Any value in listening to things you don't really understand?

[Theodisce]

I am a beginner, just a few months of study, but I have been listening to Spanish language radio since I started learning. I don't know whether my progress is faster because of it, but I do believe it has "trained my ear" to hear the Spanish words more easily.

Of course, it's not going to teach me Spanish by itself, but I am sitting in the car on my way to work for an hour a day. Why not use that time to immerse myself in some Spanish? I suppose it could be argued that I could use that time more profitably by listening to Coffee Break Spanish or News In Slow Spanish, but it's just easier to keep my radio tuned to CNN Espanol!

I've learned most of my languages listening to native audio material. For the beginning it is already sufficient if you can understand something as opposed to nothing at all. Of course, I wouldn't be able to learn Chinese that way, one does have to recognize at least some vocabulary. There is a place for grammar, too, but much of it becomes clear and self-evident thanks to the audio input. So far I have devoted roughly 500 hours to my Spanish and it was mostly listening and reading combined with occasional reviewing the declension tables. As a result I can have an hour long conversation with occasional searching for vocabulary. I would say I am at the B1 level.

[Cavesa]

For someone at the intermediate level that is already pretty familiar with the language in basic contexts, do you think it is beneficial to listen to stuff that seems to exceed your current level? For example, listening to news radio or something while working/traveling, even though you don't understand much of it. Or do you think that the only way of learning through listening is by active listening (really focusing)?

An excellent question! I suppose you are talking about your B2 German here, am I right? My answer is based on my experience with starting with extensive listening after my DELF B2, so you may want to take it with a grain of salt as it is not German, and than starting earlier at other romance languages.

-No matter when you start from the intermediate level on (beginners are different), you will probably feel like understanding almost nothing at the beginning. Even if you get used to listening with TL subtitles, or if you wait till finishing a C1 course or two. I think it is inevitable to "panic" slightly at first. However, it doesn't mean the chosen content exceeds your level too much. It simply means you need to get used to it a bit.

-Radio, from my experience, is one of the hardest things to listen to. Sure, you should be getting comfortable with it at B2, but I think tv series are much better for overall listening skill development.

-I don't think listening to stuff on the background is worth much. Focusing on what you listen is a different thing. You are very likely to improve fast, if you give it the time. From my experience (again, take it with a grain of salt as it may differ individually), one or two episodes of a tv series is enough to get me over the first "help, I don't understand it" phase. A few binge-watching sessions at the beginning of your extensive listening project can do miracles.

-Look at Emk's logs, he offers a lot of good advice on how to develop listening skills. My method is simply devouring tons of content, starting from something easier, like a dubbed and not too hard tv series, and continuing to harder stuff.

[Theodisce]

-Radio, from my experience, is one of the hardest things to listen to. Sure, you should be getting comfortable with it at B2, but I think tv series are much better for overall listening skill development.

The opposite is true for me. I find purely audio input (radio, lectures, talks) to be the easiest to follow, provided I know at least something about the subject (history- yes, chemistry- no).

[leosmith]

I think most will agree that it takes a lot of listening to native material to get good at listening to native material. What's more open for debate is what percentage of your listening time should be devoted to native material. I used to believe that most of my listening time should be i+1, with a little native material thrown in there for good measure. Now I'm learning Korean, which is notoriously hard for westerners to develop listening skills in, and I'm trying my new philosophy, which is actually similar to the way I tackle conversation. 100% native. Ok, my first 100 hours or so had a lot of beginner/intermediate podcasts and such, but I went native after that. Does it work? I'll let you know in about 4 more months.

One other comment - if you're not paying attention to it, don't expect to benefit from it. That's just my opinion based on personal experience.

[Voytek]

I used to watch movies in English when my comprehension level was at 75% and it helped me reach almost full comprehension level at the end. It took me about 600-700 hours to get there. Personally, I think that watching movies does have a sense but I doubt that listening to the radio in that case has any value. I think that listening to the radio makes a sense when you can understand virtually everything whereby you can reinforce your knowledge of the language at quite high speed - we all know how fast they talk in the radio.

But you can use the L-R method which I find very useful.