THE #1 LISTENING MISTAKE MOST LANGUAGE STUDENTS MAKE
When I first started learning a second language it didn’t take long to realise how difficult it was to improve my listening skills.
I tried watching movies without subtitles, I tried with subtitles in my own language and I tried with subtitles in the target language. I tried listening to podcasts and I watched the Spanish news every saturday morning.
Even when I knew what was being said, by following along with movie subtitles or an audio transcript, the sounds I was hearing weren’t connecting with the words I understood on paper.
I thought maybe the answer was more listening. So I did just that—I listened for hours.
The problem was, even after hours of listening, I still wasn’t improving.
After a few years of studying the language in my own country, it wasn’t until I went on a trip to Spain that I realised what the problem was…I had fallen for the passive listening trap. It wasn’t until I had spent time using the language and interacting with locals that I realised that my passive listening was the reason I hadn’t made any significant progress.