Many people are reluctant to put in the time to listen repeatedly to the same content. They do not have the patience. They want to move on to new content. Or, they want to talk to someone.

In my view, however, repetitive listening is very powerful if you have the will power to do it. It helps you to understand what you are listening to. If you are observant while listening you can reinforce your grasp of key words and phrases. It can help give you the rhythm and correct pronunciation of the new language. It is quite easy to do while doing other things. But that is not all.

When you are repetitively listening you are training your mind and engraving the language on your mind. Try the following experiment. Chose a group of items to listen to, each 3-5 minutes long for a total of 30 minutes or so. Listen to these items for 2 weeks, occasionally reviewing the words by reading the text and reviewing the new words and phrases. You will feel that you can understand everything but still have difficulty using many of the words and phrases. Never mind. Put these items aside and do not listen to them for a month or two, or even longer.

Now two or three months later when you go back to reading and listening to them, at first there will be words that you do not remember but very quickly you will find that you can focus on these texts better than ever. You have allowed this language to “bake” in your brain. You will find it easier to learn this content the second time, and more of it will become part of your usable language.

This is what I am experiencing after a 10 months absence from my Korean. All the texts that I listened to 20 or 30 times are now even clearer to me than they were before. I am focusing on all the words and phrases even more clearly than 10 months ago.

Try that with The Linguist content. Go back to your old friends from time to time, once they have ripened in your memory so that you can really start to use all those new words and phrases.

Has anyone had a similar experience?