How Much Do You Need To Understand To ENJOY PODCASTS In A Foreign Language?

People often throw around percentages and rough guesses when we talk about how much we understand or how much we should understand to read or listen to content in a foreign language. But how much do you actually need to understand to simply enjoy the experience?

Today, I share the results of a little experiment I did to test this out for myself and I think the conclusion is really interesting! Let me know your thoughts in the comments! 🙂

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Explaining my wonderful experience enjoying my first German podcast:

My Podcast Study Method:

My Podcast Interview Method:

My Transcription Method:

My German Interview with Easy German:

The Easy German Podcast:

[michaelcheser]

I guessed 80%. Really, this number is challenging to calculate. Sometimes I know the words spoken but don't register them while listening because they were spoken too fast for me to process. Other times, I correctly register all the words from the sentence but still don't comprehend the overall meaning due to not knowing an idiomatic expression or grammar point.

[somedragontoslay]

That's my experience with Sign Language: If I give me permision to just contemplate, I can understand the idea behind a conversation, but if someone gets me into the conversation, I feel the obligation to understand everything and as a result, I don't get anything. It's horrible.

[StagArmslower]

I'm learning French for few months(I had some French in high school 40 years ago) and for last month or so I'm immersing myself in listening to Y'a que la vérité qui compte on You Tube. There are a lot of them and you can listening for over an hour to pure French dialog. I can understand maybe 80% and I actually sacrifice the reading in French for this show. I really enjoy it and noticed that I get more of the understanding after each show. I'm listening also to French comedians but that is more difficult for me. I'm driving a lot and can listen to recorded podcasts and French songs almost all day. Very often I'll find and print out text of the songs so listening is easier. I think you are right that you don't need close to 90% of understanding to enjoy the language and still have great satisfaction from it. Love your videos, thanks

[joachim]

86, 5% is pretty accurate. I think 80% of comprehension is fine to understand the main meaning of a podcast. But it depends on the podcast

[draugami]

When I was traveling in Eastern Europe, I was traveling on a train between Warsaw and Vilnius. I met a family from Lithuania on the train. So I decided to speak to them in broken Lithuanian. I conjugated verbs incorrectly and nouns . I made mistakes galore. But I communicated and enjoyed the exchange. We made arrangements to meet a week later in Vilnius. When I was there, I thought I should speak being more aware of grammar. They told me that I spoke better on the train.
When I thought about it, if someone speaks to me in broken English, I can understand them better than if they only spoke 10 sentences perfectly. Grammar is needed to communicate. But if we focus on grammar, it hinders our communication.

[Eliean]

The first thing I learnt in England, when I went there to learn English, that I do not need to understand every word. And yes, when I read in my own language sometimes, I find a word I'm not familiar with, and I guess its meaning. If we think about it, when we were kids, it happened quite a lot. That is how reading expands our vocabulary.

[feliperodrigues]

I do stir my black coffee! Always did and always do. Like you, I really don't even know why and people often question me about it. Well, guess I just like the sound of the spoon hitting the cup!

[JonathanOlelo]

I wonder what the lowest point can be, 70%? 60%? I guess it also depends on what "enjoyment" means for each person

[Luis-Torres]

I started learning with highly intensive reading through playing video games with a lot of text. Something the helps is the visual/audio context that comes with playing a video game, but overall the intensive strategy helped me boost my overall reading comprehension by A LOT in only a few weeks of learning.

Soon after, I gave extensive reading a try which I feel really helped to solidify what I already knew, because now I'm able to more quickly choose the words I want to use to express myself as I'm writing or speaking.

In my opinion, intensive/extensive reading definitely both have their place in one's language learning journey. I think intensive reading is good for building vocabulary, while extensive reading is good for solidifying what you already know. Once I got into extensive reading, I was soon able to start really talking normally over text in Spanish. My main obstacle now, is getting the muscles of my tongue to work with the language.

[rlquinn]

Black coffee is definitely worth stirring! (Depending on how it's made, lol.) Sometimes fine grinds will find their way into the drink. Stirring keeps the flavor even throughout instead of letting it become progressively stronger or bitter as you sip down to the settled dregs.

[DVasquez]

This video made my day after feeling downtrodden in Farsi! I downloaded a transcript and highlighted all the words I didnt know. And to my surprise I was bang on 90%!! So thank you for your amazing videos and advise

[solea]

Thank you for letting me and thousands more off the hook Robin. There really is no need to whip ourselves to a frenzy !!

[indiheath]

From personal experience with similar material I'm guessing 60%.... was leaning towards 50% but maybe that's not enough to really follow.... I remember thoroughly enjoying content and feeling I was only understanding between 40-60% but that wasn't podcast content which I know is more challenging. Interesting idea here. I think people massively overestimate how much comprehension is really needed to enjoy and follow the general idea of something. Especially video media such as tv shows and movies, there's so much leeway when there's a visual element.
EDIT: After hearing the actual result I completely understand the 80%. For a podcast, yeah, 80% makes complete sense. You can't get away with knowing that many less words when there's no other context to draw from. Makes me wonder what my comprehension was of the EG podcast when I first started in back when it started, maybe around 80-90% which sounds high to me but there were SO many words that went over my head, and still is. But love the podcast! Excellent that it's two people as well, the conversation is a lot more natural than if it were just one person.

[frankjspencejr]

I was thinking about 80%. But I must say for myself, currently learning French, I love the sound of the language and I enjoy it even when I understand less than 50% or even less than 30%. And I know that my granddaughter, who understands well below 80% of what she hears, is gradually learning the language. I think if you’re interested and you’re listening for understanding, you can benefit with a much lower comprehension level.

[jan_kisan]

i guessed 70%, and wasn't surprised but the actual number. and me personally, i enjoy stuff even at 0% comprehension: i'm listening for the sounds they use, the rhythm, the syllable structure, the repeated little things that are potentially to do with grammar. there's a lot you can do with stuff you don't yet understand.

[DeTAYL.]

This was an amazing video! I guessed around 80 percent BTW

[ibo]

80% is my guess because Pareto.

Also I would guess that videos would be lower and books higher than podcasts because of how much we can get non-verbally.

[ezequielgervasio]

We need to know enough to keep a conversation or to start a conversation with no problem at all. I mean, like you said, more than 80% is enough. I can understand more than 85% to 90% of any podcasts i use to listen to, but i still have a huge problem when it come to writing and speaking. I get lost when I'm in a call chatting with foreigners, i forget words or how to write them, how to make sentence with not grammar mistakes etc. I get so mad with myself because I make a lot of grammar mistakes :(

[lunititis]

I guessed 60%. I just saw Janusz interview in easy german, i understood maybe 10-20% and enjoyed it anyway.

[immersionesp]

please please do a video on how you learn new vocab. And just build a vocab base.
thank you