Here, we'd like to share with you some practical advices gathered from other successful foreign language students. Best of luck!

Listening Spanish

• I have lots of CDs from (Spanish) textbooks and songs in Spanish. I always wrote what I listened. I listened to them in detail to capture every single word. I didn't understand for most of the time but I've gotten used to the sound of Spanish.
• I used to listened to jokes and short stories in CD. My focus was on more on sounds and words than plots of the stories. I wrote them down and checked them with the scripts.
• I listen to news many times and try to understand main points. I don't really worry about details.
• I watch movies and cable programs in Spanish without subtitles. If I don't understand the plot, I watch it more than once to understand it well.
• Although it was just for 10 minutes, I made a habit of listening to every single word of Spanish every day.
• I used to type up whatever I hear on radio. Of course I couldn't last not even 5 minutes when I just started. But my typing got faster, and I was able to listen to details too. It's really important to make conscious effort to listen in detail.
• I was listening so many times so that I can listen to each word in a sentence. Then, one day, I began to understand everything I listened to.
• For me, I definitely had to really concentrate and listen to it. I used to listen to Spanish as a music in background. But, you know, it doesn't work at all.
• When I began to feel like I'm getting better at listening, I changed my approach to listening. I began to listen for the plot or story line instead of details.
• When I was getting better, I began to watch television and followed the plot. Soap opera's my recommendation. I was really in to it.
• You shouldn't just hear the audio. You should listen to it many times until you understand it.
• It was effective to listen to it many times after reading the information in text. I didn't skip the parts that I didn't understand by listening to it once.
• It has been a very important preparación to do dictation exercise for learning individual sound in Spanish.
• The reason I sticked to radio or other audio sources is that if there is a visual source, I can't concentrate well from my ears. I could get confused thinking that I understood the content by watching it.
• When your listening skill has improved by listening to details, you don't have to worry about capturing every word or doing dictation. Rather, you should focus on understanding the main idea.
• After having done the basics, the listening ability improves according to the total time you spend listening.
• With those TV programs in series, if there is something that you don't understand, you don't have to worry about it. It's fine if you can understand the plot.