Spanish Listening Comprehension Tips

In this video, we are talking about tips on how to improve your Spanish listening comprehension skills. These tips will help you better understand Spanish speakers in conversations. First, let’s start with the why. Most Spanish speakers do not enunciate when they speak. Another reason is that Spanish is the second fastest language in the world after Japanese. So when you combine those together it can make for a lot of difficulty understanding.

There are two types of listening passive and active listening. Passive listening is where you have things like Spanish music in the background but are not really paying close attention. This is could help you learn the musicality of the language but will not really help you that much. We recommend trying to do active listening. This is where you listen to something and take action like you would in a conversation.

Here are our tips to practice active listening.

1. Have a conversation in Spanish

When you are having a conversation always look to say something back and expand.

2. Get scripts or subtitles

Get scripts or subtitles of what you are watching or listening. When you are reading while you hear it will help you better understand by being able to see the sentence structure and better understand the context. Also if you are listening to music try to find the lyrics for the song and sing along.

3. Slow it down

When you listen to slower versions of the audio you have more of a chance to understand. You can do this on youtube by going to the settings box (the little gear wheel) and then click on speed. Write the words you understand down then go back and watch it at normal speed to see if you can pick out the words from what you have written down.

4. Predict the content

Try to predict the vocabulary that you might see in the video you are about to watch. Look up any words that you think you might need or that will be used.