This Is How You Should Practice Listening--In Italian and Any Foreign Languages

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Listening is one of the most generally overlooked exercises in all languages--just like speaking.

Learners resort to the news in slow Italian, subtitles, reduced speed, and simplified narration in the hope of building up slowly and gradually an ear for the language. The common misconception goes, "once I can understand reduced speed, I'll be ready for regular speed." Seems logical, doesn't it? Unfortunately, there are a couple of problems there. Subtitles, reduced speed, news in slow Italian, etc. become a comfortable box everybody is afraid to abandon. So most learners stay in first gear and refuse to step on it. However, even if they did move up a notch, being able to understand slow-motion Italian WILL NOT give them an edge. They will simply need to train their ear to real-speed Italian from scratch once they decide it's time. Therefore, why waste years on the comfortable but useless stuff? Starting off with the real Italian is just the most logical thing to do. Besides, practicing with the real and faster-than-the-real Italian will automatically train your ear for anything slower. In this way you can get two things done in one.

Textbook listening practice exercises usually present a few additional problems.

For one thing, text and dialogues are extremely unrealistic. They're poorly written, sound artificial, and reflect nothing of the way Italians speak.

Whoever reads the dialogues or text seem to be blissfully unaware of a thing called "acting". No one needs Gianmaria Volonté reading for us here, but should it really be more of a torture than they already make it? A bit of sentiment wouldn't hurt.

Nowhere in Italy or in the world will you find crispy clear enunciation in a completely silent environment.

Below are a few ways you can train your ear to Italian--effectively.

1) Stop watching the news in slow Italian. It's ok if you're only six months in studying Italian, but if you're already an intermediate student this is going to be detrimental to your progress. Watch the regular news instead. On the website "Raiplay" (this is not a link) you can find the national TV-news, and it's accessible to viewers watching from anywhere outside Italy--except North Korea.

2) Watch films and shows in Italian without subtitles. There's room for compromise here. If you really don't want to turn the subtitles off--though you should--at least use subtitles in English. DO NOT USE subtitles in Italian. If you do, you'll stop listening altogether and read only. Subtitles in English (or your native language) will at least naturally encourage you to listen for language comparison.

Also, I understand there might be good films or shows you don't want to miss the meaning of. Go ahead and use subtitles in English for those if you can't help it. Turn off the subtitles for anything that's not worth understanding in full--which these days amounts to about 95% of content out there.

3) Watch and listen to what Italians watch and listen to, not what learners of Italian watch and listen to. Your goal is to stop being a learner and to start being a speaker.

4) If you feel it's just too quiet around you, you can bring the challenge up a notch. Open the window and let some street noise in. Alternatively, you can create background noise from a YouTube video. There are videos reproducing the sound of rain, rivers, traffic, town square noise, restaurant chatter, shooting, you name it. Train your ear to understand dialogue in a noisy environment, not in a soundproof booth. A language isn't learned through silence, but amid life's noise.

5) At some point, you'll be able toListen to something faster than regular everyday speech

Training your ear to real speech is possibly more daunting a task than working to improve your speaking skills. However, with a bit of focus, method, and motivation, you'll be able to stop thinking of it as yet another chore "you sadly must tend to".

Focus: convince yourself that not understanding is not a bad thing. It is instead a necessary phase you cannot skip. You must learn to make your way through it by realizing it is in fact a positive and valuable experience. It teaches you how to react to it. Being familiar with this feeling means you won't panic or freeze when it happens in a real conversation scenario.

Method: Practice your listening five or ten minutes a day. You can even do it on alternate days. What matters is consistency over quantity.

While listening or watching, there's nothing really you need to do. In fact, there's nothing you should do other than sit back, relax your upper body (chest, shoulders, neck, facial muscles, arms), and let the sound in. Do not take notes and do not use the dictionary. Do not focus on individual words. Your initial goal is to get the gist. Details come later. At the end of the listening practice session, you can summarize aloud in one or two brief sentences what it was about. You can say something like: "In questo dialogo, due persone parlano dell'arte rinascimentale a Firenze," or "il telegiornale ha riportato la notizia di un omicidio molto efferato in Lombardia."

Motivation: this is the most immediate result of a methodical and consistent practice. Along with motivation, you will gain confidence. The more you understand--and you will understand more if you practice like I recommended--the more confident and motivated you will become. The more confident and motivated, the more and faster you will understand. This is the kind of loop you want to get yourself in.

Practice listening this way and you will reap the benefits. In fact, you will sooner than you think.