The Museum of Knowledge team is often asked, after listening to a language how long will take to understand it? Best practice for language learning most certainly includes adopting well-known techniques such as immersion learning. Immersion learning can include listening to audio descriptions, radio excerpts and verbal conversations. The benefits of learning a language by listening to structured dialogue include;

• Understanding how words and phrases are pronounced
• Understanding and being able to express yourself using different accents
• Becoming familiar with intonations in the spoken language form

Learning a language by listening to various dialogues should not be carried out in isolation. Listening and repetition is imperative in order to ensure successful comprehension and rapid progress. Listening skills, based on structure is also important so that words spoken can be fully understood. These words are utilized within a context, a topic or key subject area. Because of this, it is helpful to become familiar with some words and phrases in respect of a specific subject area prior to listening to dialogue.

Taking into consideration topical subject matters such as business meetings for example, an area of focus could be negotiating contracts, in which case, understanding the terminology and vocabulary used in such dialogues and subject matters would be preferential ahead of engaging in listening to the dialogue. The more vocabulary known and understood in advance, the quicker it will be to fully understand spoken dialogue. Advanced knowledge of a language would also enable listeners to understand such dialogue with high levels of competency within three months.