I find my ability to speak foreign languages greatly improved by listening to music, conversations, TV shows and movies.
At least at the conversational level; this is more notably so in German where there are so many articles to learn, and many expressions such as ‘doch’ and ‘ach so’ which are so common in every day speaking. By watching and listening people converse with each other —instead of just reading and memorizing over and over the same sentence—the articles and these expressions began to appear naturally and many of my previous mistakes subdued.
So, if your end goal is to understand a language there is a case to be made for listening rather than just reading, it may very well be just how we really learn languages. Of course this is always one test away.
I find my ability to speak foreign languages greatly improved by listening to music, conversations, TV shows and movies.
At least at the conversational level; this is more notably so in German where there are so many articles to learn, and many expressions such as ‘doch’ and ‘ach so’ which are so common in every day speaking. By watching and listening people converse with each other —instead of just reading and memorizing over and over the same sentence—the articles and these expressions began to appear naturally and many of my previous mistakes subdued.
So, if your end goal is to understand a language there is a case to be made for listening rather than just reading, it may very well be just how we really learn languages. Of course this is always one test away.