Can listening to music really improve overall listening comprehension?

[Serpent]

Good luck! I do think that sometimes it's good not to look at the lyrics immediately, just like it's good to listen to a podcast with no transcript.

[Elenia]

Good luck! I do think that sometimes it's good not to look at the lyrics immediately, just like it's good to listen to a podcast with no transcript.

I agree! Especially if you want to learn to sing the song (something I like doing). It's better and more enjoyable to get a good understanding of the rhythm and pacing of the song before moving on the the lyrics. I also tend to do very intensive lyrics study (transcribing them, correcting them, translating them) which goes better after I know the song fairly well.

[steyyan]

In Spanish I could understand music long before anything else spoken in Spanish, so while I found that boosting my confidence in the beginning, the usefulness wore off, especially since even a 15 minute YouTube video (usually spoken in machine gun tempo) offers more raw language input than an entire album (often sung loud and clearly, with quite a lot of repetition) usually does, and the former is easier to find than the latter...

[reineke]

One mustn't confuse listening for enjoyment and listening for developing receptive language proficiency.

The sooner we confuse the two, the better.