Just listen

When people start with Spanish, they want to do everything at once, or at least in the shortest time possible. They run their immersion environment, but cram everything in it; reading, listening, speaking and writing. Although this are things that are present in a good immersion environment, you should look out to not give yourself a burn-out. People that are too keen to do all these things on a day – each and every freakin’ day – are just working towards a huge burn-out. I’ve noticed it by friends, who didn’t want to continue with Spanish at the end. That’s why I propose something different. Just. Listen.

Why would you just listen, and to what? First of all, the why: listening is easy. You don’t need to been actively doing it to benefit from the input. As long as you’re awake your brain will pick up the Spanish structures and words. Words you know will draw your attention for a few seconds, after which it’s burnt even more in your brain. All this can be done hands-free; while driving, while working out, while working, etc., etc. The sky is the limit when it comes to listening. It really is the coolest thing out there. It also takes less energy from you. Where speaking, reading and writing really take away your energy because you need to be concentrated, audio can easily be ignored when needed. Somehow, you tune-out when you need to concentrate on other things, and tune-in when it’s possible again. But still, even when you’re tuned-out your brain will still pick up words and phrases.

Ok, so you want to listen and leave other things away for the time being (except for your SRS sentences, of course). Now the question is: what to listen? This could be anything. I’m a huge music-addict (already was before starting with Spanish), so I listen to Spanish music most of the day. Before I go to bed, I also listen to the Harry Potter audiobook I have or to some podcasts I download once in a while. During the day however (when I’m not listening to music) I have the television on playing Spanish shows or the news. If that’s not the case, I’m listening to talk radio over the internet. There are literally thousands of ways to get audio input, you just have to search and pick out the ones you really like and could listen to the whole day. It’s not that hard if think about it…

Now that I’ve told you why I think you could only listen for a long period, I still forgot to tell you why I think you should concentrate on listening for now. The main reason is that many Spanish learners can read, write and even speak, but still have trouble listening. According to many, “Spaniards speak like a freakin’ machine gun! Trtrtrtrtrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!“. I don’t really agree, although the language seems to be made for rapid speech (I don’t know, there’s just some kind of rhythm in it…), but if the majority of the learners think it is, it’s a serious problem. No one can have a serious conversation with a native when the speaking of that native goes waaaaay too fast for the learner. That’s why it’s so damn important to get used to the rapid speech of Spanish speakers, and it’s better to get used to it NOW, rather than later.