This is different question to the other thread here.

Anyone who is learning a foreign language, what did you do to improve understanding it when it's spoken to you?

I'm learning Spanish just now (started night classes in January) and I'm pretty good at the reading and writing, but speaking and listening is a lot harder. I think the speaking part just requires plenty of practice but I can't imagine ever being good enough to always understand what people are saying to me. The teacher speaks Spanish 90% of the time and I do ok, but that's just within the class.

Someone suggested downloading radio shows in Spanish, anyone know where I can find some?

You can get podcasts that are designed for people that are learning Spanish. If you search for Luis Rojas on iTunes he does some good ones, he speaks fairly slowly which makes it A LOT easier to understand.

Also this: Search | Teachers TV is a TV show in several language for people that are learning. There's some episodes in Spanish on there and I find them really helpful for practicing.

wwiTV.com - The ultimate guide to Live TV webcasts. You can watch a lot of Spanish language TV channels on here, though I find it kind of hard to follow them because they talk quite fast! There's probably alot more stuff than this out there, but I hope that helped a bit

Its hard, I learnt Portuguese at night classes and my reading and writing is still much better than my speaking/listening just because I know no Brazilian Portuguese speakers. It upsets me sometimes :-(. I went to all the effort of learning it, spoke it a fair bit in Brazil and now 5 years later its slipping away cause I never get to practice it.

when i was learning german (i did it up to a-level and i'm picking it up again next year as an outside module - can't wait! ), our teacher spoke german ALL of the bloody time! it was good, though. the best way to take your linguistic skills from being good on paper to being good in real, off-the-cuff conversations is to immerse yourself in the language. this is why every time i meet a german person when i'm out, i aaaaalways say hello lol, and this is why i did the exchange 3x, because you come home at the end of the fortnight and your conversation skills and confidence have gone up immeasurably (and because it's 2 weeks off school and all the cheap fags and booze you can get your hands on). if you can't get yourself off to spain (what better excuse than that 'it's educational'?), don't switch off when you don't understand something your teacher says in spanish. even in a-level classes, when we'd been learning it for blooming years, we didn't understand EVERY WORD our teacher said and we weren't expected to - it's about getting the gist and the point. if you think about it, even speaking in your native language, you come across words you don't understand but it doesn't impinge on your understanding as a whole. it's just learning a language is so difficult that it's easy to get disheartended and lose your confidence about it and think you're doing crap when you're actually doing well. remember that you don't have to understand every word and just let it wash over you - same as the way you listen to shakespeare, i always think.

LOL Rehab, i've been watching teachers' tv haha cos i've decided i want to be a primary teacher with a specialism in german and anyway, there are many gems on there, including this german kinda-soap opera called Extra that's soooooo crap and cringingly uncool it's compelling!

Also, being an insomniac, i can tell you the BBC seem to have language programmes on every single night in the 'Learning Zone' segment from about 2am. they're also quite kitsch and amusing but they're also probz quite useful because they're just about speaking the language and everyday situations (and also some situations which would simply never arise but you feel good knowing you would be able to say "the falafel factory has exploded, please alert the authorities" in greek should the need ever arise.

Aha it's so brilliant! Cheesy crap at it's best!

Oh, and I went on an exchange trip to Spain a few weeks ago and you're so right - I improved my Spanish alot while having a week long piss up!

hehe yeah foreign language programs are pretty great, I remember watching S Club dubbed in German, best entertainment ever.
The Shakespeare comparison is very accurate, I did English Lit for my degree and I'm always trying to convince people to just go along with Shakespeare and they'll realise they know whats going on.
I think I either need to move to Spain for 6 months or find a lot of new Spanish speaking friends.

really? in london? i know many brazilians there! it's so rare knowing foreigners who learn portuguese, i'd be glad do help you (if i can help you from far away).

i've been learning english and french and all i can say is that listening skills are essential. go to websites and try to listen to the news in the language you're learning for at leat 20 minutes a day. i say the news because they're often said in a formal way, without slangs, it's much easier than watching films and series in a foreign language. they're a good start!

i found this site a while back - spanish: Radio Lingua Network | Learn Spanish online with free podcasts

other languages: Radio Lingua Network | Podcasts


i didn't really get into it though.
maybe i should give it another try.