New study indicates that the best way to learn a language is simply to listen to it

Deutsche Welle's Radio D - super inane but great for listening to and reading along with a large variety of languages, even including relatively rare ones like Bulgarian.

Many of us that have spent a great deal of time learning languages will not find this a surprise, but a new study is out suggesting that listening to a language is the best way to learn it, even if you don't understand what you are hearing.

"However crazy it might sound, just listening to the language, even though you don't understand it, is critical. A lot of language teachers may not accept that," he says.

"Our ability to learn new words is directly related to how often we have been exposed to the particular combinations of the sounds which make up the words. If you want to learn Spanish, for example, frequently listening to a Spanish language radio station on the internet will dramatically boost your ability to pick up the language and learn new words."

This is very true. I would add though that there is a big difference between active and passive listening, and passive listening should only happen when you have no other choice. Say for example if you are at work and your job is to do data entry; in this case listening passively to a broadcast in the language you are studying is better than not listening at all, but ideally you will want to find a way to concentrate on the sounds of the language itself without any distractions.

As a news junkie, I find the best way to concentrate on the sounds of a language I'm studying is to listen to the news in the language, as the broadcast is then definitely something that I want to understand for the information contained within the broadcast in addition to the language itself. When learning to write a language as well it's best to find something to listen to as you follow along.

Some more from the article on why listening is so effective:

'When we are trying to learn new foreign words we are faced with sounds for which we may have absolutely no neural representation. A student trying to learn a foreign language may have few pre-existing neural structures to build on in order to remember the words.'

Sulzberger looked for ways people could develop these structures to make the learning process easier. His finding was simple: extensive exposure to the language, something made easier by globalisation and new technology, said a Victoria release.

Perhaps IALs should also concentrate a bit more on spoken content. I eventually intend to create a few spoken Occidental recordings or videos but am still thinking over what I want them to be about.

One last note on the subject: it's often fairly easy to tell the difference between a person that has spent a lot of time simply studying grammar on their own and perhaps some reading, and a person that has listened to a great deal of the target language, as the former will constantly be forming sentences within his head as he speaks, often correct, but sometimes pretty awkward if the construction isn't something often used in the target language (saying something like "I feel depression due to excess cold of today") whereas someone that has heard a lot of the target language will often just imitate or only slightly modify oft-used expressions, resulting in a more natural kind of speech ("I hate it when it's this cold").