Tips for Learning Spoken Spanish
I'm learning Spanish vocabulary, verbs, and the sort, and I'm gaining ground on them pretty quickly. One thing I cannot seem to get a hold of, though, is learning how to understand spoken Spanish. Do any of you have tips or suggestions on how I can learn how to better comprehend spoken Spanish?
11 Answers
One of the best tips I have ever received from one of my Spanish teachers was this:
Listen to the whole sentence and try to understand the heart of what is being said rather than focusing in on translating it in your mind word for word.
I have, of course, paraphrased what she told me many years ago but it has helped me enormously.
She would put on tapes during part of the lesson and encourage me to listen to the natives speaking She would ask me questions afterwards.
(Although this lady herself was not a native speaker she had a degree in Spanish and was married to a native Spaniard.
Alternatively, if you can afford the time and money there are genuine native teachers who can teach you though Skype. Their charges vary considerably from fairly low to fairly high. If Heidi allows it I can recommend you a website through which I am taking lessons with a native teacher from Spain
I hope this helps 
Talk to a native speaker. With Skype and other voice chats available this is actually really easy. I would recommend chatting to someone who is learning English (they tend to have a better idea of how difficult it is, having been there themselves).
Listening to conversations can be, from my experience, more harmful than good. Very often slang and other language short-cuts are used and will only serve to confuse and disorientate you.
I think that learning from a native speaker in a controlled environment is the best.
The best tip I can provide is to have patience and time. Whether you want to sit down and talk to someone, or watch tv, or listen to music, motivation and keeping focused is the key to achieve results.
I'd suggest to do as you feel best with this, if you love listening to music more than watching tv then go ahead and work with lyrics. If you enjoy movies or series better than reading, then just rent or find some on youtube. Either way, whatever option you'd chose that it'd be something you'd enjoy doing.
Practice is the key 
There is a program called Destinos I enjoy very much. It consists of 52, 27 minute videos with a site that has exercises on vocabulary, grammar, culture and it's free. There's a link to it under the "more " tab above. Choose references, then learning resources. Scroll down to resources outside of SD. There are more suggestion there as well.
I agree with Feliz that the most important thing to do early on is to try to expose yourself to the language in a context that allows you to understand as much as possible of what is being said. There are various ways to do this.
Find a sympathetic speaker:
By a sympathetic speaker, I mean someone who is willing to lead by the hand, someone who can provide a good model for spoken Spanish, and someone who is willing to watch patiently and enthusiastically as you stumble and fall, until you are finally able to take your first "baby steps" with the language. The most obvious sympathetic speakers are parents and grandparents, but just because you were not born into a Spanish-speaking household does not mean that there are not alternatives. A couple of ideas might be to find a tutor (in person or on-line); befriend a native speaker; attend a church where the services are held in Spanish; attend an ESL session at a local library, rec center or church, and offer a sort of tutor exchange to a Spanish speaker who wishes to learn English; offer a similar tutor exchange via Skype to someone on a language learning website such as SpanishDict, LiveMocha, or Busuu.com.
Listen to Spanish media:
Oftentimes, it is difficult to find a sympathetic speaker, in this case (and even if you are able to find one) it is also a good idea to saturate yourself with various forms of Spanish media. It is important to recognize that, especially early on, not all media sources are going to be equal to this purpose. What you should try to look for are sources that provide enough context so that you can at least get the gist of what is being said (or as Feliz suggested, try to understand it as "blocks" of speech rather than as individual words). A couple of things you could do would be to watch movies or television which contain a lot of visual cues and body language. You might also try listening to an audio recording of a book that you have read before in English and with which you are already familiar. You could also try doing this with while simultaneously reading the Spanish text (there are various resources available on the web for this purpose). You could also try watching videos that have been dubbed into Spanish that contain story lines with which you are at least somewhat familiar.
Listen to Spanish Music:
Don't just listen to it though....learn it, and learn to love it. Listen until you begin to develop a taste for a particular genre or genres, and learn the songs. You don't necessarily have to sing them out loud, but learn them to the point that you can sing them in your head (again, Youtube is a good source for repetitive listening). While I wouldn't use this method in exclusion of other methods, I do think that listening to music is an important step in learning another language because music is a big part of most cultures and any steps you make towards better understanding or sympathizing with the culture whose language you are interested in is a step in the right direction.
Dictate as you listen:
I have just recently started doing this and have found it to be a tremendous exercise for developing your listening abilities. All you do is find a suitable recording (such as a youtube clip, dvd, etc) and try to transcribe the words, phrases and sentences that you hear. What you will find is that even if you understand what is being said (and you should, of course, always try to listen for comprehension), the rate at which people speak is generally faster than your (well, this is true of me anyway) ability to write, so you will find yourself falling behind. But this is not a bad thing because it allows you to go back to the beginning of the clip and listen again while reading what you have written (and making corrections when necessary) until you reach the point where you left off. I find that for a minute of actual dialog, I will fall behind at least a dozen times before I am able to write everything down. Therefore, for a single one minute portion of a clip, my brain is actively working through at least a dozen (and often more) repetitions of the same material thereby solidifying the sounds in my mind. As I have said, I have found this very effective in improving my listening skills, but what's more, I have also found that since I have been doing this, I have been more prone to spontaneously think or speak in Spanish than has been true in the past. If you have a relatively limited vocabulary, you might have a bit of trouble finding resources to use, and you might need to start with videos which have been dubbed into Spanish (which often have dialogs which move at a somewhat slower rate than is true of a typical Spanish film or conversation), or you might even try recording Spanish newscasts because news anchors tend to annunciate a bit more when they speak which often makes it easier to discern the natural breaks between words.
Listen to language CDs:
There are numerous audio programs on the market which are designed to teach you Spanish: Pimsleur, Living language, Rosetta Stone, etc. Many times you can find recordings such as these freely available at your local library or through inter-library loan programs. Personally, I have tried a few but never really found them to be a very effective method. That's not to say, however, that they won't work for anybody. I have heard several people who swear by various programs such as Michel Thomas, Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone....I, however, am not one of those people.
Don't forget to read!!!
If you find yourself getting lost in a conversation, oftentimes it can be because you have not adequately built up your vocabulary. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of becoming a voracious reader in order to build up your language skills.
In any case, these are just a few ideas (and by no means an exhaustive list), but hopefully, something in here can be of use to you.
I like to practice with the Pimsleur Audio Lessons. I check them out at the library.
brianelliot, that is a great question. I am in the process of understanding spoken Spanish and developing my capacity to speak Spanish.
After some preliminary exposure to the spoken language (I attend Bible classes and church services in Spanish), I have found it takes about 10 minutes or so for me to get into the rhythm of understanding the speaker. Like feliz has said, I don't try now to translate each word, but to grasp the message communicated in the sentences. Time, exposure, and vocabulary exercises will help you reach this understanding. You will likely pick up about 10% of the phrases when you begin this technique, but you will improve with time and exposure.
Teachers will rarely call on me to answer questions in Spanish, but they frequently call on me to read aloud. This is a very profitable exercise. Though I am not familiar with many of the words in the passages I am asked to read, I have found I can sound the words out using vowel and consonent pronunciations I have learned. The worst problem I have is handling accents, particularly verbs tenses. Sometimes I have to read a word and re-pronounce it to correctly apply the accent. The other class members do not mind, though. In fact, they are willing to correct me when I am totally "off base".
Exposure, practice, rehearsal, and time.
I hope this helps!
Watch Spanish movies, listen to podcasts and news, etc.
@LiveUnsheath
Dude, I love emulation! My latest emulation endeavor was with the PSII and enjoying playing Final Fantasy X on a higher resolution than was possible before on the TV back in the day.
What games have you played (in spanish)?
-Charlius-
I'm not sure if it is a very effective form of study, but I play old SNES games that have been translated into Spanish on an emulator. I've picked up a few hundred words and phrases from them so far. So, at their very worst, they are a good source of vocabulary and humorous things to say. 
I don't waste my time with anything but role-playing games, though. They have the most text.
Listen to native speakers talking to each other more often. Imagine how someone trying to learn English would feel after hearing oneof your normal conversations.
