Hey guys. I hear alot from Steve saying he enjoys being able to listen to content whilst doing other stuff like going for a walk, housework etc etc. This is great, but is the content only really beneficial to you if you’re at a certain stage already in the language in terms of listening?
For example. I have seriously neglected any sort of listening in Portuguese…up until now, because i’m realising i’ve been far too lax in thinking i don’t need to focus so much on listening because it’s so similar to spanish…even though it isn’t. So will it be pointless for me to download some podcasts and listen to them on my way to the gym if it’s all just noise to me? , other than the occasional word i recognise from spanish.
Or in order to improve will I have to be listening to content whilst reading 20 or 30 times?
You obviously won’t get as much as you would if you were reading along with it, but, at the same time, it’s obviously not going to hurt. You have to get used to the rhythm and intonation of a language, so listening to any (native) material in your target language, even if you don’t understand anything, will still improve your listening skills in the language.
I guess I heard a fair bit of French in my seven or eight years of mandatory French classes (learned nothing, though (go Canadian education system!)), and, years later, once I had finally stopped hating the language and decided to properly learn it, listening was so much easier than it should have been in a language I virtually knew nothing about (really, our education system is great), because I was already used to the way French sounds.
And I mean, like… you’re asking about listening to the language while you’re doing other things (otherwise known as “not language study time”)… it’s not like you could use that time to study the language more effectively. Your options are either “listen to Portuguese” or “don’t listen to Portuguese”. And one of those is far more effective than the other.
(hint: it’s the first one^^)
I guess thats true, any listening must be more beneficial than no listening. I know the 11 thousand odd words effectively from reading alone. It’s hard to say from memory, but a huge majority of these words I will only put down as known because I recognize them from spanish words. So in other words i’ve pretty much racked up all these words from 1. having studied spanish for a few years and 2. Only really reading material as opposed to listening, speaking or writing.
