Learning to listen to Spanish

This post is primarily for adults learning Spanish, for example in my college-level courses.  The most popular inquiry is regarding how to hear, and more importantly understand, the Spanish language.  So please read the following strategies and ideas about how improve your listening skills.    

1.  First thing is first, get over the notion that you need to understand every word.  It's just not realistic.  It won't happen.  But instead, listen to get the gist and then use educated guessing to fill in the blanks.  If you have comprehension questions to answer, know those when you're watching, and listen just to find out the answer and forget the rest.

2.  In that process, you will need to repeat audio/video playing several times...  maybe even 50 times or more!  Use the pause button judiciously, then rewind immediately, until you do your very best to get it.  It is good ear-training.

3.  Are you using earphones?  If not, I highly recommend them.  Having the sound closer to your ear is helpful.

4.  Write down what you DO understand.  Leave blanks where you DON'T understand.  Then, see if you can figure it out.  Seeing it written down can be helpful.  

5.  If you hear a word that you don't understand, see if you can spell it out.  Type it into Google Translate, and see if it gives you anything that might be appropriate to context.  

6.  Be patient with yourself.  It is easy to get frustrated, but frustration does you no good.  Take a break from it, walk away.  Come back later when your brain is fresh.  This may do the trick!

Here are some idea for more organic forms of practice:

1.  Watch a movie, but set the language to Spanish.  If it is a movie you know well in English, you will find you can learn the Spanish you are hearing due to your pre-established knowledge.

2.  Listen to music in Spanish.  Find Spanish songs and then Google the lyrics so you can read along as you play the song.  Then take this song with you on your MP3 player, in your car, wherever you can listen to it.  Like #2 above, repetition will help you learn the language.  It's how we learned as babies... by listening over and over before we attempted to say a word for ourselves.

3.  Check out the podcast News in Slow Spanish.