How Much English Should You Listen to Per Day?

I often recommend to my students to listen to English daily. Why is this important? As a general rule, if you want to write English better, you need to read more good-quality English in newspapers, novels, and other articles. However, if you want to converse better, reading offers very little help. To improve your conversational English, you need to practice listening more regularly.

What is the best to listen to?

What makes conversation difficult is generally understanding what is being said to you. Therefore it’s very important to improve your listening skills. Watching TV programs with subtitles in English helps your brain link the written words with spoken words and the general situation and context.

As for program selection, in my opinion, it’s best to select programs and films that you find interesting or content you are familiar with. I have always enjoyed cooking, so I often watch cookery programs, for example, Masterchef. This helped me learn Portuguese. I also enjoy football, and the Portuguese language commentary was very useful for me.

So, I would strongly recommend watching the sports you enjoy and understand well, with English commentary, this will teach you a lot of relevant vocabulary about a subject you enjoy talking about. While you watch a sport, you will see a familiar action and hear the correct English word for the action. This is often repeated multiple times. Making a regular television habit will ensure you hear multiple repetitions of the new vocabulary and will help you learn the new vocabulary well.

As with many other things, repetition and consistency are so important. Practice makes perfect is something we often say in the UK.

Language Exchange

Another common way to learn English is to do an exchange. This option is very expensive and inaccessible to many. But how does this work? An exchange involves full immersion in the language and culture. It removes the opportunities to use one’s native language, as the student is living in a country where English is the only known language. During an exchange, the immersion is 24/7, and a course is 2 or 3 hours per week of English practice. In exchange, a learner would have a month’s worth of English practice in 2 days. This is much more intense than anything which could be repeated at home.

Conclusion

So how can this be reproduced at home? You can watch films and series or listen to podcasts. Target an hour per day, this, combined with classes, will make a huge difference to your levels of fluency. It is so important to start good routines and habits, especially if they are enjoyable and useful.