{"id":839,"date":"2009-02-12T09:16:48","date_gmt":"2009-02-12T08:16:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=839"},"modified":"2009-02-12T09:16:48","modified_gmt":"2009-02-12T08:16:48","slug":"listening-is-the-key","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=839","title":{"rendered":"Listening is the key"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A researcher in New Zealand has found evidence that extensive listening to a foreign language makes a big difference to your ability to learn and understand the language, according to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.victoria.ac.nz\/home\/about\/newspubs\/news\/ViewNews.aspx?id=2458&#038;newslabel=hn\">this article<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It doesn\u2019t matter that if you don\u2019t understand anything at first &#8211; your brain will automatically make the necessary neural connections it needs to process the unfamiliar sounds and combinations of sounds, just as it does when you\u2019re acquire your native language. Without such connections it is very hard to remember new words. The more you listen to the language, the easier it becomes to learn new words and to understand the language.<\/p>\n<p>This is something I\u2019ve long suspected, and I use this technique in my own language learning. For example, when my first attempt to learn Welsh about 10 years ago wasn\u2019t very successful. I worked my way through Teach Yourself Welsh a couple of times listening to the lessons and reading the notes. At that time I didn\u2019t have any opportunities to hear or speak Welsh, and soon forgot most of what I\u2019d learned. A few years later I started listening to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/radiocymru\/\">Radio Cymru<\/a> regularly, and when I had another go at learning the language I made much more progress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A researcher in New Zealand has found evidence that extensive listening to a foreign language makes a big difference to your ability to learn and understand the language, according to this article. It doesn\u2019t matter that if you don\u2019t understand anything at first &#8211; your brain will automatically make the necessary neural connections it needs [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language","category-language-learning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}