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In developing advanced spoken German, being a good listener is indispensable.
I don’t just mean that in an abstract sense – taking advice and criticism from native speakers and tutors seriously is definitely important! – but also more literally. If you aren’t good at understanding the German spoken to you, you will correspondingly have a harder time developing your speech.
So how exactly do you improve your German listening skills? ‎This guide is going to answer just that question. Scroll down below for the whole list of tips, tricks, and strategies!
1. Maximize your exposure
Let’s start with some groundwork. Before you head off and commit yourself to any more extravagant techniques, it’s important you understand how your brain masters listening in the first place.
While things vary from person to person, there is one constant, and that’s exposure. In simple words, you can’t learn how to understand German unless you’ve already heard a lot of German before. Which, yes, means that you’ll need to swallow your pride and allow yourself to not understand a thing for quite a while until you get it right!
Your goal should be to maximize your exposure to German as best as you can. You don’t have to set daily quotas or anything, but do try to surround yourself with spoken German as much as possible.
This extends far beyond linguistics, by the way! Even cultural exposure and shared activities with German-speaking friends can help your brain to produce and properly fill the proverbial German-language drawer, leading eventually to advanced listening skills.
Obviously, this will be easier for people who live in a German-speaking country or close by than for those on the other side of the globe, where native speakers are harder to come by.
But don’t worry, there are solutions for those kinds of cases, too, and we are going to take a look at a few of them today!
2. Go for variety
Some might have read the first point above with a sense of slight disillusion. “Wait a minute,” you might say, “I do make sure to listen to at least a bit of German each and every day, but my listening skills remain stagnant even after long months/years/lifetimes of practice!”
This is a common problem with many potential causes, of which one is by far the most prominent: an insufficient sample size. The sample size I am referring to here is the number of German speakers you interact with regularly.
Many people leave it at one, two, maybe three and call it a day, not realizing that our brain needs tons of samples – tons of speech patterns, cadences, rhythms, and individual uses of slang and vocab – in order to really let the language sink in and become universally recognizable in any situation.
The bottom line? Expand beyond the native speakers and tutors you might already know and try to incorporate a wider variety of spoken German into your daily life. This alone might already accelerate your progress significantly!
3. Go all-in with German cinema and TV
It’s okay, you don’t have to commit yourself to watching all the 1,100-and-counting episodes of Tatort back-to-back. But to really get a feel for the diversity of spoken German and what it sounds like in many different contexts, there’s still no better method than consuming a lot of German-language media.
Movies and TV shows are perfect for this purpose because, apart from being entertaining, they tend to include a lot of true-to-life spoken dialogue that mimics the way people communicate in real life, accents, idiosyncrasies, slang, and all.
This is especially true in newer (post-2000) German productions, and doubly so on TV, where down-to-earth dialogue has always been much more widespread than in the sometimes avant-garde, overly poetic world of German highbrow cinema. I recommend a healthy mix of both!
When you don’t have the time to put on the big screen and make it a whole Filmabend, podcasts are a great alternative. They do almost the same job from a language-learning point of view while also being perfectly suited for passive, background listening.
Pro tip: Use apps like Lingopie and FluentU to watch German content that you find interesting. Choose a video to watch, click on the subtitles to get translations and hear the pronunciation, and voila! You’re learning new German words while being entertained! You can also save your new vocab to flashcards on both apps.
4. Add audio courses to your study plans
Incorporating more spoken German doesn’t have to stop short of your study curriculum!
Audio-based language courses are an amazing and convenient way to keep expanding your German vocabulary and practice speaking and listening without greatly adding to your workload.
My first recommendation would be Pimsleur, one of the most widely used language courses worldwide and one of the first to incorporate audio (first in the form of tapes, nowadays on CDs and online) into their curriculum.
Their highly-refined speaking and listening exercises have one of the best track records in the business, and there’s no doubt you’re likely to recognize some of their methodology from other, newer courses that have since taken inspiration from Pimsleur’s standard model.
Rocket German is one of these. Among the best courses I have yet tried for the German language, it’s definitely worth a look if you didn’t click with Pimsleur’s approach. It’s a tailor-made experience that places heavy emphasis on developing good speaking and listening skills as well as cultural awareness.
Also worth checking are the courses on Skillshare that focus on helping you improve your comprehension and speaking skills for they often include a lot of listening practice.
5. Think holistically about your learning
While it’s certainly true that learning progress in the written, read, and spoken forms of a language rarely comes perfectly in parallel, there is still an undeniable connection between all aspects of language.
German is no different in this case! What this means is that it is actually counterproductive to focus too much of your attention on listening alone, even if you notice that that is where your skills are currently in need of the most attention.
Instead, complement listening exercises with plenty of speaking and, yes, reading and writing as well! This will ensure that you won’t lag within a different area of your skills eventually, forming a renewed need to play catch-up with yourself – and who wants that?
Another bonus: by choosing to improve both your German listening skills as well as the rest of your repertoire at the same time, you will be much more well-prepared for real-life language situations across the board. After all, we rarely ever only use one of these components at a time in everyday situations!
6. Understand and practice both active and passive listening
You might have noticed already a couple of references to concepts like “passive listening” in this guide. Maybe you already have a bit of an idea about what active or passive listening entails, but what exactly do those words mean, and how are they relevant to your learning?
In short, passive listening is listening without significant mental focus. When you listen passively, you mainly absorb the content of what is being said instead of concentrating on it.
An example of this would be playing a German podcast in the background while you’re busy with other tasks. You’re definitely listening to the content of the podcast and taking in (some of) its message, but your attention is not wholly directed toward it.
By contrast, active listening involves trying to deconstruct what is being said by analyzing and sometimes translating the spoken language in your head. This isn’t limited to vocab – when actively listening, you might also pay attention to what cases or tenses the speaker is using and to what effect.
Many make the mistake of assuming that passive listening is the goal and active listening a means to the end of achieving that goal. However, the truth is that we need good skills in both active and passive listening to interact fluently!
Therefore, it’s best to fill your day with plenty of opportunities to practice active and passive listening equally, in environments that are well-suited to each! This way, you’ll eventually learn to listen and respond in the same way that native German speakers do without having to think about it.
7. Connect with native speakers for language exchange
If one of your main issues at the moment is a lack of exposure (see point number 1), then one of the easiest and most rewarding ways you can change that is by introducing yourself to some native German speakers and offering a language exchange.
In my experience, this is one of the most fool-proof ways to make some native friends no matter where you happen to be located. With all the countless excellent websites and apps like Tandem and HelloTalk you can use these days, there really is no excuse not to expand your horizons!
8. Use music to improve your German listening skills
Music offers a more fun alternative to sometimes dry-spoken media like podcasts or radio shows. Many make the mistake of focusing too much on “useful” or educational media, neglecting the fact that enjoying ourselves is an essential part of learning!
One small note about stereotypes: their origins befuddle me, and they are entirely inaccurate. German music doesn’t have to mean Bavarian tapdancing in Lederhosen and Dirndl, yodeling to the tune of accordions!
In fact, as you can see in the photo above, the land of Bach and Beethoven can get pretty hardcore about their favorite acts, especially at events catering to specific niches like the Hard Rock-themed Wacken festival – the largest of its kind in the world, by the way!
From fun pop punk bands like Die Ärzteto the undying Udo Jürgens (Austria’s very own love ballad-addicted crooner), and from the nu metal of Rammstein to rap and hip hop acts like Falco, Cro, and Bushido, rest assured there’s a lot of excellent German music for any taste!
9. Have virtual conversation classes
Having a few native speaker friends to exchange languages with is a fun, rewarding, and very effective experience for improving your German listening skills.
However, some might prefer a more structured approach with the help of a trained instructor.
One-on-one virtual conversation classes are a perfect fit for this – consider Italki or Preply, for instance. Both of these feature thousands of professional German tutors who will be able to design a lesson plan together with you and work on your most pressing goals.
10. Expose yourself to different accents and regional varieties
Despite the fact that German is heavily standardized, you would be mistaken for assuming that all native speakers sound alike. Not only are there tons of different accents all throughout the German-speaking sphere, but plenty of unique local dialects and slang exist, too!
Some, like Berlinerdeutsch, the Hamburg dialect, and Standard Bavarian, have gained immense cultural prominence, to the point where they are a common feature in many popular movies and TV programs.
However, the diversity of the German language goes far beyond, including for instance the Austrian and Swiss varieties that aren’t discussed nearly as often as their German counterparts!
If you are planning to learn German for the sake of interacting with a specific regional group of speakers, it would be useful to therefore get used to the sounds of the accent and/or dialect popular in that area.
But even if you’re just learning “general” everyday German, your listening comprehension will definitely improve by expanding your knowledge of different modes of speech unique to different places!
11. Use apps that teach with the voices of native speakers
Audio courses are great, but many of them rely on machine-generated content for playback.
Sometimes, this can work quite well, but nothing can replace the kinds of subtle nuances you can pick up from a real human being speaking to you – even if it is through a set of speakers.
If you want to take your listening practice to the next level outside of and apart from engaging with native speakers face-to-face, then I suggest using a German learning app that includes real, pre-recorded audio from German native speakers.
Mondly is my current favorite out of these. The lessons are gamified similarly to Duolingo, with a bite-sized approach that freely adjusts to suit nearly any kind of schedule.
Compared to most of the competition, Mondly stresses the importance of imparting phrase-based vocab instead of individual words alone.
This is meant to get you speaking faster, and in my experience, it’s a really good trick for upping your listening skills with commonly-used expressions, too. It also helps that all of the audio on Mondly is provided by real, native German-speaking voice actors!
12. Don’t get ahead of yourself
Last but certainly not least, I must stress the importance of setting realistic goals and boundaries.
You can’t expect yourself to become a fluent German speaker in two weeks – so likewise, you also shouldn’t stress over not getting your listening comprehension pitch-perfect after a short amount of regular practice. And that’s not to mention how people acquire different skills at completely different rates!
Knowing and understanding how to improve your German listening comprehension is already a huge step, so congratulate yourself for making it that far! Just remember to stay consistent and add a sprinkle of realism to your roadmap at regular intervals.
Final thoughts
At first, trying to make sense of spoken German might seem daunting. When you can barely make out simple words in an average conversation, how are you supposed to reach any measure of fluency?
In the end, though, it doesn’t have to be nearly as mysterious or challenging of an undertaking as it may seem. First of all, you don’t have to surmount this obstacle by yourself – other German speakers are often the greatest source of help you could ask for!
Beyond that, simple patience and a well-thought-out learning plan are all you need!
Make sure to use the best German learning resources available to you and note down some solid, reachable goals. Good luck on your journey!