1. Spanish is usually spoken very quickly
2. Native speakers tend to slur words together, blurring their boundaries

That said, there are several steps you can take that will dramatically improve your listening skills over time.

How To Develop Spanish Listening Skills

Of course, the best way to improve your listening skills is to engage in actual conversations with native Spanish speakers.  Unfortunately, most of us don’t have a lot of opportunities to do that on a daily basis (although you probably do have some opportunities).  Barring real-life interaction, here are a few ways to improve your comprehension.

• Watching Spanish Talk Shows On Television – Most major cities have at least one Spanish television station.  Talk shows in particular offer excellent listening practice because they tend to feature real people speaking naturally, in contrast to the exaggerated speech on most soap operas.
• Watching Spanish Movies – Watching Spanish movies is a great way to hear a variety of accents spoken in a (mostly) natural manner.
• Listening To Spanish Radio – Okay, most disc jockey’s take care to speak slowly and clearly enough to be easily understood by everybody, so the radio isn’t the best way to hear Spanish spoken in its natural setting.  However, the radio is also the most available source of listening practice since you can do it every day on your way to work.

Watching Spanish-language television programs and movies is a great way to practice your Spanish listening skills (something I neglected to mention in my Learn Spanish For Under $50 post). Over time, watching Spanish film will train your brain to separate what initially sounds like Spanish-like gibberish into coherent thoughts and eventually individual words. From personal experience (and that of others I’ve talked to), this process tends to go frustratingly slow at first followed by a sudden click where you just “get it.” So don’t be alarmed if, after a few weeks of daily viewing, you’re still having trouble. Keep at it and one day, something will click in your brain and it will be like you could understand it all along.

The Process

In order to get the most benefit from your effort when you’re starting out, you’ll need to watch each movie a number of times. Here’s the general progression.

1. Watch the movie at least 2 or 3 times with English subtitles turned on over a period of a few days until you know the plot by heart before going onto the next step. If you can briefly and accurately tell a friend what the film is about, you’re probably good.
2. Watch the movie 1 or 2 more times with English subtitles turned on, this time paying close attention to what is being said in Spanish and what the translations are. The English subtitles will almost never correspond exactly to what is being said: instead, it will be just enough to give you the gist of what’s being said. Pay attention to patterns. Are some seemingly long and complex utterances being translated by relatively short and simple English phrases? Are there any key words or other sort of markers these utterances tend to have in common? Make a note of them and see if you can figure out what’s going on. By paying careful attention, you should be able to make some headway understanding general speech patterns.
3. Turn the subtitles off. By now, you should know exactly what a scene is about and generally what’s being said even if you can’t understand much of the actual Spanish. After a few viewing, you should be able to synthesize what you know is being said with what you hear and begin to understand the actually Spanish without having to rely on context. It’s a long process but trust me, it works.

In tomorrow’s post, I’ll briefly review three of my favorite Spanish movies that would work well with this technique.