Listening to a foreign language

I found this great quotation from a Roger Zelazny classic, Doorways in the Sand, which I’ve been re-reading lately.¹ In this chapter, the main character Fred, is listening to two aliens having a conversation about him in their native language:

At some earlier time I had slowly realized that the thing that would most have surprised them probably surprised me more. This was the discovery that, when I gave it a piece of my divided attention, I could understand what they were saying.

A difficult phenomenon to describe, but I’ll try: If I listened to their words, they swam away from me, as elusive as individual fish in a school of thousands. If I simply regarded the waters, however, I could follow the changing outline, the drift, pick out the splashes and sparklings. Similarly, I could tell what they were saying. Why this should be, I had no idea.

I’ve noticed this to be a very true phenomenon, with any foreign language, but I am aware of it in particular since I began studying for the JLPT. One section, the listening section, strives to really test people with tricky dialogue that changes subjects, puts lots of red-herrings and other useless information. If I do as described above, and try to pick out the words that seem useful, somehow my brain fixates on that, and I lose all the details afterward, so I often get those questions wrong.

On the other hand, if I can keep my mind relaxed and not fixating on any word or sentence in particular, but try to take in the whole conversation, imperfect as it is, then I can usually deduce the right answer.

But even if you’re not taking a test, being good at communicating in a foreign language means you have to get soooooooo adjusted to hearing it all the time, that you don’t have to strain your mind, picking out the words. If you’re still doing that, your listening skills aren’t good enough yet. This requires, hours and hours, and H O U R S of listening to that language until you it becomes so mundane you don’t have to think about it anymore. Even if you don’t know all the words, it’s much easier to get the key ideas when you’re relaxed and used to hearing it. It’s just the way the mind works.

When you listen to your own native language, you probably don’t listen to each and every word, but instead regard the all-too-familiar patterns as “Fred” describes above. So, you have to get used to hearing the language you want to learn until the patterns just get so familiar you don’t have to think about them anymore.

There’s just no other way. On the other hand, you can be assured that if you invest the time, you will learn the language without a doubt.

¹ Of all his books, this one is definitely in the top 5 in my opinion.