All language students know how crucial listening practice is to their studies. But did you know that there are different types of listening practice that focus on different skills?
To maximize this exercise, you need to master both “intensive listening” and “extensive listening.” Let’s have a look at what exactly are those two and how to do them.
Intensive listening involves focused listening exercises that make use of short audio files (spanning a few minutes or so) to help you master pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. At this stage, parsing out the overall meaning of what you’re listening to isn’t too important.
Because you’re focused on the basics of your target language, this method of listening practice helps you create a more solid groundwork for language acquisition that you can build on over time. As a result, it’s particularly useful for beginning and intermediate students.
Duolingo is one of those websites that feature a ton of brief audio activities, which force you to focus on the grammar and vocabulary you’ve just learned. If the audio is giving you trouble, no problem: there are also text versions of the abovementioned activities.
This is arguably the most well-known free translation app on the web. Not only can it translate the text you type or paste into the left column, but it can also give you the pronunciation of both the original text and its translation. Because the translator has a 5,000 character limit, you can only translate small blocks of text at a time.
Also, it shows you the type of word you’re translating (whether it’s an adjective, verb, etc.), plus related words and short information about those related words. Just be aware that, since the translations are machine-generated, there may be errors or inaccuracies, so you’ll want to double-check what Google Translate produces with your language tutor or language exchange partner.
LingoClip (formerly LyricsTraining) offers brief music videos with exercises. All you have to do is choose a difficulty level, and fill in the blanked out words you see on the app.
To make the most of LingoClip for listening practice, pay careful attention to the lyrics and how they work together. Note the structure of each phrase. You can also use this app for extensive listening, which we’re going to talk about in the next section.
Plus, the videos are all naturally entertaining since they come from the shows, movies and channels that native Russian-speakers enjoy on the regular. You can watch documentary footage, television show clips, funny commericals and more all while learning the Russian language!
Take a quick look at what FluentU has on offer for yourself:
Didn't catch something? Go back and listen again. Missed a word? FluentU makes native Russian videos approachable through interactive captions. Tap or click on any word to see a definition, in-context usage examples, audio pronunciation, helpful images and more.
Access a complete interactive transcript of every video under the Dialogue tab. Easily review words and phrases with audio under Vocab.
Don’t stop there, though! Use FluentU’s quizzes to actively practice all the vocabulary in any video. Swipe left or right to see more examples of the word you're on.
And FluentU always keeps track of vocabulary that you’re learning. It uses that information to give you a 100% personalized experience by recommending videos and examples.
FluentU also has a free podcast course called FluentU Story Podcasts. Episodes center on grammar concepts and conversational stories, letting you see how the grammar concept is used in context. The podcast is currently available for those learning English, French and Spanish, with more languages being added.
What’s Extensive Listening?
Extensive listening is essentially the opposite of intensive listening.
Here, you focus on longer audio files that can span anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours long. The objective of extensive listening is to understand the audio as a whole, rather than focus on the finer points like vocabulary, grammar, etc.
As a result, this type of listening helps you understand spoken language in real-world contexts. This is particularly important for intermediate and advanced students looking to transition from academic understanding of the language toward full fluency.
Audiobooks are excellent for extensive listening practice, because their hours-long length forces you to try to parse out the overall themes of the book rather than get overwhelmed by all the tiny details. Audible provides a wide array of options in languages such as Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian and Portuguese. No matter your level, you’re bound to find something you’ll like on here.
Beginners might do best with children’s books, which have a more limited vocabulary, while intermediate students might find short stories more suitable for their language learning needs. Of course, advanced students can dive into any audiobook that appeals to them, since they’re already the closest to native-level fluency. For instance, a beginning German student might try the children’s book “Der zweiköpfige Drache” (“The Two-headed Dragon”), while an advanced Spanish student might enjoy a gripping novel like “El Silencio de la Ciudad Blanca” (“The Silence of the White City”).
As you’ve seen, intensive and extensive listening focus on very different skills. While the former builds your general foundation, the latter focuses on training you to apply what you’ve learned in a real-world context.
Pairing intensive and extensive listening will make your language skills as round and meaningful as a perfect pizza.
