convos and my german teacher said that I was already in B2 level however I can’t still understand some natives and I have to switch to english. Now im going back to my home country with the goal of coming back to germany and I really want to drastically improve my listening skills. I tend to use the l+r method but I don’t know if it works or if i just have to get more active input. Wha could you recommend me guys?
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I think, you chose the wrong Forum. Maybe move this post to the Open Forum?
One way to listen more authentic stuff could be watching German TV. I don’t mean translated series on Netflix. When you watch original German soaps or even a German crime series, you hear a lot of dialogs, colloquial language and also sometimes regional differences and you have to get used to acustics, that are not produced in the dubbing studio or with AI.
Have a look at https://www.ardmediathek.de/. (Maybe you need VPN to watch.) Very often they offer (German) subtitles, too.
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That’s not surprising. There is a huge difference between a B2 level, and being able to understand everyday speech. There are at least three issues here. Firstly, you might not be able to recognise the words even when you know them. That is because of the difference between carefully enunciated speech, and normal speech with contractions and many words pronounced in a very sketchy manner. In French, the word être can sound more like eh. Secondly, you might recognise words, but the rate at which you need to process them exceeds your ability. In other words, the cognitive load is too high, and you can’t keep up. And thirdly you might hear words or phrases, but not know them.
For the first issue, try listening to input that you struggle to understand, while reading the transcript. And then listen to it without reading the transcript. Try and listen like a baby, without translating, just let it slide into your brain, and let your brain do its thing. In other words, a mix of listening on its own, and listening and reading, with input that is difficult. Note that the difficulty should come from the speed and pronunciation, not the complexity of the language. The aim is to train your ears.
For the second issue, you just need more input. Try listening to input that you mostly understand, the more you practice, the more you strengthen those connections in your brain, the easier it becomes, thus reducing the cognitive load. It takes a long while to feel at home with an L2.
For the third issue, just look up words whenever you don’t know the meaning.
Do this for an hour a day, preferably more, and you will see noticeable improvements after six months, more so after a year.
Oh, and there is a fourth issue, and that is regional accents. Germany is noted for regional dialects. That might also be an issue in your case.
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First of all: What is your current method? I see you have 48000 known words in German so you probably have one.
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Are your listening stats on LingQ an accurate count? I mean do you do listening outside of LingQ. You’re at 310 hours in LingQ stats which is not a lot at all. So just going by that measure you need more on the side of 600..and probably really more like 1000 or more.
I’m in a similar boat as you. I go to Germany quite often (just about every year or two for the past 10 years). My gf and her family are German. I still often have difficulty with native conversation and I have twice the amount of “Lingq” listening stat hours AND I’ve watched hundreds of hours of other German programming. Various series, documentaries, etc. Fer.weh gives a good tip on looking at ARD mediathek. Lots of stuff to watch there. Also tons of youtube channels where you can watch documentaries, shows, or other things of interest.
Do you watch Easy German youtube channel at all? Are you able to keep up with the street interviews? They also have a podcast which is excellent. I’d check these out of you haven’t already. The street interviews are great because you get all sorts of people talking normally. Not something scripted and perfect.
Anyway, I’d make sure you know what the specific problem is. If you have audio with transcript…if you can read everything that is coming at you, then it’s not a lack of vocabulary. It’s the understanding of it. Listen to the audio and at parts where you’re having trouble deciphering things, check the transcript. Then listen again. Are you able to understand it and hear it now? One problem sometimes is that the transcripts aren’t always accurate so it can sometimes be confusing doing L+R.
Also, what kinds of things are you listening to now? If audiobooks…no one talks like that. The non spoken parts use simple past and most people talk with the present perfect for one thing. So you may be having trouble recognizing that if all you’re reading or listening to are books. Try to find dialogue heavy content and really focus on that. Find out how things are said more colloquially. This can also change from area to area. Is there a particular area of Germany you’ll be going back to? Maybe try to find more content from that region. Each area has their own public tv which you can find on ARD or the individual station’s youtube channels. Oh and for ARD mediathek directly you do probably need a vpn. I know I need it for most of the content. Some of it is region free, but not all.
Also with L+R, I think you need to be careful that you’re not focusing more on the reading than the listening. I know I can be guilty of this at times so I try to focus on the listening more. Or probably you should do both L+R and listening only. Maybe try listening only first. Then do L+R, especially if you don’t understand everything the first time. That way you train yourself to HEAR first and make an effort to understand with listening only. Only after you’ve listened first do you check the transcript. If there are sections that you struggled with, focus on those and repeat listen.
so I did a lot of reading and listening to youtube videos about my topics of interest as history, politics, nutrition etc, I read a lot like 3 m words that why I have that number of known words, but I admit I was very lazy on the listening part, I was just most focused on reading.
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I work every day with german, I did volunteering and I had to communicate with kids, I think the problem was that the kids have a limited vocabulary and I rarely was able to have a proper conversation in german, I can hold convos sometimes, there are days in wich I feel totally fluent and others that I’m even afraid of entering a bar. I did’t do lots of active listening and yes I saw and listened a lot to the easy german podcast even at 2x but I noticed that without the transcript I get lost fast, with it, is very easy. I also stopped studyin german a few months ago, I just started using the language and now I want to get back to it. My goal is to understand it as I understand english.
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Have you tried to grow a mustache & a mullet?
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If you are going to an area where dialect is spoken, see what you can find out about the dialect on the Internet. The words that are different will often be the words you hear in daily conversation.
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