Whatever your feelings are about listening to your target language, and regardless of how far you’ve come, the significance of listening cannot be understated. Continue reading to learn more about the importance of listening in Arabic learning, as well as some helpful hints.

Why Is Listening So Important in Learning?

Many language learners place a high value on speaking. They don’t put forth as much effort to silently listen. Listening appears to be a basic or secondary skill to other more active language abilities. Listening to a foreign language is challenging, much to the surprise of many new learners.

If you’ve ever taken a second language exam, you’ll know that the listening portion is nearly always the most difficult.

Here’s a quick fact: bad listening causes more than 60% of all misunderstandings, whereas poor reading causes just 1%. If you are not presently learning how to listen, it may be time to incorporate activities that will help you improve this ability into your learning process. 

The advantages of good listening skills start in class, but they extend to many parts of your academic and personal life.

What Is the Importance of Listening in the Learning Process?

Listening is an essential skill for language development.

According to research, when we communicate, we spend around 40-50 percent of our time listening, 25-30% speaking, 11-16% reading, and just 9% writing. That implies we spend almost half of our time listening!

Learning to listen can help kids learn how to convey their thoughts. This is due to the fact that students who listen gain more knowledge to ponder on and think critically about before responding. 

Furthermore, teaching students how to listen might help them acquire their second language faster if they are dual language learners in the class.

The significance of active listening extends to social-emotional development. Active listening encourages attentive thinking, which can help kids cope with anxiety and sadness. It can also assist kids in developing connections since when they engage in discussion, their classmates are more likely to see them as open and engaged.

Finally, exercising active listening may foster empathy, which can benefit a student’s life both inside and outside of the classroom.

What Is the Importance of Listening in Arabic Learning?

Spending more time listening in our second language is the key to improving our skills. It is, nevertheless, critical that we learn to listen properly. We are frequently not taught exactly how to listen in a foreign language, or if we are, we are not taught effectively.

Let’s look at why listening is essential and how we may enhance our Arabic language listening abilities.

1. To Participate in Active Listening

If you’ve ever sat in a group of people speaking Arabic, you’ll be familiar with the uneasy sensation that you should be participating. You have the impression that if you don’t say anything, you’re not truly participating in the conversation.

That couldn’t be farther from the truth. The issue is that you’re mixing up a silent and a passive procedure. Despite the fact that you are not saying anything, listening is a really active process. That’s why you’re exhausted after a social gathering in the Arabic language.

Getting over the impression that we are “doing nothing” is a critical step toward good listening. One option is to use active listening skills to remind yourself and others that you are part of the conversation even if you don’t talk much.

1. For Conversation Purposes

Face-to-face communication is obviously one of the primary reasons why many of us study a foreign language. Listening will, of course, play a significant role in this.

If you don’t know how to listen in a foreign language, you’ll never be able to have a meaningful conversation other than typing to someone.

1. To Learn Accents

Arabic is a language that has lots of different accents and dialects. There are more than 30 countries that speak Arabic and none of them speak the same. When you focus on improving your listening skills, you get to learn more accents and dialects. 

Dialects are mainly conveyed via speech, not writing. So, if you spend all your time learning by writing, you won’t make progress in your accent. Learning dialects via listening is essential if you want to have a good knowledge of how a language functions and even the culture of a nation.

1. Learn New Words

Improving your listening skills will enable you to pick up some new words. There are things stated in everyday conversations that would never be written down in a book.

Remember that language changes all the time, and some of that information will only be revealed through speech. Remember that even dialects may alter the way some words are spoken.

You will notice a significant boost in your performance as a language student if you enhance your listening skills.

Remember that one of the really wonderful things about listening to others is that you will be able to learn how individuals pronounce particular words. 

You will never be able to learn how to pronounce from a book, but you will be able to learn how to pronounce by listening to others. Again, accents will come into play here, because individuals speak things differently based on where they are from.

1. You Get to Enjoy Arabic in Different Forms

Once you’ve begun to develop new listening skills, you’ll be able to enjoy the language in entirely new ways. Listening, for example, will allow you to experience eBooks, radio shows, podcasts, classic songs, television shows, poetry, and movies!

Prepare to re-listen to your favorite shows/podcasts/songs several times. You may not catch all of the words the first time through. 

But then as you listen to the same conversation spoken time after time, you will be able to pick out new words, recognize words you heard the last time, and really start to comprehend how different intonations and accents can be implemented to those phrases.

This will help you to further develop your listening and language abilities. As previously said, listening unlocks your capacity to learn a language, and you should devote a significant amount of time to it.

Can You Learn Arabic By Listening?

Yes, you can learn Arabic by listening. Listening is essential for vocabulary growth, grammatical development, and proper pronunciation. As a result, developing a regular practice of listening to Arabic is a necessary skill for an Arabic student.

Listening is a form of immersion. Immersion, in return, develops your learning process. This can help you learn faster and more effectively. So, if you want to learn Arabic by listening, go for it! A helpful tip, though, is to use the help of a written text of what you’re listening to.

You’ve got it now. You now understand why listening skills are so crucial while studying Arabic. We recommend that you enroll in Alif Arabic classes for this. Our team will be delighted to work with you to improve your listening skills and more!