Start learning a language by listening

Start learning a language by listening. It is important to listen to the target language as much as possible even if you can’t understand a word.

Why?

Children start the speaking process by listening to the adults talking and only later start to imitate it. How would we expect to be able to say even a simple word, like Hi! if we have never heard it before, only in written form? We need the input in order to produce the output. First we need to hear in order to be able to talk and that applies to our second language as well.

By listening to the language your brain will store a lot of sound-combinations, and later, when you actually learn the meaning and the spelling of the word or expression you will have half the work to do since the sound-combination is already stored in your brain. You will only have to learn the spelling and the meaning. You will also become better at understanding spoken language.

It also helps with your pronunciation. Have you ever had a native speaker correct your pronunciation and you just stand there, like: but that’s exactly how I said it? and you start desperately repeating the word until the native speaker says that’s it!, but you have no idea what you have said differently?

Each language has its own set of sounds. Depending on your native language and your target language you might have a hard time differentiating between certain sounds in your target language. By listening to your target language your brain slowly gets familiar with the new sounds helping you achieve a more accurate pronunciation. And trust me, it can save you a lot of trouble and misunderstanding. Just think about the ‘infamous’ beach pronounced with a shorter ( I ) by  English learners… Or in Hungarian for example, a lot of foreigners have trouble differentiating between the sounds a and á. We have two very similar words agy and ágy, that mean two completely different things. Agy means brain and ágy means bed, so that small alteration does matter. 

What do YOU listen to on a daily basis? Audiobooks? Youtube videos? Radio? Tv? Start listening to them in the language you are learning!

Have fun,

Zsófi

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