The Big Listening Con – Why Most Listening Practice Material Isn’t Fit For Purpose
by Olly Richards
I used to think that speaking was the most important skill in language learning.
After all, learning to speak fluently is what we all ultimately want.
But there's a problem…
In all the languages I've learnt in recent years, my speaking ability has outpaced my ability to understand (my listening ability).
As a result, I'd often find myself able to start speaking, and have conversations quite early-on in the language learning process.
But when it came time to understand the reply in a conversation, I'd often be a little bit lost.
(Edit: I eventually fixed this problem when I created the StoryLearning method!)
Have you ever felt this?
You have? It doesn't feel good.
Poor listening skills…
Make conversations hard
Leave you feeling demotivated (or embarrassed)
And ultimately hold you back
On the other hand, when your listening skills are strong, you quickly become more familiar with the language, and your speaking ability soon improves as well. (It's a win-win.)
(My near-death experience on top of a mountain taught me the power of comprehension!)
Once I realised this, I began spending more time listening to audio in my languages.
It really helped.
Not long after, I began looking for material with transcripts, so I could listen and read at the same time.
That helped even more.
I started talking about this learning approach in my teaching, and on the podcast, and people loved the idea!
With one small problem…
Most Listening Material Is A Con
To this day, whenever I suggest that people spend more time listening to audio material, the reply is predictable:
“But Olly, where can I find good listening material?”
(Note the word good in that sentence.)
There is, of course, a lot of audio material in foreign languages out there, but it's usually one of two things:
Textbook stuff, for complete beginners
Native speaker stuff, like movies, radio, or YouTube
But what if you're neither a complete beginner… nor super advanced?
Well, it's surprisingly hard to find listening material that's good for language learning.
(Looking for good listening training material? Check out Conversations)
Here's why…
To Improve Your Listening Skills, You Need To Listen A Lot
Yep, you need to rack up the hours spent listening!
Not only that…
You also need to listen to real language, on a wide range of topics, that is representative of how people really speak, including…
False starts
Slang
Interruptions
Mistakes, etc…
But here's what most so-called listening material looks like:
It's short – 20-30 seconds of audio at most (half a page of text)
It's on transactional topics – e.g. how to rent a flat
It's “language for teaching” (rather than real language)
Here's the real problem: This stuff isn't actually “listening practice” material at all!
What?!
Yes, and here's why…
You might think that any piece of audio is helpful for listening practice. But actually, if what you're listening to is short pieces of textbook-like dialogues that have been “cleaned up” for easy listening.
Indeed, in language classrooms around the world, you'll hear teachers say: “Let's do some listening now!”, and play a 20-second clip from the textbook.
How does it help you practise listening?
Sorry, it doesn't.
This kind of material is just a textbook in disguise.
To improve your listening skills – i.e. get better at listening, so you understand people when they talk – you have to listen tolonger recordings that contain real, natural language.
When You Listen A Lot, A Wonderful Thing Happens
When you simply spend good quality time in the company of your target language, you get natural exposure to a huge number of new words, phrases, grammar, sentence patterns, and so on…
Far more than you ever would by studying short, textbook dialogues.
This extended exposure is what you need in order to develop strong listening skills.
(Think about it: How can you ever become good at listening without spending a lot of time… listening?)
So, this brings us back to the original question: “Where can I get good listening material?”
Where can you get material that satisfies all the above requirements…
AND that comes with a transcript?
AND that is suitable for your level?
Hmm.
You can't…
Until now.
Creating Hope For Bad Listeners (Like Me)
One thing I've learnt about language learning, is that the right material makes the world of difference.
It happened to me recently, in fact, with Cantonese…
I was frustrated as hell with bad material. Non-existent material might be a better term, in fact.
With Cantonese, it was a binary choice between:
Artificial textbook dialogues that bored me to death, or…
Breakneck-speed Hong Kong movies & TV of which I couldn't understand a thing
Sure enough, over the last few months, I've been in Cantonese heaven. With hours and hours of interesting, authentic listening material to play with, my listening skills have gone through the roof, and I'm speaking much more fluently as a result.
So, after seeing first-hand the power of passion-fuelled listening material, I made a big decision:
I'm going to create the world's most awesome listening material, in many different languages, and at a range of ability levels.
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