6 Deadly Language Listening Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

6 Deadly Language Listening Mistakes and How to Avoid Them 6 Deadly Language Listening Mistakes and How to Avoid Them Dangers lurk around every corner.For some people, big spiders strike fear.For others, a creepy clown will send them reeling.But for language learners, theres one dark and deadly danger worse than all others combined: language mistakes.And theres one type of language mistake more insidious than any others. It will sneak up on you when you least expect it.Whether its a new word in a conversation that throws you for a loop or an accent youre not accustomed to,  language listening  mistakes will leave you quaking in fear.Okay, maybe thats a bit of an exaggeration.But theres no denying that  listening skills are essentialâ€"so important that you can actually  learn a language by listening.Sure, you can (and should) hunt for  tips or secrets to improve your listening skills, but at some point, a mistake will creep up on you in the dark of night.Luckily, youre coming to the fight prepared. Here are six language listening mistakes to look out for to help you win. Why Is It Important to Enh ance Your Language Listening Skills?Many people underestimate the importance of this valuable skill.  An article  in  TESOL Quarterly  points out that written and spoken languages are two very different things. So even if you can read every word you encounter, that doesnt mean you can understand every spoken word you hear.So its possible that in many situations, you cant functionally understand the language. Nothing seems more dreadful than working hard to learn a language only to find that you cant understand it!After making such strides in the language, its disheartening when listening mistakes appear. With a decrease in motivation, you might find your passion starting to fade. When this occurs in language learning, its a huge problem due to the strong link between motivation and learning.In fact,  studies indicate that greater motivation can speed up learning, so its important to try to dodge anything that might hinder your progress.6 Deadly Language Listening Mistakes and How to Avoid Them1. Letting listening anxiety overcome youAnxiety is an unfortunate side effect of learning a language. The more you learn, the more you realize you dont know, and you might find yourself feeling pretty twitchy about that.The problem with this is that it may actually stop you from doing listening practice. If youre nervous that you wont understand, you might try to avoid it completely.But anxiety is more diabolical than you might have guessed. Even if you manage to keep practicing in spite of your nerves, one study suggests that merely having language anxiety can affect your abilities.However, there are some tricks you can use to reduce anxiety.One way to keep the listening anxiety at bay is obvious: do listening practice. Listen to  target language podcasts and music. The more you practice, the better you get. Over time, you might be able to whittle your listening anxiety down to nothing, and this will help your skills skyrocket.Regardless of how much you practice, though , you might also face anxiety when trying to understand native speakers. This is normal, and you should  go easy on yourself. Just remember that if youre ever in a conversation with a native speaker, most will understand that youre going to make mistakes and wont hold it against you.People around the world recognize the challenges of language learning. Plus, diving into a conversation with a native speaker will give you valuable listening and speaking skills! So go to Meetups or find a language exchange partner  on sites like italki.While italki offers you plenty of free resources to start practicing, you can also hire a professional educator to teach you one on one. This is the best option for any language learner who needs to improve their listening quickly. Just register on italki, find your ideal language teacher and schedule your first lesson. The platform makes it very easy to accomplish this.Whatever you decide to do, dont let anxiety get the best of you!2. Not recognizing fa miliar vocabulary wordsSome learners seem to memorize vocabulary lists like theyre going out of style. After all, the more words you know, the more you can understand, right?Not always. Even if you know a word, without adequate listening practice you might not be able to pick it out in a conversation. Sometimes, words can run together and you cant even tell where one word stops and the next word begins. This occurs because, as language learners, we tend to focus on individual words in isolation.Because we learn them this way, recognizing them in context can prove challenging. This is problematic because even if you know thousands of words, you might not functionally be able to interpret spoken speech. Additionally, studies emphasize that context can actually affect meaning, so having a limited ability to notice individual spoken words could also impede your ability to notice valuable contextual clues.Plus, discovering suddenly that you cant pick out familiar words can be   disappoin ting because youve invested so much time in learning.To avoid this mistake, keep your expectations in check. Try to understand what you can, but if you miss a word (and you will!), dont beat yourself up. You might not get all the words the first time, but if you keep trying, youll pick out more and more.Another way to decrease the probability of this mistake is to do more contextual listening activities.FluentU is particularly useful for ensuring you can understand words in context. Thats because FluentU uses real-world videos to give you the listening practice you need. Each video is captioned and the captions are annotated to give you easy access to any words definition, example sentences and an associated image.Plus, you can see how a word is used in other videos simply by clicking it. That makes FluentU an easy way to ensure youll understand the vocabulary you learn in context!3. Not allotting time for listening practiceFor whatever reason, many language students focus on readin g and/or writing but forget listening and/or speaking. Perhaps its the popularity of textbooks (which rarely allot for speaking and listening skills), but it can leave a huge hole in any learners skill set.Language learners usually aim for fluency, but if you forget to do listening practice, youll never reach your full potential. Language is largely spoken, so its essential to understand spoken speech. The Literacy Bug suggests that well-balanced pedagogy needs to include reading, writing, speaking and listening.To fight the mistake of forgetting listening practice, be sure to alternate your activities to focus on developing balanced skills. If youre learning from a textbook, its important to seek out listening activities. Luckily, there are plenty of options out there like audio programs, audiobooks and more that you can use to incorporate listening practice into your routine.4. Not enjoying the chosen resourcesFor some language learners, listening practice is a chore. Thats a nigh tmare come trueâ€"if  you dont find resources you enjoy, youre less likely to practice and your skills will suffer. How well do you think your listening comprehension will improve if you only (begrudgingly) do two or three minutes a day?Thats why it is so important to select the right resources for you. Listening to something you enjoy for an hour actually winds up seeming easier than listening to something you hate for two minutes.  One study even suggests that pairing the right video with good listening strategies can improve both effect and motivation in language learners. If thats not enough reason to find the right activity, we dont know what is!Luckily, there are plenty of options for listening practice, so if you dont enjoy what youre doing, try a different option. For instance, if you dont like listening to endless dialogues, watching one of the best foreign language films on Netflix  might be the perfect solution. Once you find something you truly love, youll have no troubl e sneaking in some listening practice and loving every minute of it.5. Expecting to immediately understand speech spoken at a natural paceOnce youve studied a language, you might feel like you should immediately be able to understand native level speech. Sadly, that rarely happens. Understanding what you hear is a skill that takes time.Thats because native speech is usually very different than what students hear in a classroom. Its faster. Its often decidedly more mumbly. Because of this, even students who are relatively advanced in a classroom setting might not understand everything immediately.One study suggests that while listening comprehension is one of the most central skills for language learners, its not a widely researched skill. Still, what we do know is that it takes time. Its important to focus on the gist of a conversation, not on understanding every word.To start practicing this, keep a notebook handy while youre listening to an episode of your favorite podcast (or wat ching a YouTube video). Write down a summary, or the gist, of what you hear. Continue to do this every day and youll begin to see a marked improvement in how much you pick up.If you really want to see your progress, go back to that initial entry after a few weeks and listen to that same podcast. Can you understand more? What would the summary look like now? See how much youve grown?6. Translating in your head.Trying to translate spoken foreign language into your native language as you listen is a natural reaction. The Oxford University Press English Language Teaching Global Blog  points out that translation in foreign language instruction is common and sometimes even useful.Sadly, it can also be problematic.When listening, translating in your head takes valuable time and may prevent you from hearing whats said next. So while you might have a perfect translation of the first few words you hear, you might not understand anything else.Instead, try to focus on capturing meaning. Sometim es it takes focus and self control to do this, but its worth the extra effort. Its an advanced skill, but its essential for strong listening skills.Watch a YouTube video in the target language thats very contextual (like a video focused on restaurant or transportation vocabulary). Picture the context in your mind. As you listen to the speaker, imagine a video playing in your mind of whats happening. If a customer is ordering a drink, thats what you should be visualizing. Youll begin to associate those words with pictures and actions, instead of literal translations.This will be difficult at first, so you might transition towards this by doing it slowly. Translate one sentence or phrase, then picture the next. Then, over time, build to larger chunks. Eventually, youll lose the natural drive to translate in your head, and youll understand much better.Language listening mistakes dont need to scare you. Just keep an eye out for them and remember how to fight them off when they sneak up on you!