I still feel that I can barely talk about anything I’d like to. Sure I can introduce myself, order a meal if I had to, but I still feel like my ability to converse is still at a very strict beginner level. I understand grammar. I do. I can’t tell you the correct grammar names in french, but I have studied ad reviewed them a few times.

For people like me, listening is all that is needed . I’ve stopped all formal study and just began incorporating more and more french in my life. (Through TV, and video games.) I feel that this is far better for me than sitting there learning yet more words. Or more grammar.

My two cents.

As for material that is above my level… I listen to that in the car kind of passively. I understand maybe half of what is going on and have that single podcast or broadcast on repeat until I can get to about 80% understanding. Most of the time I know the structures and vocab but it just doesn’t click. But with each subsequent pass it becomes clearer… I will recognise one more word or one more structure. It becomes clearer and clearer until I feel comfortable enough to move on to the next track. Sometimes I get through 2 tracks a day with 40 minutes driving, other times I’ll have the same track on for a few days.

Of course there are times when it bugs me that much that I have to look at the transcript when I get home

I think listening to foreign material with no written transcription is not meant to teach you new vocabulary but new sentences, new ways of saying things. You need to have the vocabulary, anki is your friend (but I know I’m not teaching you anything here lol). Listening is good for ear training and for real sentences from real world to go in your brain, if you already have the needed vocabulary.

I think a lot of people just give up on it before it has a chance to work. This sort of learning is insidious — it doesn’t feel like it’s doing anything and then *bam* you realize how much it has added.

I regularly listen to the daily news, spoken slowly, from Deutche Welle “Langsam gesprochene Nachrichten”
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/0,,8030,00.html and the DW-World TV news as well. I also listen to a variety of other content irregularly. I would say my periods of listening are generally short; never more than 30 minutes.

The main benefits to me of this are expansion of vocabulary by deducing the meaning of words in context and an opportunity to listen closely to pronunciation (which I can always improve on). I also found, particularly in the early days, it really helped me get a feeling for the “rhythm”, and learn the unique sounds, of the language.

Aside from the learning something new I also find it invaluable for forcing my mind to “click” into German every day and importantly as a measure for self-encouragement. For example with the daily news, I remember when I began I understood absolutely nothing. Now I understand a lot but still with some way to go. The day I can understand the whole news bulletin I will know I have achieved something. Although at this rate it probably not going to happen in my lifetime

Josh: did you ever try to get some serious audio-based input, like several hours per day and that for several months in a row? I agree that just listening is less effective, but in combination with a TV it’s great. Look how far Keith got. Also, I became fluent because I watched well over 5000 hours of television in Spanish.

What I was aiming at is the fact that, for me, I tend to not pick up much that’s new while listening. If I hear something I’ve learned elsewhere, sure, it clicks more firmly into my mind. But listening for hours and hours doesn’t seem to change the fact that, if I didn’t know a word on the first pass, I won’t know it on the 20th pass.

I get about 10 hours of input per day. In my target language, of course. It helped me with my pronunciation, with my grammar, with picking up words, etc. That doesn’t mean I don’t look up things, because I do. I use an SRS to get comprehensible input. Still, as Keith proved with his Mandarin project, it isn’t necessary at all to ‘study’ to become good at a language; listening is enough.

Just read this article, it clears up a lot. In short: it tells that by just listening you’ll get used to the sound of the language and also absorb the patterns it uses.