Intermediate is the worst stage of learning a language 

In a nutshell, you’re tired of content made for learners, but you suck at understanding content made for native speakers. 

You thought you were ready to start consuming native content. How could you not be? You’ve been practicing with content made for learners and easily keeping up. But as soon as you made the switch, you got lost. 

What happened?

In the beginning, everything was fresh and exciting – it was in another language! But that’s not enough anymore. You’re not skilled enough to understand the stuff you’re really interested in, so you don’t really like anything you’re watching. You’re too stubborn to go back to learner’s content now, but you kind of miss the strict routine, familiar faces, and feeling like you knew what you were going to listen to tomorrow. 

To make matters worse, you struggle to understand and communicate with native speakers. Shouldn’t you be able to hold a conversation by now? Language learning is a major part of your life that you’ve spent literally hundreds of hours on, but you’re too embarrassed to tell that to anyone because you don’t feel you have the results to match those hundreds of hours. You’re alone.

And the only way out is to grind. More and more (and more and more) hours of practice. Is this Hell?

Been there.

How do I know if I’m ready to start consuming content made for native speakers? 

How long does it take to get to native content?

Everyone will have a different opinion on this. Some language learners advocate for integrating native content into your routine from day one. Personally, I don’t find that interesting or productive – it all goes over my head – and I prefer to begin with easier material crafted specifically for learners. 

In my experience, learning Spanish and Japanese from scratch through comprehensible input only, it takes roughly 300 hours before you’re ready to transition from learner’s content to native content.

I already speak a related language to the one I’m trying to learn. Can I start consuming native content right away?

Possibly! After reaching an advanced level in Spanish, I started learning Portuguese and French and found that I could skip learner’s content and jump right into listening to easier native content in both languages.

This is by no means mandatory. If you try native content and feel like you’re not understanding enough, then by all means, start with some learner’s content instead. Indeed, I was very confident with Portuguese and jumped into native podcasts without a care in the world, whereas with French I took ten hours listening to an intermediate learner’s podcast before deciding I was bored and looking for native podcasts instead. You do you.

I’m scared, what if I try and can’t understand native content at all?

It’s super normal to be nervous! The only way to find out is to try. If that’s too stressful right now, give yourself a break, and keep listening to learner’s content for the moment. 

However, if you think you might be interested in giving native content a go, read on for my tips on how to make the process as smooth as possible.

I’ve started listening to native content, but I feel like I was getting more out of learner’s content. What if I’m not ready for native content yet? 

This is naturally super nebulous, and it’s up to you to decide how you want to proceed.

Consuming learner’s content is kind of like sipping a glass of water with a straw, while consuming native content is closer to drinking from a firehose. Suddenly you’re getting a much broader array of speech, and a lot of it, but there’s a lot that’s going on the ground instead of into your mouth. 

When I make the transition between learner’s and native content, I don’t do it all at once. Listen to some learner’s content, which is relaxing, calming, and you understand almost everything, and some native content, which is exciting, confusing, and you’re missing a lot of the details. 

Both of these types of input are useful to you – you’re still learning either way. And it’s normal to get frustrated at this transition, as depending on the quality and quantity of learner’s content available to you, the gap between learner’s and native content can be pretty large. It gets to the point of being willing to listen through your confusion. If your goal is to be able to consume native content and communicate with native speakers, you’ll need to start eventually. When in doubt, I advise you to stick with the native content, even if it’s uncomfortable. Otherwise you’re just dragging out the process. (Of course, if you’ve grown bored with learner’s content and yearn for a new challenge – common for me once I’ve listened through a couple hundred hours of learner’s content – that helps spur the transition.)

If you decide to press on with native content (good for you!) but feel as though you’re drowning, don’t worry! This post is for you. Because…

NOT ALL NATIVE CONTENT IS CREATED EQUAL.

I’m here to give you my tips for finding the easiest content to start with. They don’t hold true a hundred percent of the time, but they make useful rules of thumb.

Rules of thumb for finding easier native content

In general

Nonfiction is king. Self-help can be particularly easy to follow.

If you know vocabulary words but can’t understand them when spoken at natural speed, try:

• News
• Speeches (e.g. TED Talks)
• Video essays

If you can discern the sounds but you don’t know their meaning, try:

• Calm lifestyle vloggers
• Interviews
• Repetitive podcasts about narrow topics

Podcasts

If I had to create a hierarchy of comprehensibility among popular nonfiction podcast genres, it would look something like this: news > hobbies > lifestyle > comedy.

I generally find news podcasts the easiest to understand. Here’s why:

• Nonfiction tends to be easier to understand than fiction – the vocabulary is more commonly used, and the topics are familiar and relatable. 
• If your target language shares common roots with your native language, or tends to borrow from the same language, then words related to business, politics, science, and technology will likely sound similar to their equivalent in your native language. 
• The hosts tend to use less slang, speak more clearly, and are less likely to interrupt each other than in other genres. Newscasters speak like announcers, and it’s great. 

However, there are downsides to news podcasts. For one, they often include excerpts or interviews with poor audio quality. Don’t feel bad if you can’t understand the garbled phone or street interview audio that got pasted into an otherwise crystal clear episode. Listening to a lot of current events can also get depressing over time. Mix in some other topics too – I like books and travel. 

Avoid fictional radio dramas – the natural-sounding voice acting, sound effects, background music, and mixing can really muddy the waters. 

TV shows (and movies)

In general, I recommend TV shows over movies. Here’s why:

• The plot has time to develop at a slower pace.
• Repetitive plot points are easier to follow.
• Shorter episodes are easier to concentrate through.
• Recurring characters have repetitive speech patterns, which helps you get used to their ways of speaking and makes it easier to learn new words in context.
• Side characters and guest stars provide a variety of speech patterns and accents, broadening your input beyond the core cast.

Shows made in your native language and then dubbed into your target language may be slightly easier to understand since the turns of phrase may not be entirely natural in the target language, but recall your native language. You can use this strategy as a crutch while you find your footing. (You may need to subscribe to a streaming service to access good dubbing options.)

Children’s shows can be a good place to start. The storylines and dialogue are simpler to understand than shows made for adults (although the voices of animal, creature, or comedic characters can be particularly hard to understand). I also just enjoy cartoons, so I’m biased.

Another good option is soap operas. They can be easier to understand than other types of shows because of the dramatic acting and simple plots. A potentially massive number of repetitive episodes is also a plus.

On the nonfiction side, look for documentaries with slow-speaking, serious narrators and descriptive visuals. As a bonus, there’s likely to be a sizable number of short documentaries available for free on YouTube! This also has significant crossover with news podcasts – if you find content you like and it’s produced by a news organization, dig deeper to see what other modes of content they offer. 

Finally, reality shows, like soap operas, also tend to have simple plots. However, the dialogue is more natural, which makes them more difficult to understand. 

YouTube videos

Your mileage may vary. When I was just starting to listen to native content, I found YouTube pretty overwhelming. 

Starting out, your algorithm isn’t trained to show you interesting videos in your target language – or probably any videos in your target language – so you have to start from scratch. Personally, at this point I’m not skilled enough in my writing skills to come up with many relevant search terms, so it’s mostly a matter of sitting back and letting the algorithm do its work. You can try googling for top YouTubers in your target language, but when I’ve tried that, the search results don’t come up with people whose niches interest me. You may hit a similar wall if you prefer to watch smaller YouTubers.

Be prepared to take YouTube slowly. It takes time for the algorithm to catch on to what’s interesting to you, and the channels with the most interesting topics might not be comprehensible at this point because they speak too quickly, the audio quality is poor, the hosts talk over each other, they use too much slang, or any number of reasons. Anyone can upload a video, so the differences in quality and style between channels are massive. It’s frustrating.

Navigating YouTube efficiently, and enjoying all its features, also requires a lot of reading. When you’re listening to a podcast series or watching a show, you know roughly what to expect from each episode – even if you can’t read the title or description – because each episode follows similar themes. However, on YouTube, new channels are recommended constantly, and you don’t know exactly what you’re getting into when you click, especially if you can’t read the titles. Another fun aspect of YouTube is reading and interacting with the comments section, and if you can’t read or write well, the whole thing goes over your head.

YouTube is a great free resource, so don’t ignore it, but don’t rush it either.

Social media

YouTube is the main social media platform I use, so I have the most experience there, but liking relevant posts and following creators on any and all social media platforms you regularly use is a good way to experience more target language content in your daily life. I like sharing memes with my friends on Instagram, and the more memes I interact with, the more I get shown! 

The magic of social media: it serves up more (hopefully) relevant content the more you use it.

Music

Music is definitely on the lower end of comprehensibility. I can barely understand the lyrics when they’re in English – my native language! 

Music lyrics operate on different rules from prose or conversation, and when you combine that ambiguity with unclear pronunciation and distracting mixing, it’s naturally difficult to understand. Additionally, the shortness of songs and varying percentages of instrumental sections turns tracking your listening practice time into guesswork. I don’t track my music listening as language practice, and I don’t think listening to music is the most efficient use of time, especially for intermediate learners who understand less than learners at a higher level.

This is not to say you shouldn’t listen to music! By all means! It’s fun! 

It’s not going to hurt, but it might not help much either.

Books (and articles, Substack, etc.)

I don’t worry about reading when I’m entering the intermediate stage of language learning. Rather than grinding reading when my vocabulary is still small and it’s really difficult, I wait for it to be easier. 

In Spanish, I spent a few hundred hours consuming only native audio content before starting to read, and was able to go straight to regular adult novels, no graded readers (short books designed for language learners) necessary. That was really nice. Listening to a few audiobooks beforehand can be a good clue to whether your vocabulary is sufficient for reading books. (Unfortunately, I don’t have experience with using articles as a starting point for long-form reading instead of books, so I can’t give specific tips on that, but I assume it would be an easier starting point. Let this bookworm know your experiences in the comments.)

If you’re gunning to read right now, consider that even if you’re not reading intentionally, you’re still reading inevitably. If you’re already getting in your listening practice, i.e. listening to podcasts, watching TV shows and movies, watching YouTube videos, and using social media, you’ll get plenty of things to read as part of what you’re already consuming, and that can be more approachable than trying to read long-form content. Episode titles, descriptions, comments, reviews, and automatic subtitles all expose you to written language for practice, and you can engage with that as much or as little as you like while you grind your listening hours. 

Then, when your vocabulary is nice and big, it’s time to get serious about reading. That’s when you begin the transition from intermediate to advanced. (Stay tuned for a post on that . . . after I learn how to read in Japanese!)

Above all, don’t get discouraged.

Making noticeable progress in listening comprehension takes dozens of hours, and transitioning between big stages pretty much universally sucks. 

Hang in there, and regularly look for more (and better) comprehensible input. The majority of native content won’t be comprehensible right now, so finding stuff you can happily listen to requires persistence, trial and error, and just getting lucky. Take your time, take breaks, and find the fun in it! Remember how far you’ve come and how cool it is that you’re able to listen along with native speakers.

Let me know your strategies for breaking into native content in the comments below!