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Shocking truth about passive listening

| 121 comments | Category: learning languages

A whole industry of language learning products is based on something that I have to frankly say that I think is absolute rubbish.

Some people swear by it, and yet it rarely ever produces any useful results.

The shocking truth is that passive listening is never going to get you to fluency in a language. What’s even worse is that it won’t even help your ability to understand.

Learn a language while you sleep? Dramatically improve your ability to converse by having the radio/TV on in the background for thousands of hours? Master a language while you work or do your taxes with your shiny iPod blaring noise you aren’t paying attention to?

Not a hope in hell.

This is something that really touches a nerve for me because I have met the results of this approach – people who have put thousands of hours into passive learning and they are barely any better off because of it.

It’s barely better-than-nothing.

I meet dozens of disappointed language learners every week, no matter where I am in the world, and I have declared war on the reasons holding them back from reaching fluency in their target language, and relying on passive learning (playing audio in the background while you are focused on something else) is high up on my list.

I want to destroy this myth and finally help these frustrated people do something useful. In the same way as just studying will never help you speak, passive listening will never help you speak and even understand a language.

Results of thousands of wasted hours?

I asked some people on twitter and on Facebook what their opinion of the actual results of this was and (among others) I got the following replies:

@hpp23 I tried passive listening but it didn’t help me in my learning. First understand actively, then listen passively & let it sink
@yearlyglot I think passive listening can only be done when you already know the language. But learning must be active.
@permanentnomad After two years of studying Japanese with it, I think my time would have been better spent speaking with natives.

I share these sentiments. When you already understand the language, it’s different – but to learn the language? The problem with embracing a passive means of learning a language is that a language is active. It requires your attention to understand and your ability to produce to actually converse.

Sorry to break it to you but you have to do some work to make progress in a language. Passive listening is a way to escape doing something useful, since you are doing something else at the same time.

Having thousands of hours of audio in the background will do you no good if you aren’t actively giving it your attention. It’s just noise unless you are actively listening to it.

My own disappointment with passive listening

This approach was already something I was sceptical about for several years, but as part of the last months’ input experiment (some of which has helped me improve my learning approach) I had the radio on in German all the time while I was doing something else (writing a book, or doing grammar or written exercises for the test) and gave it a real chance to see if it could help.

After sitting my German C2 exam, a few hours of spoken practise per week gave me 75% in the oral exam, and actively writing several texts for correction gave me 74% in the written exam, both of which I’m very pleased about. But passively hearing over a thousand hours of German radio got me a disappointing 37% in the listening exam.

The listening exam was hard, but it was very fair. The reason I got such a low result isn’t the test’s fault. It was my delusional belief that passive listening for a really long time gave me even the slightest edge. You definitely can’t listen your way to fluency, but you can’t even passively hear your way to a decent level of listening comprehension.

Some people have ludicrously suggested that I should have heard more to get a higher result. As if three thousand hours would have tripled my score(!)

The only reason I got even what I did would have been due to the spoken practise - which naturally involves focused listening. What I should have done for exam preparation is focus on any audio and analysed it while doing nothing else at the same time. I am confident that just five hours of this would have likely given me enough of an edge to pass the entire exam.

I realised this after doing an example exam a few days before the real one. If I had not done the active listening work the days before the exam, my result would have actually been even lower!

Why is it so popular?

It’s not even really passive listening I’m criticising here – that doesn’t actually exist; it’s passive hearing. When you are truly listening to something then it has your full attention.

So why is passive hearing so popular?

In this day and age we want short-cuts to everything. Drive-through fast-food, shampoo and conditioner in-one, phones that are also calculators/maps/Internet browsers/games. Sometimes this can be useful, but other times you are better just keeping it simple and doing one thing at a time. Learning languages is one of those things.

Learning a language while you do something else is lazy. It doesn’t show any devotion at all to the task at hand. It gives you a “sense” of doing something useful, and it can even be fun for some people! (Playing computer games and watching TV can also be fun, but it doesn’t mean you get anything useful out of it)

After the “honeymoon”, when you have to use the language you’ll just feel stupid that you can’t speak or understand when spoken to despite all that “work” you put in.

It answers people’s eternal question of “I don’t have time” to study/practise a language because “I’m too busy”, so just simply have it in the background to feel like you are doing work. Of course you have time! Stop making excuses and find the time! Even 10 minutes of focused learning/listening will give you way more benefits than 10 hours of noise you aren’t paying attention to.

The few benefits

Of course, there are some reasons that passive hearing can be beneficial.

However, it’s important to be aware of precisely what these reasons are! I am not writing this article to tell people to turn off their streaming radio or stop listening to podcasts – (I even wrote a post recently about how to find podcasts!) I want people to stop deluding themselves that it counts as their main useful step to fluency that deserves all the time it gets.

Here are some benefits, with some warnings:

In early stages, a language really feels like noise. If you have it on in the background you can get used to how it generally sounds and it seems less foreign. You don’t need to focus on it to get this feeling. I am attempting this with Hungarian to get used to the sound of the language before getting full-time exposure to it. But this is just familiarity for emotional comfort (which is indeed important) – it is not actual comprehension. Hearing Hungarian for years without actively analysing it (or better yet, using it with natives) will get me nowhere.
@don_rivers compared it to having coffee on your desk. You can take “sips” whenever you feel it’s important and tune in and focus when you decide to. I’d still argue that the times between the “sips” are only useful in that you are saved the “hard work” of pressing a button, and it otherwise doesn’t help. A solid distinction of right now I am focused on learning the language will help a lot of people, and they lose this if they vaguely tune in and out.
Even when not paying attention, your subconscious will be on the look-out for certain things. It’s like how we suddenly hear our name from across the room in a noisy party from a conversation we weren’t paying attention to. When listening to news etc. in a foreign language, you will hear key words you learned and might decide to tune in and focus then. I recognised “egy” (one) on streamed Hungarian radio and this is a confidence booster. But a thousand hours to get these minor buzzes is not worth it. The feeling is much better with natives.
@danielpwright says it is to be preferred over English (or your native tongue), if you can’t actively listen/converse right now, although I would say this is just marginally better than nothing if you aren’t giving it your attention. It’s better to find some way to actively listen or converse rather than feel like you have done your language-learning work for the day.

Be more active!

I’m not trying to rain on people’s parade here – I just want learners to be clear about the fact that they need to put time into lots of different aspects of learning a language (especially speaking it). By all means, continue passively listening, but be aware of its usefulness so you try other learning approaches too and give them the time they deserve. Don’t use hearing “something” all day to get out of the guilt of not doing any real work!

Give the audio your full attention and analyse it. Even if just for a few minutes. This was my main mistake in my thousand-hour experiment. What I should have done was close my computer screen and give the audio my full focus for at least 5-10 minute segments and replay it if possible until I understood it all.

Having the radio/podcast on in the background isn’t doing you any “harm”, it can only help – the harm is in people’s understanding of how much it helps. If they think it helps more than it actually does, they may put less work into way more useful things.

Of course, my criticism on passive listening here is not related to active listening. But I’d argue that most people with their target language on in the background in some audible format, simply don’t pay attention to it, thinking that their brain is processing it magically for them. Even if this were true, without your focus you are getting a minuscule (maybe 1%?) amount of the benefit that some focus would give in a way smaller timeframe.

Rather than thinking that many hours a day “doing something” counts, take small parts of your day and do some active learning! Read in the language and try to understand as much of it as possible, listen to online radio but try to make notes of what is being said and use a dictionary if necessary – and most important of all find natives and speak to them - there is nothing stopping you from trying.

I like to study using SRS, and sometimes this gets as little as just two minutes when I’m on the metro or otherwise waiting somewhere. But that is two minutes of my full undivided attention. This is the only way to make useful progress in a language.

So please – stop trying to do everything at once! Be active with your language, even if that just involves actively listening. I would, of course, highly recommend finding ways to converse with natives as soon as possible.

Looking forward to your comments as always! Since I’m dropping a bombshell on a very much loved pastime of a lot of people, I expect some disagreement – but keep it relevant and insult-free or I’ll eat your comment up! I have my nom-nom-nom finger posed!

Share this on Facebook and twitter if you think more people need a fire lit under their asses!

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This article was written by Benny Lewis

Comments: If you liked this post or have anything to say, please leave a comment! I love reading them
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http://sndrsch.blogspot.com Sandra

In the first moment I was a little bit irritated, because I’m learning languages by the so called Birkenbihl-approach. And in this method passive listening is a very important and helpful step, because the brain builds the necessary nerves for the language you are learning. But it’s the third step after translating and active listening; and you are right: you have to understand the text. When passiv listening follows this condition it works. For more information you can read here: http://www.birkenbihl-insider.de/PDF/MethodEnglish.pdf For those who can read and understand german you can find more information about this in my blog: http://sndrsch.blogspot.com/2010/04/vera-f.html

Jasmine

I’m sorry but I have to disagree! I spent time in Egypt, and never studied Arabic. I never spoke in Arabic and nobody ever spoke to me in Arabic. Nobody ever translated anything that was said into English. But just listening to others talking, phonecalls and TV (again no translation) and after just a few months I can understand Arabic and translate.

Daniel

Well, I’ll have to agree with your opinion. Sure, just hearing to your target language won’t make you understand very much the language. It is like: “Oh, if now I’ve already heard about 2k hours of X, I’ll be able to read the Extra-difficult-book-for-natives Y”. It won’t work. You’ll have to make some effort and make your own brain work a little more to understand what’s been spoken. I’m a living proof that it isn’t hardcore listening that makes the learner: while I was a child, I’ve learned English ONLY playing videogames (N64). Basically, no listening skills were necessary. Just a good game and a good dictionary. My listening skills came with time and later exposure to movies, music etc.

However, I think that listening is very important when studying a new language. When I’m listening (or hearing) to the radio, in my language (Portuguese), sometimes I’m not even thinking about the news. The radio is there, playing, and I’m just singing another thing. The point is: when I ‘catch’ some information that should be interesting, I stop EVERYTHING to listen. Well, this case applies to your opinion: I already known the language, so, it’s passive after active.
In short,’passive’ learning in a foreign language helps the learner to ‘catch’ words he/she already know in a normal speed conversation, depending on the learner’s skill, thus providing a kind of revision. Plus, it makes the learner ‘get used’ to the language sounds before actually understand it.
That’s what I think. Thanks for your post and enjoy your study!

Daniel – Brazil

Katie

I was ready to be irked by your post by the title alone, but having read it, I think you’re spot on.

On the other hand, more than a few friends of mine who immigrated to the U.S. as teens told me they learned English by watching tv. I think it’s probably not as simple as that, though, as they were thrust into an anglophile world, with school and sports (they were swimmers), and tv probably helped. I grew up watching Mexican television, really hoping somehow I’d learn Spanish that way, and it did nothing for me. But having taken the time to actively learn the language, listening truly does help today, but specifically when I focus on it. I make mental notes of how words are used in combinations. Listening to French, which is a new language for me, does nothing.

Interesting post. Somebody had to say it.

Yakov

Just want to put another word in there for active listening. Unfortunately, I’m not constantly surrounded by people speaking foreign languages in my day-to-day life. (Although I do host couchsurfers from foreign countries, so sometimes I am Listening to podcasts is a great way for me to learn while on the go. And I disagree– I can listen to a podcast while doing something else, as long as it doesn’t require much brainwork: washing the dishes, walking a familiar route, etc. Those are times when otherwise I would be doing no learning. I still try to pay attention to (almost) every word. I also try to only listen to audio where I understand a good amount, 50-70% at least, more if I can find simpler audio. (Unfortunately, this has been more challenging with less popular languages like Hungarian and even Russian.) Of course, that’s in addition to other techniques such as SRS, reading, even studying grammar (which I happen to enjoy!)

I find that this so-called input-method has done wonders for my language-learning. Now when I do (happily) find myself in a situation where I’m actively using the language with fluent speakers, I find I can understand what they’re saying much better, and don’t have to constantly stop them to ask what they meant, trying their patience and increasing the chances they’ll try to switch to English.

I agree however that just hearing without listening sounds pretty pointless. Even with kids –my little brother lived in Israel from birth till the age of 5, and went to nursery where everyone spoke Hebrew — but never learned more than the word for “water”. (He did learn fluent English, which we spoke at home.) Guess he wasn’t interested!

Dominick

You can do two things at once as long as the listening is the one that you give all your concentration to. For example, there are tons of household chores that take zero mental ability to do, such as folding laundry, washing dishes, sweeping, weeding the garden, etc. that don’t take any mental effort because you could do “them in your sleep” (and for folding laundry I actually have) and these can give you an excuse for a good hour or two of active listening time. I like to consider this actively listening while passively doing chores. After a couple hours, the house chores are done and I can’t even really remember doing them, but I have learned about the latest advances renewable energy from the podcast I was listening to.

Jerry Bauer

Wow! Benny you are 100% correct! I watch about an hour a day of Italian TV which I LOVE. I understand about 80% but when it comes to speaking I am PITIFUL! I have tried “shadowing” but they speak to fast for me to keep up. I thought that listening and reading would make me fluent. WRONG! I really don’t know how to become fluent! I live in New York and don’t know how to find native speakers to practice with.
Jerry Bauer, Staten Island, NY
Please help me!

Will

It’s like saying you’ll become a concert pianist by listening to piano music all day long.

Aamba

Not even babies learn language by passive listening. It has been shown that television or radio alone will not teach babies a language, interaction with live human beings is essential.

Tyler

I’m really not quite sure where you find these people… If they rely on passive listening, of course they are wrong and should stop.

Passive listening isn’t even a step. It’s really just a way to fill in the cracks.

Q: Why play the target language on mp3 while you sleep?
A: To fall asleep to it, and then be able to wake up to it first thing in the morning without effort

Q: Why play the target language in the background?
A: You become used to hearing it. It’s not about comprehending it so much when you are passively listening to it. It’s about getting used to the sounds of the language. That’s really it.

I think if you are to ask the right questions to all language learners, you could find the same answer: you shouldn’t rely on passive listening. But the same fact is, most people don’t rely on passive listening. Most of the passive listeners are actually getting into the language, perhaps even studying it. The target language playing in the background isn’t the end-all-be-all.

Scott3

Hi Benny, I am 35 and I learned danish in 1 year. I am close to fluent. I did it from memorizing 20 danish films (with subtitles) on and off, I did it chapter by chapter on dvd’s. I also read everyday and SPOKE daily. I have shocked Danes I have meet who cannot understand how I speak so well. It took 3 months and I was sailing. from months 4-7 I got deep understanding.

Here is the trick! Listening comprehension (understand ) come last!!The ears do not pop until months 9-12!! most people quit before this.

I do no passive listening. Talking and saying the words out(and thinking) cememts the words.

The key is output not imput. I have been blasted and cursed by langauge experts for saying this! After 4 months add listening to interviews in the new langauge(repeat..repeat ..repeat)

passive listening is only go for the first 18 hours. Studies show that all the brain need to recognize the new language. You do NOT learn by passive listening( Krashen is a old joke)

hope this helps someone

http://biesnecker.com/ John

I'm surprised you meet so many people that rely *only* on passive listening. It's like tuning your TV to a baseball game while you do the dishes every day and wondering why you're not yet a star athlete…

Tom

One problem is the ambiguity of the term itself. Some people have learnt languages purely through listening/watching to films, radio and other sources but ALWAYS through paying attention for most of their learning. Although this is in a way active because they are engaged it is sometimes referred to as passive as listening is one of the passive skills.

I disagree that it can’t bring fluency because I’ve met people and heard of others who have succeeded, but I agree that it’s definitely not the most efficient way and far and above not the most fun way! There isn’t much point in life other than to enjoy it as much as you can and to help others enjoy it, and sitting in a room listening to languages by yourself doesn’t help much

Despite it not being the best way in most aspects there are the mythical bonuses it gives; after a LONG period of actively listening apparently people usually have fantastic accents and native like usage so I think I might experiment some time in the future to see if this really does work or not, I can’t resist my curiousity Because if this is true then there might be ONE situtation in which learning a language like this would be worth it; if you wanted to live in a country which spoke the language for MANY years because otherwise it’s a waste of time which could be better spent with people!

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the Irish polyglot

Nobody relies *only* on passive learning. The problem is that they do so much of it, that they feel they don't need to do as much work in other areas. People actually tell me with pride how many thousands of hours they've “worked”.

http://biesnecker.com/ John

Yeah, I guess the scare asterisks were a bit much… I should have said something like ‘put more or less all of their effort into passive listening.’ I actually do a lot of it when I’m doing other things, but I don’t count it as anything but background noise, just like listening to music while I run isn’t making me into a rock star

http://twitter.com/iraloiola iraloiola

Hello, I'm a Brazilian learner of the English language. I didn't believe that while sleeping we can learn a language and I agree with you that active learning is what leads you to fluency. I love to listen to an American radio station but only when I really pay attention to what people are saying is when I can understand part or the whole thing of it. And when I don't understand the meaning of the words (I'm at the point that I can recognize sounds) I look up in an online dictionary.For example, a few days ago I've heard: kick up your heels. But what that means? I did my search and even wrote about it in a forum to share it.
I think that this is active learning.
Thanks for your post.

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the Irish polyglot

Glad to see you are doing some active listening! Your progress in English is shown in fantastic writing abilities

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the Irish polyglot

I had a look at the PDF you linked to and passive listening comes *after* active listening – as well as that, the benefits listed are pretty similar to what I said. I personally wouldn't put passive listening as a major step in a language learning program though.
Claims like “the brain builds the necessary nerves for the language” sound hard to swallow. This may happen during active work, but I find it very unlikely for something you don't consciously care about. The subconscious can do many amazing things, but if the conscious doesn't give a sh*t then why would it bother?

Guest

You can see the lack of benefit of passive listening in immigrants who never learn the target language. How many older immigrants have you seen who move to America, and never learn English? Surrounded by English every day, even among their family members, they never learn it. I'm not going to psychoanalyze their learning problems, but if passive listening could teach them English, they would be speaking it fluently.

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the Irish polyglot

I really hate picking on immigrants (since technically I'm constantly one myself), but what you say is spot on. I meet expats abroad for 10 or more years with barely any abilities in the local language. They will definitely have been exposed to tens or hundreds of thousands of hours! All that exposure makes them feel stupid and I want them to know that it doesn't make a difference at all!

Just because it comes from a headphone doesn't make it any more special – it's still noise you wouldn't be paying attention to.

Blahah404

The fact that immigrants don’t know a language only through being exposed to a background chatter for years, without making any attempt to learn the language, is no evidence at all against the effectiveness of background listening as a learning tool.

Quokka

I am quite surprised that there are so many people *believing* in passive listening.
To be honest, I wouldn't have written such a long article about this issue.

It's just common sense.
Many people can't even remember that they put a pizza into the oven prior to booting their computer.

Sorry for being so harsh this time. :-p

http://www.fluenteveryyear.com/ Randy (@Yearlyglot)

“So why is passive hearing so popular?”

For the same reason that diet pills are popular. And bankruptcy protection. Electro-shock muscle treatments, etc., etc. People want something for nothing. They want results but they don't want to do the work.

But there is no free lunch. Nothing in life is free. That's why I have so much respect for a person who speaks a foreign language, or who has a muscular physique, or who can run 10 miles (16 km for the rest of the world). I don't need to know anything else about a person, because I can see from one single detail that this is a person who does the hard work, and is committed to something…

KK

Бесплатный сыр только в мышеловке.

Abby

I appreciate reading this, because I know that it's absolutely true. I have spent 12 years “passively” listening to Arabic radio, music, etc. and had not really learned much except when the people around me were actually speaking Arabic and mixing in English. I was able to pick up on conversational words really well because I knew what the conversation was about and could sort of fill in the blanks. I could even “participate” sometimes, in English, of course, because I knew the subject and could at least enter my opinion. I know also that speaking the language does improve your learning. The more words you speak, the more words you'll understand, then you can use those words, and so on. Learning any language should be as natural as learning your first language was, except it really should go faster if you're an adult! No matter what people say about our brains not growing as fast anymore! That sounds like an excuse not to even bother trying! I know that my kids will probably be able to pass off as natives more easily than I could, but it doesn't mean I shouldn't try!

http://sndrsch.blogspot.com Sandra

Oh, there are results of neurologists, which show that it's really so as I said… Mrs Birkenbihl refers to these results

Lisa

I learned English through passive listening too! But well, I was very young when I heard English for the first time (probably already as a baby), so that doesn’t count, of course I agree you can’t learn through passive listening. I can’t do 2 things at the same time, no matter what it is, let alone something complicated like learning a language! I think it does give you a bit of an advantage though when you’ve done a lot of passive listening before learning a language. You get used to the way the language sounds, so it won’t sound so foreign later on. I used to watch a lot of anime (heh) and when I learned some Japanese it sounded pretty natural to me already.

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the Irish polyglot

harsh hahaha. You need to read some of the e-mails and comments I get from people

This is unfortunately not common sense: a lot of people waste this time and claim it works. You can see one comment defending it already and I'm sure there will be more…

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the Irish polyglot

Very true. People who put such achievements down to natural talent / genetics are just as bad as people who think they can get results over night.

Something that Khatz said when I interviewed him, to talk about appreciating the work involved in learning a language, was that people who watch the Olympics should have to watch the thousands of hours each trainer went through if they really want to appreciate their achievements. I doubt any of them trained for their passions while doing taxes and sleeping…

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the Irish polyglot

Google translate tells me that means “Free cheese only on a mousetrap” – I like it

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the Irish polyglot

You were either ACTIVELY listening (which is not what I am criticising), and doing other work (such as studying books, even if nobody translated it for you) or you have some magic forces working for you if you can understand Arabic with no real work You have discovered the magic pill! Give it to me

Jasmine

Perhaps Nape is right.. I was 17-18 during this period

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the Irish polyglot

She doesn't refer to them in the PDF you gave. It sounds like pseudo-science to me.

Something I didn't say in the article but someone mentioned in a comment, is that people can spend DECADES in a country and never learn a language. They have been exposed to hundreds of thousands of hours of passive hearing. Surely their brain must have “built the necessary nerves for the language” thousands of times over by then?

It's a lazy solution to a problem that involves actual work. If any approaches show results its because of the other aspects to it (this one you showed me has 3 other core aspects, which I'd argue are actually producing the results).

Nape

Maybe she's very young. It seems that kids DO learn through passive listening, while adults can not.

http://biesnecker.com/ John

Children absolutely do not learn through passive listening. There’s nothing passive about what they’re doing. I would submit that small children are by *far* the hardest working language learners on the planet.

My son is 2, and he is constantly playing with language. He’ll repeat words and shift the vowels around to hear how they sound. He’ll ask what things are called and repeat the answers, he talks back to cartoons on the TV, and every time he learns a new word he repeats it until you *really* want to teach him another new word. And this is pretty much his entire waking life.

When you think about it, it makes sense. Not being able to communicate with the people upon whom you depend for every single thing in your life is a massive problem, and so there’s a lot of motivation to be able to communicate. Before I had kids I thought they had it easy, too, but they don’t — little kids bust their balls to learn to speak and understand. It’s just that they don’t realize how hard they’re working, and so they don’t complain

Milind Bawankar

I’m working on this accent and the only way to truely improve it is passive listening. Where can I listen to the Received Pronunciation british english accent in a pure form? whether be it audiobooks(websites), radio stations, (internet based) etc. and not BBC which isn’t really RP all the time, unfortunately.
http://branson-hotels.net/

Anonymous

I have to say that I don’t agree with this at all.

I think that passive listening can be very useful in all stages of the language learning process. It helps to give the listener familiarity with the music, stress, emphasis of the language. Even if you don’t understand the words or the grammar, you subconsciously absorb a lot of information, and later when you come to formulate your own sentences, something automatically prompts you to arrange the words in an unfamiliar order.

Without meaning to be rude (and thus get my comment deleted!), I think the recent you didn’t do well in the listening part of your German exam is because your German simply isn’t very good. It’s very easy to cram for reading/writing/speaking when you have advance knowledge of the themes and the format of the exam. In the listening part of the test, however, you have to react on the spur of the moment and it’s impossible to be fully prepared in advance, instead having to rely on your natural ability and genuine fluency.

Just a thought.

http://twitter.com/don_rivers Don Rivers

Having the sound on without listening is not passive listening. Passive listening is listening without responding. I realized this when someone mentioned that kids learn by passive listening. I realized the definition here was wrong (or at least, was being used differently by different people, leading to confusion). OF COURSE not listening is useless. So I think we are probably in pretty close agreement, just realize everyone is working from different definitions.

http://n-true.livejournal.com André Müller

Hey Benny, altes Haus! =)

I can imagine that listening to a language only passively doesn’t help much, besides maybe getting you a feel for the language’s melody and *perhaps* distinguishing their sounds. So it might be helpful at the very beginning and on the very end of language learning, I imagine… but then again, when you’re almost fluent and try to work on your melody/prosody.
I’m having a hard time learning Chinese, and in August I will dive into the country itself, and I hope some of your suggestions and tips with help me gain fluency in the language I can read and write well, speak moderately, but cannot understand whatsoever when spoken (argh, my listening comprehension is approximately zero!).

Hey… I’d like to know what you think:
My Chinese vocabulary is quite large and by using Anki (I think you wrote about it before) and because I study Chinese at the university, I really know many words. But currently I can hardly even understand simple spoken sentences due to lack of practice.
My friends (who all have way better listening comprehension) say, when I will go to China for one year, I will come back and speak Chinese WAY better than them, because all the “theoretically” vocabulary in my brain will be activated there and eventually I will understand every word I know.
With your knowledge of Thai you can maybe understand how different understanding spoken Chinese/Thai is from understanding spoken Spanish or so. It feels much different… maybe because the language is so syllable-based and has these tones…
What do you think? Will I quickly gain fluency and will all the theoretically learned vocabulary that I can produce and recognize in writing (of course I know their pinyin pronunciation) quickly be “activated” indeed? Do you think knowing much vocabulary before starting to really speak the language might help me becoming very eloquent in the close future?
I know you suggest different approaches (diving into the language from the very 1st day on), but I already know Chinese, I just can’t “hear” it.

Greetings from Leipzig (soon Kunming),
- André

Pingback: Language Solution » Blog Archive » In praise of passive learning again.

http://www.ikindalikelanguages.com lyzazel

I, for example, find I can usually listen to something and give attention to it while doing the dishes. I'd call that passive enough and it still works.

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

If you give the listening all your attention then it's not passive, it's active. Washing the dishes is etc. easy, of course you can focus on the audio for that.

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

Thanks for the comment Abby – other PEOPLE really are the key to making progress in any language. Too many people use lazy excuses as you say – we should all be more active

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

Thanks Katie – glad you agree. Despite all the protests, this does indeed need to be said
Anyone who learns a language by watching TV is being more active than they will admit.

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

Washing the dishes etc. is easy, but unless you spend your whole day doing something that requires no focus you can't focus on it. I've met housemaids and bored security guards who have learned plenty of a foreign language “at work”, but they were being ACTIVE in it. If your job requires focus then any audio in the background will be ignored.
Your story of your brother shows that even children can't learn passively if the focus isn't there!

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

That's active learning. House chores require no real focus. If you work as a maid then you can learn a language really well that way, but people who have jobs that they need to focus on at the time and try to have “noise” on in the background cannot do two things at once so easily.

Dominick

In fact I am not a made, I am a software engineer, which of course means I can’t listen at work, but only while at home doing chores.

Perhaps in a later post you can explain how to analyze (I prefer the American spelling of the word, it looks cooler) what you are actively listening to in order to get results.

Dominick

I meant to type “maid” btw

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

You live in New York and you don't know how to find ITALIANS?? hahaha
Go to meetup.com and search for Italian meetups in NY. You will definitely find them. Then go to facebook and search for Italian New York and click on events. Then write to craigslist and see if anyone wants to meet up, and google Italian culture NY to see if there are organisations for it.
Seriously – NY is the easiest place outside of Europe to find Americans…

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

That's why I corrected myself mid-article to call it passive “hearing”

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

You are “passively” washing dishes while actively listening That's why it works!

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

Nobody relies on passive learning, but it's the belief that it's so good that you can use it a lot and feel you are achieving something that I'm trying to address here.
Filling in the cracks is fine, as long as people are focusing way more on good learning approaches between the “cracks”

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

A man after my own heart! Glad to see others achieving so much in just a few months Good work with your Danish!!

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

I agree, but that's for (as you said) *actively* listening. As you mention, it's a misunderstanding in the term itself.

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

I'll do some active listening for Hungarian and let people know if it helps Although my focus will be on active conversations

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

I agree – the familiarity aspect is important (why I mentioned it in the post). I'm listening to Hungarian now to get “used to” how it sounds. However, I want people to be clear that it won't actually help you with your level of the language. It's a confidence and “feeling” issue instead – for that passive listening can help.

http://twitter.com/kelliwise Kelli Chatelain

How do I know the words to countless songs that I've never listened to actively?
I agree that active listening is more effective and should be the focus, but passive listening does do something.

http://twitter.com/kelliwise Kelli Chatelain

What you said is true, however most piano, violin, etc. teachers want their students to listen to the pieces that they're learning as much as possible. It's a tool that helps but of course practicing the instrument physically is more important.

Mluvpomalu

Without being able to know what the sounds mean, I see no use in just listening. If you read a written text, comprehend it, and then listen, there is great benefit in that.
Even if to our ears it sounds fast, we get the cadence of the spoken language, which is very important.

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

I said in the article that it helps with getting used to the accent. This is useful, but won't help you with your actual ability to communicate.
If my German simply isn't good, how did I do so well in other parts of the exam? You can NOT “cram” for speaking and even for reading or writing. That's ridiculous! You have to react in the spur of the moment for all parts of the test. Saying that listening is the “only” part of a test you can't cram for shows no understanding of such a test. If anything (as I said) some crammed focus listening may have brought my result up to a pass, but I can't imagine improving my results in other parts as easily.

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

Yep, it does do something. It's “better than nothing”, but not good enough to get all the time and energy it takes away from other aspects of language learning.

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

I disagree. I learned piano for 6 years and my teacher never assigned me listening assignments. I'd only listen to him play a piece after me as a correction, like a native would correct my spoken mistakes. My “homework” was to PRACTISE on a real piano as often as possible. I'd apply my arguments here to piano playing too. Practice helps – listening helps if you are music critic, or perhaps if you are “actively” listening to see how other players do it better than you. Although that should be less than 5% of your work if you want to be a good piano player.

Hilde

Okay, old post but I hve to reply anyway.

A friend of mine listens to music, sometimes check up the chords and then plays the whole song at her first attempt. Quite impressing!

http://www.facebook.com/tommy.mcdonald.9 Tommy McDonald

You’ll never learn to play by ear if you you’re simply pecking at the keys, and without knowledge of what the notes are and how they are supposed to sound, otherwise your music is going to sound very artificial or robotic with no human touch and it will just be a memorized pattern with no understanding or heart put into it.

Music is a language in and of itself. You need to be able to hear it so that you can speak it, and without knowing what something is supposed to sound like, you won’t ever be able to form your own sentences, and in this case, what we would call improve. You need to know the piano key (the word), and the sound it makes (what that word means), and how it works when composed (the sentence).

The reason why some musicians are able to play something after only hearing it once and by ear is not because they learned to repeat a pattern taught by their teacher, but because they understand every structure that goes into playing the piano that was in those teachings. However, I do agree passive listening will only get you so far (at first anyway) but it is a nice introduction stage to simply just hear what the language looks and sounds like before dedicating any time to it.

To truly master something, you need to be active in it, and understand it from every possible angle, not one angle, BUT all angles. It’s really like a jigsaw puzzle, and every little piece (even the small stuff) must be put together to form the complete picture.

Listening, and hearing are two different things afterall.

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

Cadence is important, I see it as the main advantage of passive listening. Other advantages however are in only people's wishful imaginations

Mahogany

I should have added, I’m not relying on the passive stuff. I started actively learning the langauge a month ago and am now bravely speaking/utilizing(espessing through writing when my tones are off) what I have begun taking in through my studying. But what I was saying earlier was more that, since I’m using a lot of phrase book materials, being able to hear the language too (in a natural environment) has helped me in addition to the other stuff .

http://n-true.livejournal.com André Müller

That was my thought as well. But 17~18 is, according to most psycholinguists, already way beyond the so called “critical phase”, which usually ends with puberty (or even earlier as many suggest).

Yes, kids can do such things. But that's not the same as passive learning. Small children are very involved in talking (esp. with their parents), they do not talk themselves because they can't, but their parents always give the words they say a meaning, speaking words that refer to actual actions and objects in the surrounding. This is how a baby can learn the language, by actively listening and seeing how the noises that come out of people's mouths actually refer to real-life situations and because there is a pattern (grammar, phonology etc.).

But a baby will not learn a language if you always have a radio next to it, playing music and news and the weather forecast in a foreign language. So that's a difference.
I actually wonder what would happen, if an infant grows up with listening to radio broadcast and music in, say, Japanese. Surely it won't learn the language, but it might be familiarized with its sound… oh well.

http://twitter.com/kelliwise Kelli Chatelain

well I guess piano is quite different than violin. When you play the piano, the notes are always in tune (well, as in tune as the piano is at least). You might play the wrong notes, but they are still in tune. With the violin (and most string instruments) you have to tune each note yourself. Not to mention that there are different types of tuning that use different ratios (spaces between half steps and whole steps, pythagorean is one such type of tuning) that are specific to the keys that a piece is written in. That might be why my violin teacher has always told me to listen to the pieces that I'm playing. With piano, the space between a whole step and a half step is constant and can't be changed by the player, so the listening practice wouldn't be as necessary.
I hope that all made sense…
And don't get me wrong, I did say that physical practice is more important. ;]
oh, that reminds me, have you heard of the Suzuki method? it fits right into this discussion :] you probably didn't use it in your piano lessons because listening is an important component.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzuki_method

http://www.MyBeautifulAdventures.com/ GlobalButterfly

Couldn't agree with you more!

http://www.youtube.com/user/FluentCzech FluentCzech

Sometimes I do wonder if “passive listening” is like lying in the bath and calling it swimming. I too have met people who have the radio or TV on in the background, and feel they are creating an immersive environment, but it is clear they have understood nothing of what they were listening too. It all simply washes over them, in effect training their brain to treat their target as noise to be ignored.

What I have seen work, though, is people who repeat the same short section of audio for hours on end. For example, playing the same song or the audio to an Assimil lesson 30, 40, or 50 times in a loop on their mp3 player while they do other things. The constant repetition over several hours seems to help it sink in.

Maybe this works because even when you think you are being “passive” there are still moments when you are paying attention, and maybe having earphones plugged in makes you pay more attention than to a distant radio or TV.

Whatever the reason, this looped repetition via headphones is clearly not entirely passive: you have actively chosen what to listen to, and controlled its repetition. At the same time, it is not entirely “active” listening either.

So, when people say “passive listening worked for me” we need to ask what kind of passive listening they were doing. TV or radio in the background would raise my eyebrows, but repeated listening to controlled content wouldn't surprise me at all.

Katie

I have to disagree. For me, house chores require my undivided attention, or I don't even do them at all. I'm just wired that way.

Blahah404

The shocking truth about this article is that passive listening is that isn’t what you’ve described at all. The term in linguistics, psychology, neurobiology etc. refers to listening without responding. Listening with response is active listening, where responses can include trying to silently remember what you just heard, repeating out loud, or performing some task in response to the content of the sounds.

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

Thanks Anthony – I saw your comment on Cody's video about this too. There may be potential in repeating the same audio over and over, but I find that such an unnatural way to learn! Surely 2 minutes of focused attention and actively repeating the audio can give the same result as 2 hours of writing a thesis with the same droning foreign sentences in the background. It's encouraging people to seek out lazy ways of making progress, and I want to get people off their iPods and looking for human beings or something more interactive to practise with.
Having said that, I have to recognise the usefulness of *active* learning, and as you said, repetition is more active than passive. I may try out some repetitive Hungarian audio to see if it helps. However, a lot of people think of passive listening as having the radio/TV on in the background so this article needed to be read.

The worst part is what you said at the start – “training their brain to treat their target as noise to be ignored”. It's a sad, but likely possibility that may do more harm than good.

Sctld

If I remember correctly, Benny said in his German test results that he is confident that interacting with German speakers would have resulted in a better listening score.

While I agree that passive listening should not be the be-all-and-end-all of language learning, a number of the arguments Benny makes will not be sound until he shows that he actually would have had a better listening score through interaction with native speakers.

Therefore, I would very much welcome another “C2 in 3 Months” challenge further down the line, with a comparable language (obviously you can't learn German twice).

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

Better interaction would indeed have improved my oral score dramatically. There is no doubt in my mind about this – I got an extremely high score in the Spanish C2 because of focus on human-being practise.
The results on my listening comprehension are different though. I think that I would need long-term exposure (more than 3 months) to naturally improve my listening comprehension results. To hack it in 3 months I'd have to do some active listening, which I didn't do much of in these 3 months.
Another C2 mission is not going to happen any time soon. This time locked indoors studying has been stressful for me. Unfortunately studying is the best way to pass exams. I prefer to promote social interaction to improve spoken abilities. If there were some oral-only version of the C2 I'd consider sitting it in other languages.
I may do a C2 exam again in future, but definitely not for at least another year, and maybe not even for a much longer time. Keep in mind that I've sat 3 CEFRL exams already, so I can talk with a “little” confidence of what does and doesn't help

Sctld

“Better interaction would indeed have improved my oral score dramatically. There is no doubt in my mind about this – I got an extremely high score in the Spanish C2 because of focus on human-being practise.”
But you’d also been studying Spanish for a longer period of time. The point is that we cannot confirm your claim without a directly comparable test. It doesn’t matter how many other C2 exams you’ve sat or passed if your methods aren’t directly comparable.

I appreciate that studying for a solid three months is exhausting, and I certainly do think that you have more than earned a substantial break!

Your blog is extremely inspirational and a good source of tips.

Hghplus

You have probably read SuperLearning and SuperLearning 2000. If you combine Passive and Active listening with specific music at a specific beat, you may find the results more to your liking. I have found it useful.

http://corcaighist.blogspot.com Corcaighist

I agree with you. One's listening has to be ACTIVE for it to be of any benefit. One has to engage with the listening text. Take short texts and play them over and over until they sink it. Break down the language in the texts, treat it like a puzzle. Translate back and forth and construct the sentences yourself. Make the language your own. Take control of it and the you will see the benefit.

What I do not understand is that there are people out there who think they can learn a language by just listening to/ hearing it without engaging with it. That I simply can't get my head around. If a language sounds like nonsense when you first hear it, and after 6 months of listening to it, without engaging with it, it will still sound like nonsense.

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

I know – this post has brought people with that opinion out of the woodwork. It will always be nonsense unless you focus on it, but now I have lots of people reminding me once again how crazy I am. “Of course” you can learn a language in your sleep – your magic brain is working for you without you having to do anything… [eyeroll]

Although I've gotten the usual suspects to voice how wrong I am as usual, I hope some people take this message and realise that they need to ENGAGE in their language if they want to make progress.

Tdepke

Howdy! Great blog, probably the only one I come to on a regular basis. I have a technical question though, What wordpress plugin do you use to get that nice little dropdown list of translations for your whole page on the top right of the page?

Any hints on learning Russian?

http://blog.tumbledesign.com/ Nicky Hajal

The way I see it, learning a language is a huge mental investment. Not in a conscious way but an unconscious one – your brain will need to use up a huge amount of its limited processing cycles to figure out how to make sense of these new sounds.

So before it really goes to work for you, it needs to know that this s actually important (in an evolutionary sense, important for your survival).

Passive listening is a nice idea, but really doesn't communicate, on a primal level, how important it is that your brain get itself wrapped around this.

Going and talking absolutely does because you are in the moment, heart beating, adrenaline surging, soaking up every detail of the interaction. Your brain gets the message!

I've never learned a language, simply because I have never *truly* needed to. Likewise, I never learned trigonometry until I truly needed it for a project was working on. As soon as I needed it, I got it.

I predict that learning a language will be quite similar, when the genuine need arises.

Until then, I will keep listening to French Info Radio just because I love those accents!

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

I'm not a linguist, so I'll make no apologies for not using official linguist (or nuerobiological) terminology.

To me passive involves no focus or attention and active does. Rather than tell me I'm wrong perhaps you'd offer the correct terminology for the wasteful activity as I describe it?

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

You would be right if “background listening” means active listening as I've described it here. Someone else has suggested that setting your MP3 player on repeat to be exposed to a small selection of phrases repeatedly over time can help. Here, I'm mostly discussing having the radio/TV/podcasts on in the background with no attention given to them.
Otherwise I see no difference between immigrants with background chatter and a language learner with background chatter if neither are paying attention, other than the fact that one comes from a headphone and the other doesn't.

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

That's great insight from someone who hasn't learned a language yet! You are totally right – your brain gets the message when you make it clear how important it is. Turning the target language into background noise basically gives your brain the message “this is not important to me, feel free to ignore it”.

Jen

@Benny – “Seriously – NY is the easiest place outside of Europe to find Americans… ” BRILLIANT! I know what you meant, and I'm sure most others will too… but this is a fabulous slip. Love it! It's just so darn hard to find a good American in [Chicago, Detroit, Miami, Houston, LA, Seattle, Denver, Middle-of-Nowhere USA] these days! Thanks for pointing us in the right direction…shoulda been looking in NYC the whole time…

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

I've corrected that typo

http://blog.tumbledesign.com/ Nicky Hajal

One quick addition:

I studied French for several years (4-5) in school – typical language learning, typical lame results.

Then, I was in France and we got mugged. The police didn't know any English and, being the only one who knew a lick of French, the pressure was on me to work things out.

It was stressful and scary but, who woulda guessed, I knew a heck of a lot of French when I actually needed it.

It gives me the feeling that there is some sort of 'activation' step needed to really get comfortable in a language and that, as you suggest, actually talking to people is the best (maybe only) way to get there.

Really interesting stuff that no doubt has a lot of big picture insights for learning in general!

-Nicky

Blahah404

You are right, sorry, my response wasn't very constructive on its own. In your post you seem to be lumping together the entire range of modes of attentiveness in listening to just two.

The real distinctions include:
1. Having audio playing during sleep. This is completely distinct from the other ways of approaching audio you have described, because you are unconscious at the time.
2. Having audio playing whilst you focus intently on another task
3. Having audio playing whilst you perform another task which requires little attention or while you perform an intermittent task.
4. Focusing completely on the audio but only listening, without attempting to respond (for example in the ways I described in my first comment) – this is usually called 'passive listening' in the literature.
5. Focusing completely on the audio in an analytical way, for example by listening out for particular cues or trying to analyse the content – this is called 'active listening'.

I understand the gist of your argument – people shouldn't rely completely on background audio of any kind as their only language learning tool. But all the research does support the idea that listening to spoken audio in any stage of attentiveness (including sleep) significantly helps with learning material the next day, and with reinforcing material learned the previous day.

There's also an obvious intuitive response to your criticisms of constant audio whilst performing some other task. There is no cost. You say people have wasted thousands of hours – they haven't wasted any time at all if they've been doing something else at the same time. Futhermore, in the case of the type of attentiveness I've listed as no. 3, there is a definite benefit to having audio playing in the background. It allows you to pattern-match and to selectively focus, and comes at no cost to the task you are performing. Don_rivers' response which you listed as a benefit is exactly right, and shouldn't be dismissed to a small mention – your objections to this type of listening are invalid.

I agree that people shouldn't use constant audio as a crutch, but I don't believe there can be many people doing this. I also don't think your level of attainment in the recent German test your took can in any way be correlated to the amount of background audio you had playing.

To summarise: there IS a definite benefit of passive listening, and of having background audio playing whilst you perform other tasks or during periods of low attentiveness or consciousness. The ideal way of using sleep 'listening' would be to actively study a passage in the day or evening, then to play that passage on repeat while you slept. Then actively study the passage again the next day. You would be maximising what we currently know about sleep learning, audatory processing and memory consolidation.

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

Thanks for the detailed response!

I'm talking about 1&2 as being worthless in this post. 3 depends on the task. Washing dishes for example can allow your hands to go into autopilot and requires no concentration at all, so for all intents and purposes you are focused on the listening (and the dish-washing is “passive”).
I find it extremely hard to swallow that playing audio while you sleep “significantly helps”. It may help you feel better, but it sounds like nothing more than pseudo-science. At best it helps the learner in that they hear the target language as they fall asleep and as they wake up, and the “noise” they don't understand will appear in their dreams and make them think they dreamt in the language.

Also, I'm afraid there IS a potential cost and reason to look at those hours as being “wasted” and even potentially damaging. You are programming your mind to view the target language as background noise that can be ignored. This may lead you to tune out even when you are in an active conversation, because ignoring the language has been what you have learned to do.

I will not be promoting sleep learning as there is little evidence at all to show that it helps in any practical way. A language should be presented in its proper context and dealt with consciously. Sleep learning is a lazy cop-out in my view. Its potential is to let someone think that they have done “8 hours of work” and not bother doing any more during the day, or it may program your mind to ignore that strange noise.

As was said before, immigrants that don't learn the language are exposed to tens of thousands of hours of noise in the background and it doesn't help them. People need conscious deliberate focus – referring to the mysterious 90% of our brain we don't use or whatever isn't going to change that.

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

That isn't a wordpress plugin, it's just a bit of code that you paste into your header code. You can get it here: http://translate.google.com/translate_tools

I don't know any Russian, however it's in the same language family as Czech. You may find some of these tips useful regarding word formation and grammar. You need to read a different script, but I'm pretty sure a lot of those tips would work quite well in Russian

Otherwise you need to speak the language from day one and be confident about it, like in any other language. I've written about that in detail and my guide will be readable in Russian soon

Blahah404

On the contrary – there is evidence to show that it helps in some specific cases. There is no evidence that it doesn't help, it just seems to be your guy feeling. It's also pseudo-scientific to assume something without evidence and based on specious reasoning, as you've done with the role of auditory processing on memory formation during sleep. The body of research which supports the idea is no more pseudo-science than the rest of psychology.

In particular there is a vein of research which may be interesting to you as you embark on your Hungarian mission. There have been various findings which show that when babies learning their first language, or adults learning a language with new sounds in it, listen to the language overnight, they are significantly better at distinguishing those sounds the next day. You could try this without any harm to your learning when you begin Hungarian. If it doesn't help, you've lost nothing. If it helps, great.

I really don't suggest that you promote 'sleep learning'. This is miles away from those shill companies that sell language tapes that claim to teach you vocabulary while you sleep. There's no peer reviewed research suggesting anything like that has an effect (at least not that I could find). But there is research showing that, if coupled with active study before and after the period of sleep, audio during sleep can enhance retention of the material.

I think your idea of a cost is based on a guess, whereas the benefits of constant audio are demonstrable. It's impossible to test the claim that you are training your brain to tune out the language. I'd suggest that the only reasonable way to assess the proposed cost it by analogue – your native language is played around you (by actual speakers, the radio, TV, whatever) your whole life. It certainly hasn't trained me to tune it out – if anything it's made me adept at noticing patterns in the background chatter (hearing my own name, people talking about a familiar topic, etc.).

I completely agree that people need conscious deliberate focus, but again I have to say the immigrant example is not relevant, or accurate. You don't know whether hearing many thousands of hours of the language has helped those immigrants who never tried to learn the language – it may be that it would accelerate their learning if they did try to learn. We don't know, and to suggest either way is pure speculation.

Also – the idea that we only use 10% of our brains is a complete myth – evolution would have failed us if we grew brain matter at only 10% efficiency

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

This is interesting, but it is certainly not pseudo scientific to assume something with no evidence to prove it! Science is based on scepticism until something fits normal reasoning. If “there is evidence” then I would need to know the precise conditions it was carried out under before taking it seriously – double blind tests, a “placebo” of chatter not in the target language just for the period the person sleeps for comparison etc. I'd argue that a course that happens to include sleep learning that has been successful, is successful for its other aspects.
If this doesn't rely on the 10% myth then where is the logic? Why would we have evolved the ability to learn languages while we sleep? It makes no sense to me, and I say pseudo science because it sounds like the “our brain is mysterious” explanation. If it's true, so be it, but I find it utterly illogical that you can learn something worthwhile without paying attention to it.
When we sleep our “consciousness” goes through various different stages. If it relies on the REM dreaming sequence for example this is actually a very small part of the night. The reasons why we sleep like that may be more known that I'm aware, but it would not make sense that this was the mind's time to acquire new input from the environment other than sudden noises to wake us up for survival purposes.
The difference with your native language is that you have active learning applied *first*. So you don't learn to ignore it. If you start with passive learning then there is potential for cost. Passive learning may be efficient to reinforce your language level and maintain it if you can't get so much natural exposure, but to start that way cannot give you the same results as in your native language. It's the opposite way around, so there is potential for the brain to just label it is ignorable noise, since that is what you are training it to do.
How is the immigrant example not relevant? They hear “gibberish” all the time. People who are actively learning a language with passive learning on the side is different. If passive learning is 5% of your time invested in a language then me arguing it away is pointless. If it's 50-95% of your time then I'd say you need to change something quickly.

Serge

André,

I've been in your shoes years ago. The reason you are not making progress is because most your input is incomprehensible. You need to find audio content that you will understand, that usually means somebody speaking more slow and more clear than usual. But at the same time don't get stuck at the same level, you need to challenge yourself with faster and faster speech. Actually that kind of input is plenty available when you converse with natives because most of them will slow down for you. If they don't, ask them. The key to progress is to keep most of your input understandable.

But speaking to natives is not the only way to get that kind of input. I have personally improved my listening abilities and got rid of my accent using a self-study course I described here: http://thelinguist.blogs.com/how_to_learn_engli… The reason it greatly improved my listening ability (I believe) is because I was exposed to a lot of audio at varying speeds. All my input during the course was very clear to me, I didn't have to rewind and listen again and again. I found the course very effecient as I spend only 40 hours and achieved great results.

Another way that a lot of self studying people use is to listen over and over to audio at normal speaking speed until you understand it. I admire persistance of those people. I guess it works for them, but I personally find such method exhausting and demotivating.

Guest

Nothing new. Already knew by everyone. Do your repetitions, and don't be lazy. Next time the article “should talk about”, when someone reads XX book twice without a dictionary, and swearing how much improvement was hoped after finished the book (…or spent milllion hours, and did not do a single exercise).

Blahah404

I agree this is interesting! Well, by definition something is pseudoscientific if it is presented as having some foundation in science, or truth, when it is not scientifically rigorous. In this case there are two factors which make the assumptions you made pseudoscientific – they are untestable and not based on inductive reasoning. But that's just semantics

I agree with you that you should assess the methodology of the research. It would be nearly impossible to conduct a double-blind test in these scenarios, because the test subjects would have to be very stupid not to know whether they were listening to gibberish or a language when they woke up. It shouldn't matter – there is always blind assignment to groups. In the case of the research with babies and finnish (the only experiment I can remember in details off the top of my head), the control groups were played music or silence in their sleep. I'll dig out the rest of the papers when I have time to do a proper literature review. I think it might help you and others to read the information for yourselves.

The 10% myth wouldn't make a good explanation of this even if it were true (you can read a good article about how it's complete nonsense here: http://goo.gl/RIwE). I think there are at least two possible cases if you want an evolutionary explanation for why we can form memories based on sounds during sleep.

Firstly, an obvious purpose of being aware of auditory stimuli during sleep would be to notice approaching danger. This doesn't only mean being able to distinguish sudden noises, wolves howling and that kind of thing. It might also involve being able to differentiate social groups in the area, passing members of the same species and so on. The whole field is speculative but ultimately it's conceivable that there are a huge multitude of situations in which processing sounds during sleep would be adaptive for safety reasons.

Secondly, human evolution has involved great periods of migration, settlement and integration with other races and groups (and even species – Homo erectus coexisting with Homo neanderthalensis for example). The ability to rapidly acquire a new language from your environment would certainly have been adaptive throughout most of human history. Again, that doesn't make it fact, it's all speculative. The point is that it's perfectly reasonable that it might be the case, not so outlandish that it could be dismissed.

I do think this isn't as drastic as you perceive it to be – there is definitely no evidence that you can learn a language without putting in any effort. Your gut feeling that it should be impossible to learn with no effort is probably right. There's just a suggestion that you can compound and accelerate active wakeful learning with the right stimulus during sleep or periods of low attentiveness.

If you look at it this way it doesn't sound so crazy, and you can look for sensible ways in which you could include it in a learning program. All the practical ways of using this phenomenon, if it is true, would have little or no negative impact as they all rely on maintaining an active learning component.

In what way do you have active learning applied first in your native language? I think the possibility of background audio encouraging you to tune out your target language is spurious, and it's completely contrary to my own experience of Japanese. Over the last few months, I've had Japanese audiobooks or hip-hop playing constantly in the background whilst I go about my day, with activities ranging from highly attentive lab work right down to low attentive dishwashing. Over time there is a definite trend upwards in the amount of words and phrases I pick out from the background noise. At the moment, I'm picking up around 20-30 new words/short phrases a day just from the audio because I've noticed them so many times that, when I do look them up, they are remembered for good. Of course this would never work without active learning to support it – but I do spend about 12 hours a day just listening and only a few hours a day actively studying.

It seems you accept that listening which isn't deliberately attentive might be a useful study tool, but are on a crusade to prevent people relying on it too strongly. I think if you had been more detailed and specific in the original post you could have summed up the exact usefulness of listening in its various forms accurately, and the article would have been a good resource for learners to make judgements about how to study. Still, at least you got people talking and thinking about it!

Liam123

What actual products are based on the passive listening you describe?

I am not clear, it seems that it is a big part of AJATT (which some people swear by) but there again anything anybody claims they actually learned is told “that is active not passive”. Does this not just reduce down to Shocking truth that not learning anything doesn't teach you anything.

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the language hacker

“Does this not just reduce down to Shocking truth that not learning anything doesn't teach you anything.”
Well said!
I had a nice talk with Khatz and I'd say his method is way more complex than just having noise on in the background. He is way more active in his reading/TV watching etc. than the wasteful activity I describe here and it shows in his results.

lucas

I disagree. I actually did learn how to read english by reading books several times whithout using the dictionary. Trying to figure out by yourself what a word means is probably the hardest work you can have while learning a language.

Guest

Oh, I not mentioned English, no offense. It really depends on, what language I am learning, and where I am from. Let’s say I don’t learn English, and my mother language (e.g. Hungarian) is so distant from that one language (e.g. Russian (we have rather influence from Czech vocabulary, a very little), Chinese), what makes things complicated. But it should be true for vica-versa (if I am speaking a Slavic language, and should read books in Hungarian, even if I someone have a little practice in colloquial Hungarian).

http://brewdocinhaiti.blogspot.com brianfrommaine

Benny, you have got to check out this link:

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/foru…

It is from the how-to-learn-any-language.com forum. Someone started a post on whether background radio could help one learn a language. I am in your camp. I strongly believe that passive listening is totally useless unless you need some help falling asleep…. You would not believe the proponents of the passive listening camp! Pleading their case with scientific references no less! I still am (as you are) very skeptical of this approach.

Hogy van magyarul?

PS: I actually just thought of one instance where passive listening could be helpful. When I was learning Portuguese I listened to a TON of Brazilian music CD's. Eventually I was singing along (very poorly) with the CD's. I had no idea what I was singing initially but over time, as my vocabulary increased, I had several of those “A-HA!!” moments. I eventually understood most of the songs perfectly. It helped my speaking considerably. So music might be an exception to the rule!

http://godlark.com Godlark

Passive listening is OK, if you know that it only make foreign language less annoying for you ears. I'm listening podcast in English, but it is active – make notes etc.

http://eldonreeves.wordpress.com/ Eldon

I think you got in all the important points there – listening is important for getting used to the rhythm of the language, but just listening to people babble away on the radio ad nauseum is never going to equal fluency – not on its own, anyway. That doesn't stop it from being useful filler if you're commuting to work or whatever though.

It's one of those things that's more useful the more you know – the more vocabulary you have and the more constructions you recognise, the more useful random listening is.

http://howlearnspanish.com/ Andrew

Absolutely agreed, it's for people who are simply lazy and/or don't want to set aside the time to do it properly. The reason people buy into it is the same reason people will buy those obviously-bullshit devices you see sold on late-night infomercials that promise to make you skinny and sexy in “just 5 minutes a day!”.

The sad thing is the people who waste literally months or even years of their lives on this method and get nearly nowhere. It's really depressing to hear about that because you know that not only did they waste that time but if they had used to study properly instead they'd REALLY be somewhere by now, but no, now they're going to have to essentially start all over again with what amounts to a very beginner's level in the language if they want to learn it.

Cheers,
Andrew

Davide Mazzetti

I would go so far as to say that NO listening can be passive. In fact, of the four major language skills, listening is the most difficult, simply BECAUSE it requires effort and concentration to get any benefit from it. 'Passive' listening, to my mind, simply means having the language playing in the background whist ignoring it; and I don't see how anyone can learn anything from such an activity. As for learning whilst you're asleep – it's nonsense in my opinion. When sleeping, you have no awareness of the outside world, even though your brain is still 'active', so how on earth can you be 'listening' to a language when you're asleep? There's no getting away from the fact that learning takes conscious effort and there are no easy short cuts. Storebror.

Mr Blocked

The fact that it works for one person is irrelevant if we can't determine *why* it works for that person and *how* another person can achieve the same results.

If you genuinely achieved this, then at some point you developed a strategy to develop the material you encountered. The failure of many, many others proves that this is not a strategy that most people spontaneously discover.

Passive listening/hearing is not a “technique”, because it doesn't actually describe the strategy people like you use.

If we can't identify the strategy, then we can't recommend that strategy to others. If we can't recommend the strategy, we have no language learning technique.

PS. what's the point of blocking someone if they can just post under any old name anyway?

Pavel

Passive listening is very good, but only before you start learning the language. It helps you to remember the word correctly, instead with your native phonemes.
However, if you already speak the language it’s useless, as you have already remembered the words incorrectly with your native phonemes substituted for the ones of the learned language.

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the Irish polyglot

I’ll get to these languages soon enough, but whether you can become fluent in precisely 3 months or not isn’t what’s important, is it? Hopefully my tips help you speed up your learning to be able to speak sooner!

http://www.facebook.com/people/Brandon-Edward-Erman-Rowe/100000327375351 Brandon Edward Erman Rowe

Now, I have a stack of Learn to speak Spanish, they say the word then speak it in Spanish, and so on,
I was going to put everything onto my phone and a ear bud on and just play the first few section / cd, and just let it run, I know not 100% of the time I will be really hearing it. but when I do…. ect. I hope it helps to some point. but, putting the Spanish channel on and watching that with no idea as to what is being said, no don’t think it will help as much.

So… a Spanish learning CD. playing all the time, would that give the difference?

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny Lewis

No!!! Argh… that’s way worse than natural content! Pay attention to your CDs and then pay attention to the Spanish channel – stop trying to find lazy ways out of doing work to learn your language!

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny Lewis

No!!! Argh… that’s way worse than natural content! Pay attention to your CDs and then pay attention to the Spanish channel – stop trying to find lazy ways out of doing work to learn your language!

http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny Lewis

That’s not the same. When you are physically in the same place there is always some form of interaction, even if they weren’t conversing with you. What they are talking about is likely something more immediately relevant to you and your surroundings than any radio or TV show ever can be.

Good job though!

http://users.skynet.be/antoine.mechelynck/ Tony Mechelynck

I agree 100%.
- Listening to a language you don’t know won’t help you any.
- Listening to a language you don’t know perfectly (but already know at least a little), and trying to understand, may help both your understanding and your accent.
- For non-native English speakers I recommend listening to the BBC news bulletin every morning, and trying to understand what they say.
- Talking with someone is way better than listening without answering.

renfr

I listen to an economics radio channel everytime in the night so that I can fall asleep.
Been months I’ve been doing that and I can tell you, it has no effect.
In fact I guess that receptors in the ear shut down while you sleep, I noticed that because in deep sleep stages I don’t wake up when the radio is playing however when the cycle ends with REM sleep I sometime happen to wake up in the middle of the night because the radio interferes with my dream. (I hear it in the dream, weird…).
Also when I start falling into sleep while being conscious I can feel the music slowly disappearing, nothing is heard.
I guess this learn while your sleep stuff is just pure BS.

http://www.facebook.com/Locnguyenn Loc Nguyen

It’s true that you can’t use passive listening to be better in speaking (your ears don’t speak). Well, you must pass some beginning levels of learning a language before practice passive listening with it. It means even you listen to it unintentionally but with the vocabulary you’ve learnt so far, in combination with the audio, you will get familiar with word sounds later on. It helps you to understand what people say.

Kayla

Wow, posting your own thoughts as fact. That’s horrible.

crislang

i completely agree, i use passive listening jut to get used to french, i mean if it were for passive listening all my friends would speak fluent english, from watching so many movies in english and tv shows with subs(i am currently living in paraguay was living in ny), i also found that if i listen enough i get not just the main idea of whats going on but, almost exact in my opinion from, listening actively, of course these are words from my anki deck, or words similar to english and spanish, since i speak them both,……at first i did’nt under stand anything, but then with time i recognised words i already knew, along with understanding sentences i never came across, because of active listening, the best way to listen and learn is to, look at a transcript like at frenchpod101, they give you a translation in english aside from your target language…….or audio book, or your favorite movie in said language etc……. thats my two cents

Chrissie

I totally agree. This is why my husband (french) speaks good english because he really listens to me. And I (filipino american) suck in french because i dont pay attention when hubby is speaking french hehehe

http://www.facebook.com/people/Duncan-Stewart/3405504 Duncan Stewart

I read your site all the time and I know this is an old post but what about listening to an audiobook recording while reading along to the book? Do you think that is a good way to learn the language. I can read the language almost fluently but I never get a chance to hear it spoken. I’d like to talk to a person but it’s hard to find them.

Joe

I have been exposed to vietnamese on a weekly basis for the last 10 years thinking that I’ll eventually pick up something. I didn’t and I’m now going to actively seek to learn the language.

“Hearing is not listening” really hit the nail on the head for me. Everyone hears car engines as they go by every day of their lives, but only mechanics can tell the state of an engine from listening to the sounds. To the rest of us, it’s white noise and our brain ignores it.

http://www.facebook.com/unpetitdejeuner Shannon Mackie

I’ve never done any passive listening, but when people speak to me in a language that I consider to know very well, or when I try to listen to the radio or watch a movie I can’t understand a word they’re saying, even though I do fine reading. My friend had learned Dutch fluently within the last 10 years, and he suggested passive listening. He said that he listened first, and then learned Dutch, and it helped him to mentally separate the words. He said to listen not looking to understand, but listen just to get used to the sounds and the words, as I mentioned. I’ve been listening to Dutch radio all this week, and I already see improvements. I may not know what each word is, but I can now hear that they’re different words, and pick out ones I know from German. I think this will help me a great deal once I build up my vocabulary more.

http://www.facebook.com/adil.hussain.56 Adil Hussain

Great article, you can’t learn something without having to work for it. By all means, no one is saying stop listening to foreign languages, but as you correctly stated it needs to be LISTENED to rather than ‘HEARD’. No point in playing it in the background if you’re not going to pay attention to it. The only thing I would say is useful about immersing yourself in the language is to familiarize yourself with the patterns of the way the language is spoken, but the vital step is to actually try to understand what is being said and try to actively look for new words to widen your vocabulary.

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Shocking truth about passive listening

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