Do you ever find yourself listening to Spanish, barely understanding a word, then asking: how long is it going to take before I actually understand this language?
Not being able to understand spoken Spanish is both frustrating and constraining. You think maybe listening skills is the final barrier stopping you from any sort of freedom in the language.
Yet, despite hours of training and deep concentration in the moment, the sounds you hear still don’t make sense.
I’ve been there. It’s painful.
So, to respond, I’m going to try to alleviate your frustration in this article.
Reframing the problem
Now I could start by talking about techniques for improving your listening skills such as active listening, context control, and even just learning more words.
But, instead, I’ll ask you a simple question:
- Why is it so painful?
I ask this question because I want to break down an important component of mindset.
When it comes to working on your language skills, the biggest source of frustration, and the likely answer to the above question, is high expectations.
If you expect it to be easy to listen and understand, or that you should be good enough by now, then you are likely to feel lousy about your current ability to comprehend a Spanish conversation.
Conversely, if you can manage your own expectations, and even lower them, language learning and practicing your listening skills will be a much more enjoyable journey.
Of course, simply lowering your expectations isn’t easy. So, rather than ask you to drop your expectations because it’s a good idea, I’m going to try to help you manage them in a scientific way.
I started with a question about how long it should take to improve your listening skills. And often in these types of posts, where the author asks a question about how long something should take, the conclusion is often “it depends”.
Well, this is a tempting conclusion, but I will give you a number. I’m not going to leave you hanging.
But, of course, there have to be some caveats to any promise of time invested in listening training to return on investment made.
So, let’s start with some of the key factors that affect the time it takes to improve your listening skills so that I can build towards a healthy conclusion.
Natural ability
Yes, yes, alright, you got me.
I wanted to avoid writing about natural ability because it’s not helpful to think about. But I have to mention it because it is a factor.
Some people have a natural capacity to learn and improve listening skills better than others.
And, of course, a natural aptitude for listening comprehension will reduce the time it takes to develop your ability to understand a Spanish conversation and thus affect the conclusion below.
But, there is very little you can do to change this, so I’m going to leave it at this. It’s not worth thinking about.
It’s better to think about the activities you do have control over and focus on those.
Language learning experience
For me, listening comprehension was the most difficult skill to develop.
In comparison, I watched my wife learn Spanish over a two-year period, and I was only left with a deep feeling of jealously to see how quickly she developed her listening skills in Spanish.
While her quick development was frustrating, there was a good reason for it.
She learned French in high school and lived in France for a year when she was 16.
She had already developed the meta-skills required to improve her listening muscle in a foreign language.
She knew how to listen to foreign sounds. She had already figured out how to fill gaps in the information she didn’t quite understand, and guess the meaning from context.
Not only that but there are sounds and vocabulary that French and Spanish have in common.
If Spanish is your first language outside of English then you need to develop these meta-skills as well.
You also need to consider how previous experience contributes to the time it takes to develop listening skills, and how this will be the next factor that goes into the equation below.
Knowledge of the language
Probably the most obvious and least obvious part of listening comprehension performance is how well a student knows the language they are listening to.
I say most obvious because if you don’t know a single word of Spanish, you won’t be able to understand anything you hear when you listen to the language. This goes without saying!
But, then, it can be the least obvious thing because a lack of knowledge of the language is always a factor that affects students of all levels.
Sometimes the reason you don’t understand what you are hearing is that you don’t know the words or the grammar.
Or, maybe you do “know” a word, it just takes you a few minutes to remember its meaning.
And, if it takes you a few minutes to remember something, you’ll be lost as the conversation will have moved on by the time you get there.
To solve (or improve on) this problem, simply continuing to build your knowledge of Spanish will always contribute to your listening skills.
Then if you do ever encounter a Spanish conversation that is full of words that you know really well and can pull from your memory in seconds, but you still don’t understand what you are hearing, chances are you aren’t practicing using the right activities.
Types of listening activities
Benny Lewis wrote this wonderful post on listening comprehension: Shocking truth about passive listening.
In short, the takeaway from his article is: passive listening is really ineffective.
Benny said he spent over a thousand hours listening to German radio and still botched the listening component of his German exam.
I haven’t spent a thousand hours passively listening to Spanish radio. But, I have had a similar experience.
I have listened to a lot of Spanish podcasts and watched a lot of TV shows and movies in Spanish. And I have come to the same conclusion.
The best way to improve your listening skills is to practice with active listening exercises. And, to get the most out of these types of exercises you need to up the stakes.
The most effective activities to improve your listening skills in order are:
- Live interaction.
- Active listening exercises.
- Passive listening exercises.
Live interaction means working with a Spanish teacher or Spanish friends. We run live Spanish classes for this exact purpose, to get students to interact and respond to the language in real-time.
Active listening exercises can be done on your own but you must respond to something you are hearing with some sort of action. Even writing down words as come up in what you are hearing is a simple form of an active listening exercise.
Passive listening is the least effective activity and usually means putting on Spanish and just sitting and listening to it. It could be watching TV, or even worse putting on the radio or podcast in the background while you are doing something else.
In the next section, I’m going to make a prediction on the time you need to improve your listening comprehension.
But, the most important takeaway is that if I’m going to make a prediction about the time it will take you to improve then I have to take into account the types of activities you are practicing with.
If you are only using passive listening activities you may be in the ballpark of one thousand hours, like Benny.
But if you are using live interaction, you may only need a fraction of that time.
So how long should it take to improve your listening skills?
I have done enough dodging up to this point. It’s time to make some concrete predictions.
You know there are factors such as natural ability, previous experience, knowledge of the language, and types of listening training activities that all affect the time it takes to improve your listening skills.
So as I start throwing numbers around, of course, go easy on me—yes it depends.
That said, this is how I see the way you should set your own expectations.
Firstly, let’s assume this is the first time you have learned a language other than English. Then, we’ll put natural ability out of the equation.
Now, all we have to do is decide is how long you are going to commit to one type of listening activity.
Prior to starting to practice with live interaction, I had listened to a lot of podcasts and watched a lot of TV and movies. It wasn’t a thousand hours but it was a lot.
I used to listen to Spanish on the commute to work. It was about 30 minutes in each direction. There are 250 working days in a year. Minus the days I couldn’t listen to Spanish because I was so frustrated at my lack of ability to comprehend it. Then I need to add in the time I was watching Spanish movies, this is probably around 30 movies.
Therefore, conservatively, I would say the number of hours of passive listening practice I have done would be in the order of 450 hours over two years.
After all that training, I still couldn’t understand spoken Spanish.
Next, I’ll look at the time I needed to improve my listening skills after I started training using live interaction.
After many hours of listening passively, at the next point in my language learning journey I started to attend live Spanish classes and work with Spanish natives in one-on-one language exchanges.
I would say that I did probably a language class and language exchange once per week for about 9 months, which places me in the order of 75 hours in live interaction.
So I put the hours that contributed most to my listening skills in this type of activity around the 70 to 80 hours mark.
I would, therefore, say live interaction listening practice is about 5 to 10 times more effective than passive listening because I got more from 75 hours in live interaction than I did the prior 450 hours of passive listening practice.
This leads to the final conclusion.
After assuming you have spent a reasonable amount of time learning the key components of Spanish theory such as vocabulary and grammar—of course, using conversation hacking principles—then the amount of time you need to improve your listening skills is:
- If you are using live interaction practice: 70-100 hours.
- If you are using active listening training: 100-200 hours.
- If you are using passive listening training alone: 400-1000+ hours.
So, the key lesson is, if you haven’t spent time learning vocabulary and grammar, and you haven’t spent the time in the above list of recommended hours on each listening activity, then adjust your expectations.
There is no need to be frustrated, you simply need to get on with the work you need to do to meet your goals.
Conclusion
The biggest factor that affects the speed you can improve your listening skills in the types of activities you choose to do. Natural ability is out of your control. Previous experience is a factor but also somewhat out of your control for now.
If you haven’t hit the above training time, you don’t need to worry about not being a natural language learner or being specifically weak with listening skills, you just need to get on with the work required to improve.
What are your thoughts? Do you agree with the mathematics?
How long have you spent in one-on-one listening vs passive listening activities?
Thanks Andrew. This is the part with which I have had the most trouble. I’m going to get on Skype with some Spanish speakers right away!
Nice Alan, it’s great to hear you are still working on your Spanish, and you are inspired to get on Skype!
Understanding spoken Spanish is a major hurdle for me. I listen to Spanish TV all the time and am helping a lady from Honduras learn to speak English. There are many native Spanish speakers in this part of the country. I can understand some accents better than others. The accents from Mexico are hard for me. I find it easier to understand people from Central America and South America.
Thanks for your comment Sammie. I suggest the best thing to do is focus on one accent until you are confident with it. As your skills improve it gets easier to switch to other accents. But while you are still finding listening difficult, switching between accents will only discourage and slow your progress.
You know I love coming back to your posts because you always talk such common sense. The problem I’ve got with my listening ability is I expect it to be at the level of my native ear – no reason, just cause! Oddly with the other language modalities – writing, reading and speaking I don’t have the same expectation – I basically give myself a break with them; it’s going to take time. I wonder if the difference of self-pressure is because we are primed to understand aural input first as babies (before speaking and well before reading and writing) that when we can’t find the ‘sound key’ to unlock the language patterns we become so disheartened. But truth is even as babies listening was never passive it’s was always dialogic with our care givers (so why hours of movies or even bloody Peppa Pig). Plus there’s nothing worse than looking at a lovely Spanish person full of hope and interest in you and you know they’ve asked something really cool but all you heard was ¿ se que ya fufhfhfhchfhfhg sabes? Ultimate muppet moment 🙂 I shall endeavor to lower my expectations 🙂
Thanks Anne. Yes, it’s a fascinating question: why is it so disheartening not being able to understand? It is most likely due to expectations. The next question maybe: why do we set our expectations so high? This is perhaps less obvious but could be do with comparing ourselves to others. What I think is even more important though is avoiding ‘why’ questions around negative emotions and instead asking ‘how’ questions: How can I lower my expectations? How can I improve faster? How can I improve faster and enjoy the process? Hopefully, if you can ask yourself more empowering questions, you can have more fun and less muppet moments 🙂 Good luck!!
Further to this – there’s a strange tension isn’t there? If we aim low, we get low. If we aim too high, we give up. Maybe the trick is to aim high but be patient achieving excellence – I do martial arts so I should know better 😉
I know this conversation was a year ago, but the question is timeless. One thing about listening is that it IS actually harder. For one thing, you have the pressure of time. When you read, you can take your time. When you listen, it has to be fast, and you can’t regulate the timing. Also, when people talk, there are additional pronunciation patterns that tend to obscure the individual words in favor of entire phrases, not to mention ambient noise that can interfere. In reading, on the other hand, the words always look clear and are separated by white space. And unlike writing or speaking, where you get to control the message, grammar, and vocabulary, in listening, you are at the mercy of the speaker. And unlike reading, where you can clearly discern new or unfamiliar words, in listening you often can’t even perceive what you don’t know. So you have to be extra prepared before you can listen effectively. And you have to become well acclimated to the accent and style of individual speakers. Usually you learn to understand one person at a time. You make one friend that you really get, but can’t understand others. You understand one teacher, but then struggle with a new teacher. Person by person, and accent by accent, you grow in your listening ability. It is clearly the toughest of the skills, and most socially stressful as you try to keep up face to face with real people in real time.
I faced this problem when I was studying English but now it doesn’t seem so hard. Instead I face difficulties in writing and speaking with my third, fourth and fifth languages. The biggest problem I face with listening is regarding the ‘language speed’ and that will surely improve with time I say this because of my experience with English. Anyways, I defiantly agree with your analysis. Active listening practice is the only best solution available 😄 Thank you for sharing. Muchas Gracias.
Thanks Leul, yes I agree, I’m onto my 3rd and 4th languages as well and having the same experience. Thanks for sharing!
The other day I was watching a TV show from Australia and realized that I was not really understanding a lot of the dialog, in English. I started really concentrating and still missed a lot of it. I have since come to realize that even with TV shows from the states I often don’t understand everything especially if there is an accent or less than perfect diction. It makes me feel better about having so much trouble understanding Spanish. Years back a German friend related how he took English throughout his schooling including university and assumed he spoke English fluently. He moved to the states and realized he didn’t. Said it took him months before he understand. Thanks for your site. Bob
Excellent article. I agree with everything. I wouldn’t have agreed a year ago – I thought passive listening was much more important, but what I realize now is the importance of combining learning something, then, listening to examples to really solidify the learning. I have a tutor 2 hours a week – and we spent a few years going over grammar – conjugation – usage, etc. Now, she gives me situations to think about – and I have to respond using the correct verbs / conjugations / tenses — and not worry about the little mistakes (feminine vs masculine por ejemplo) – just communicate the idea. Also, I now see the absolute value of language exchanges. Fantastic way to learn and make new friends.
One on one conversations have been key to me. I still struggle with contemporary movies where they talk very fast with a lot of slang and background noise. But after two years of Skyping I have no problems carrying an an hour conversation in Spanish. That to me is much more helpful than podcasts and news also I use it as well. Great advice as always. Thanks.
Thanks for sharing Kim, I’m glad you have had a similar experience 🙂
Thanks for this . Cant fault what you say once again and its so valuable that you can put into words what you have gleaned from your experience .
I would add one more thing which is to look at one’s listening skills in one’s own language. In fast talking movies in my own language my wife gets the dialogue much more easily than I do and sometimes has to tell me what’s been said.
Yes, this is such an important point!!! We don’t judge ourselves harshly if we don’t understand English actors in English movies that are inaudible but when it happens in Spanish, we think our Spanish sucks and needs drastic improvement! Thanks for your insight! 🙂
As always, thank you for an insightful and positive post.
I have a solid base of vocabulary and grammar. But I, too, struggle to understand ordinary conversation. I had been using ConversationExchange to have conversations with native Spanish speakers who want to improve their English. We would speak only in English for 30 minutes and then only in Spanish for 30 minutes. And I did see some improvement in my ability to SPEAK Spanish, but I didn’t see as much of an improvement in my ability to UNDERSTAND Spanish as I had hoped.
Now I am trying to find native Spanish speakers with whom I can engage in cross-talk. The idea is that each person speaks his or her native language to hold a conversation. This is so much better (at this stage of my understanding). Without the (admittedly self-imposed) pressure to sound intelligent in Spanish, I feel more relaxed and able to understand the other person. Similarly, I don’t spend the time when I should be listening to the other person stressing out about how I’m going to “translate” my response. I think that my comprehension is improving more now than when I tried to both listen to and speak in Spanish.
I’m hoping to use cross-talk as a bridge to improve my comprehension while I continue my other activities to improve my grammar and add to my vocabulary.
Thanks for sharing Cora! The idea of “cross-talk” is something I haven’t tried but if you are finding success with it, then fantastic! Keep it up!!!
Cross-talk is something I didn’t plan to do, but my Puerto Rican pastor spoke faster in Spanish and I spoke faster in English – so we started having these rapid conversations that befuddled onlookers. My comprehension at speed improved and we didn’t waste time!
Thanks for sharing your experience Pamela! 🙂
I’m surprised that nobody suggested reading aloud. I remember back in my primary school days how effective reading aloud had been in my English comprehension. So I’m memorizing and reading aloud an entire paragraph of Spanish text everyday when I’m out on my hour long morning walk with a kindle in my hand. I repeated reading the selected paragraph many times before the grammar and meaning sink in. I may be getting stares from passer-by but it is extremely effective.
Thanks for sharing Desmond! 🙂
One thing that has really helped my listening is watching Spanish Language programming with subtitles in Spanish. You can see the words and hear them at the same time.
Thanks for sharing Christy! If it is helping, then fantastic, keep doing it!! I usually recommend that students turn the subtitles off because watching with subtitles is more of a reading exercise than a listening exercise. Try to advance to no subtitles as soon as you can!
I’ve been finding it very frustrating that my listening skills are not good even though I think I have a large knowledge of Spanish. This article has made me feel better in the knowledge that’s it’s not just me and I will get there. I’m inspired again. Thank you Andrew
Thanks, Michael! There is definitely a knowledge trap here. I used to think that my knowledge was good enough but years later I now know at that time that it wasn’t. We should always consider a lack of familiarity with the Spanish language as a possible reason why we don’t understand what we are hearing. But, yes, there are other factors too!
Well, I’m glad to hear that it’s not just me who struggles with listening comprehension. Great article Andrew and great reading other’s experiences as well.
I have my ups and downs while learning Spanish but, every time that I read one of your articles, I get inspired anew.
Thank you for providing these very helpful articles and keep up the great work!
Thanks, Scott, it’s definitely not just you. Listening was hard for me too and for almost every single student I have ever worked with. I’m glad to hear you are inspired!
Hi. I am an Intermediate in Spanish. I am B2 in spanish for reading and grammar and B1 for speaking, but i cannot understand spoken spanish well at all, it’s so frustrating.
The problem I have is this…..when i listen to any spanish audio – i listen to authentic stuff such as easy spanish, aswell as Intermediate materials, as I am B1 for speaking.
I understand maybe half or 60 % of what was said. So, I read the subtitles / text and then listen and read the sentence again and again and again…..the problem doesn’t lie with vocabulary or phrases, I know 90-95% of the text / subtitles, but no matter how many times i listen or listen and read, what the person says, sounds almost nothing like what the subtitles say. I can’t even make out what they are saying.
So there is no way i can understand without the subtitles. Any advice? Men are the worst to understand, they mumble and don’t say the phrases or words properly.
It’s usually not the speed either, i used to think it was, sometimes it is, but not too much, even when i slow the audio down, words are still not pronounced properly and sound like a blur.
Thanks
Adam
Thanks, Adam, yes, as I mentioned in the article, live interaction is the most effective way to improve your listening skills. Watching recordings of native speakers speaking online is not the most effective tool.