@verdad: Even native speakers make mistakes( even worse than mine ). And by the way , shouldn’t there be an English Lit… instead of what you wrote ?
Hi, just to put in my two cents, I think the benefit of purely listening completely depends on the type of listening and your unique situation. To give you concrete examples, I’ll share my personal experiences:
First example: For my 16th birthday, my aunt (born and raised in France, speaks French and English fluently) flew me to France for 6 weeks. We vacationed in Paris and then went to her home in the Côte d’Azur. I was constantly listening to French being spoken - on the TV, in conversations, in announcements at Museums, train stations, etc. - but I gained practically nothing as I had no French language foundation and just talked to my aunt in English. In fact, I’ve learned more French in the past week using Linq & other resources than I did during that entire trip. If I had practiced with a grammar book or a reading-based text book during that time, I would have improved greatly.
Second example: I was accepted to a scholarship language immersion program for Arabic. The program was 2 weeks long, took place in the U.S. and all the high school students who participants were native English speakers. Our professors and T.A.s mostly spoke to us in Arabic (the exceptions were a 1-hour Middle Eastern studies class that was half-English & half-Arabic and a 1-hour long community building class that was 100% English). We had cooking classes in Arabic, regular 3-hour language classes in Arabic, dance classes in Arabic and creative games outside in Arabic. Our teachers talked to us like children so we could understand - using hand gestures, props, pointing, acting skits out, repeating words, etc. I often would not understand sentences completely but there were no lengthy explanations of grammar (and Arabic grammar, while very logical, is extremely complex) and they kept writing to a minimum. At the end of the camp, we all took comprehension tests and my oral skills (both listening and speaking) were the equivalent of 2nd semester college/2nd year high school Arabic. From attempting to learn more Arabic on my own now, I can assure you that if we focused on traditional reading techniques, my progression would be much MUCH slower.
In general, if you’re asking “Which skill is more important for complete beginners in the language?”, I think it depends on 1) your goals 2) the language (ie. Spanish vs. Chinese) 3) your available resources. 
@taylorreid
You are compleatly right: everything depends on your goals, on the chosen language and your resources.
For example, I think that Russian, a language with a lot of different endings, is very difficult to study only by listening, but it’s quite possible with English.
I have to add here only one addition.
We (people) are different: some of us learn more with eyes, the other with ears, the rest with writing.
I’ve read that 75% of people learn more with eyes, and I’m one of them.
I have to see a word, and only after it I can understand it by listening.
Maybe MADERA and some others study better with ears, but they are not the majority of the learners.
That’s why reading is for this majority much more important than listening, especially in the first stage of language learning.
@Wulfgar, I totally agree. I think Steve’s dismissal of grammar is comforting, but I’m perusing a grammar book in addition to reading, listening and imitating the speech here on LingQ. This is how I learnt English and this is the way I know for sure will work for me.
Maybe it helps to study from grammar books but when it comes to grammar drills, all I can say is that they are actual tiresome ,boring and not to mention inefficient .
Also listening in general can be easier to apply . For example you are going some where (let’s say to work) and you want to do some language exercise , which of these can you apply , reading or listening ?
I actually prefer grammar drills. Why are they inefficient? If your goal is to learn grammar… drills is a good method
@MADARA: "…when it comes to grammar drills, all I can say is that they are […] boring…
I would say German drills are complete bore machines…
I would say drills are Bohrmaschinen
Yeah, but it’s a little dryer in English, no? 
Quite. Nothings worse than a dry drill at night
@Spatterson : Yes I should’ve said ‘‘rather inefficient’’ because one the one hand there are people like you who may be helped by these drills, on the other hand the rest of the world says that they can live without them.Steve was saying that drills are to avoid (if I’m not mistaken ) and also Stephen Krashen gave some study reports about them (The Power of Reading - Stephen Krashen - YouTube).
@MADARA: “…I should’ve said ‘‘rather inefficient’’ because one the one hand there are people like you who may be helped by these drills, on the other hand the rest of the world says that they can live without them…”
Eh? Spatterson against the world?
Yeah I’ve read all of Krashens stuff… and I don’t really buy it for me personally. Your “typical” person (I don’t mean this in a negative way) maybe able to just say “well, okay I’ve read this a bazillion times, this must be the rule” but that doesn’t work for me. I require precise rules and I must know them instinctual… otherwise I’m second guessing myself as I speak.
I had a whole computer language analogy typed up… but then I figured no one cares. this site is about Krashen ideas. I still pay for it but I’m not a true believer
Yeah maybe you’re right. Spatterson seems more like a go-with-the-flow guy.
WTF, my whole entire life I’ve never been described as go-with-the-flow. My life is like… the direct opposite of practically every american I know.
I didn’t want to insult you. Sometimes it’s good to go with the flow.
And about Krashen,he believes that through reading your grammatical correctness is bound to increase because of going through lots of patterns that appear randomly in texts,books etc…
The hell with it. I’ll go a bit into my programming example. It’s a slow night in Europe
The big problem reading and listening to learn a language… is that output is a completely different skill.
I’ve read tons and tons of Javascript, CSS/HTML, zsh, vim code, PHP, Erlang, Haskell, Lisp code… it’s a long list. And every time I sit down to code in these languages my mind goes practically blank. Sure I can sit there and “translate” from my native language (Java) via the internet and code something. On the other hand, languages I’ve worked with a lot (Python, Objective-C, C++…) I can code for hours, fluently.
So I don’t buy the reading and listening. reading, listening + writing and speaking. I can agree with that, from a purely non-scientific, personal experience POV
Edit 1 BTW I’m not insult. It takes a lot of effort to insult me. A lot
Edit 2: I’m only talking about my personal learning style Frankly I don’t give a damn about anyone else’s learning style. So pure Krashen might work for 99% of the world. Sucks to be me I guess. I’m not a teacher and I never will be. So, I don’t care about the rest of you
I suppose that we are all different from one another. And don’t get mad because no one wants to annoy you or anything. I mean one of the reasons I like this site is that it is used by intellectuals or future intellectuals ( I hope) and people here are smart enough to avoid speaking like the degenerates who curse others on youtube,yahoo etc…
And Spatterson, I don’t think that programming languages fit the bill here ( this is just my humble opinion ) .
You won’t be surprised to read that I think the computer programming analogy is irrelevant. We read and listen to languages for pleasure. We imbibe the culture and the way of thinking of another people. If we drive pleasure from doing this we also learn the language and increase our vocabulary. This is particularly the case if we use a system like LingQ, in my experience.
As for grammar rules and drills, I think we all react differently to them. I find it difficult to remember grammar rules and, quite often in the case of Russian, to even understand them. I will occasionally review grammar rules but not a lot of it sticks. On the other hand reviewing examples of different patterns in a language is helpful. Drills and exercises I simply will not do. I thoroughly dislike doing them. I don’t think I am unique in this regard. And majority of people who tell me they were discouraged from learning languages at school, react the same way.
I will usually default to reading if I have dedicated time to spend on language learning. Otherwise, I listen while doing other tasks.