listening to spanish.
When I am listening to people speaking Spanish, I will suddenly recognise a word. I will then spend a "split" second translating to English. BUT that is time lost AND by losing that time I have lost the next few sentences. Can anyone suggest a way of stopping this.
5 Answers
The more you listen, the more you will understand! When you are with friends you don' hear every word of a group chat, but you automatically fill in the gaps as you know how they speak and what words go together. You will often not complete a sentence.
To join a conversation like that in Spanish will be difficult given the wide number of subjects and colloquial language
As far as listening is concerned there are various types 1 One to one conversation with a Spanish native online or face to face - you helping with English. You can ask for something to be repeated or xplained and it is on a subject you know. 30 minutes is long enough in your target language 2. Something in the background music/news/tv. Improves your listening and gets you used to the rhythm of the language 3 Targeted listening. There are numerous sites with videos and comprehension tests many ending in ELE This one has activities from A1 to C2 I suggest you concentrate on B1 and 2 Marcoele
This one has lots of short videos with subtitles
Vertaal is a good site with lots of things to listen to, with quizzes and transcriptions. They often use short sections from rtve news.
You should listen several times before you resort to subtitles or a transcript.
I have also found practica español helpful practica español
I put some links on an answer to a beginners question including a Spanish professor at 1001 reasons to learn Spanish and Notes in Spanish podcast.
You can also pick an article in a Spanish newspaper - read it noting useful vocabulary, find a similar article in another paper eg El País and Abc then look for a video on the subject - try rtve or El País youtube or 20minutos.
I always recommend veintemundos a free electronic magazine with lots of audio.
When learning vocabulary try and note down phrases
French was the first foreign language I learned and though it was a long time ago and I know I would speak it very badly my brain still tunes into it if I hear it.
Don't forget to enjoy yourself listening to films following a programme you like and lots of music. You will definitely improve
First of all, recognizing a word is a big step, so kudos to you!
Improvement comes with practice, what I suggest is that you watch videos in Spanish with subtitles in Spanish. Kids shows are excellent for this because they always speak very clearly in those programs and you get to know more words, so that's a plus! You could try watching Disney movies in Spanish. Once you start feeling more comfortable you can try turning off the subtitles.
Maybe watch the same movie twice, first with subtitules and then without them. I know it's boring, but it'll train your ear!
I know that right now it may seem hard for you, but try not to translate. While watching movies you can take your time, pause the video to think, but in real life conversations that is not an option. Of course you can always ask people to repeat themselves or to explain a word that you don't know. Sometimes you will get the meaning of words from context. But you have to try to think in Spanish. Have conversations with yourself in Spanish, don't plan them, just start speaking to yourself. It helps.
You will slowly start thinking in Spanish rather than translating from one language to another.
Keep practicing and keep listening, you may not notice it but you will be making progress!
Just keep at it! It takes a long time to figure it all out.
I am working at a physical therapy place and a lot of them speak Spanish. It is hard for me, because I have the same problem as you. As long as you understand something that is a great start. Just keep persevering! You will quickly learn how to just hear the word and know the meaning.
Good luck,
Keziah
A smart-aleck answer would be to listen slowly. That's not much help.
I like Mardle's three definitions of different types of learning. Number 2, the stuff in the background, I highly endorse. I have a couple of internet radios to which I listen. I listen to the news in the morning with my cafecito and I have it on at night when I go to bed. I purposely pick the news or talk-show stations.
It may sound strange, but I think reading aloud and talking to yourself if there's no one else around helps also.
Hello Bobby,
Welcome to our Spanishdict community forum 
In response to your concerns, Ailiribel is right....you are doing well /making progress when you are able to recognize individual words when they are being spoken.
You are also correct in understanding and recognizing that trying to translate these individual words in your head will slow you down because while you are trying to focus on these individual words in the previous sentence, the speaker has now moved on to the next sentence and not only have you got left behind, and have probably missed and /or forgotten the rest of the first sentence, but also not understood the context!
As you have therefore rightly discerned, this approach to understanding any language being spoken is problematic (fraught with problems!); even more so when you take into acccount how quickly native Spanish speakers talk, especially those from.Spain!
You may well then ask, what is the answer/ what can I do to improve my understanding of spoken Spanish?
I used to struggle with this self-same issue/problem many years ago when I was receiving lessons from a lady who was married to a Spaniard and she had a degree in Spanish! She used to get me to listen to Spanish spoken on a tape and told me to understand the gist (general idea) of what people were saying!
Words describe and paint pictures in our minds that help us to understand what is being said and done. Words comunicate ideas and feelings.
Continue to build up your Spanish vocabulary and use it as often as you can in both spoken and written form.
I will briefly describe an exercise I did to improve my French a Long time ago..the same principle applies to Spanish or any language that has a spoken form. This could help you! I used a book called (New Edition) Living French by T.W.Knight and revised by Jean-Claude Aragon.
I read the first 3 or 4 chapters, one at a time, on separate occasions. I read each sentence out aloud slowly, allowing the words to paint (form) a picture in my head of what they were describing.eg: Le salon a un porte et deux fenêtres. (The living room has a door and two windows) I tried to understand what I was reading without translating each word into English in my head! This requiered a lot of practice because my brain wanted to translate every word, but it was certainly worth the time and trouble to do it! Doing this exercise to train my brain not to translate into English combined with expanding my vocabulary has paid off, but I had to persevere!
I hope this helps
