How to improve your Ukrainian listening?
Teacher's tips and resources to become better at Ukrainian listening
Many of my students get frustrated when they listen to Ukrainian. They feel lost and overwhelmed. They feel that 'however hard they try, their Ukrainian doesn't improve'. And they timidly ask what to listen to in Ukrainian, 'if you're just a beginner'. Why does it all happen? What Ukrainian listening resources to use at the start? Let's find out.
What do you need to be good at Ukrainian listening?
'Just watch a lot of films' or 'Listen to the radio' will not help, despite it being the most common advice. 'Just listening' will not help because listening involves a set of skills. And as it is with every skill, you need special exercises to train it.
I know that because I have been learning two foreign languages, and I have become confident with listening only when I have learned a lot of words and trained my ear to hear various dialects.
What skills are behind successful listening? (What I am going to say below might seem obvious and/or boring, but please stay tuned and read it through, if you really want to understand what goes wrong each time you listen to Ukrainian.)
1. Technical skills for successful Ukrainian listening
good hearing (it's obvious, isn't it? If your sound volume is too low, or if you listen to something in a noisy room, maybe you want to make it louder or relocate)
the ability to distinguish between similar-sounding words and various intonations (it's similar to having a good musical ear, people with a good sense for music have better pronunciation, and they are better at listening because 'all the words don't sound the same to them')
the ability to match in your mind the sounds you hear to a word you know (you need well-developed neurological connections in your brain, and to have them, you need to do a lot of drilling exercises – to drill Ukrainian grammar, words, sentence structures, etc.)
Beginners’ textbooks have plenty of exercises to develop such skills. For example, «Listen and repeat», «Listen and tick which syllable/word you hear», «Listen and circle the words you hear», «Find the words that rhyme», etc. Such exercises are essential for absolute beginners.
What can you do?
Find a good textbook for beginners with lots of listening tasks. Check out this one: «Beginner’s Ukrainian» by Yuri Shevchuk with an audio supplement. It may seem boring but the drilling they expect you to do is exactly what you need at the start.
2. Language (=grammatical and vocabulary) skills for successful Ukrainian listening
For listening, you need to know twice as many words as for speaking. It is because listening is a receptive skill, i.e. you receive what others give you, and you are not the one who decides what vocabulary and grammar to use. To order a pizza, you need to know, let us say, 20 words and 1 or 2 grammar structures. However, it's different when you want to understand what waiters say to you in a pizzeria – for that, you should know up to 40-50 words and more varied grammar on the topic «Ordering pizza».
What can you do? Learn Ukrainian words and grammar! It's that simple and obvious. =) And if you don't want to feel really frustrated, while you're starting out, choose listening extracts created specifically for beginners, with simple grammar and basic words.
3. Comprehension skills for successful Ukrainian listening
If you want to succeed in listening, you need to understand the meaning of what you hear. To check and develop understanding, do such exercises as «Listen and retell», «Listen and answer the questions», «Listen and fill in the gaps», etc.
What can you do?
Consider studying by communicative textbooks, e.g. this one: “Yabluko”. This book is not a self-study guide, so you will need a teacher. Here's my review of the "Yabluko" course.
4. Communicative skills for being good at listening (when you have a dialogue partner)
Listening is not only about passively perceiving what is said to you (of course, if we are not talking about listening to podcasts or YouTube on your own; in normal life, you listen to what people say to you and you reply to them). You should be able to show your interest in what you hear, to stimulate the conversation, to ask for clarification, to express your opinion on what has been said, etc. You should be able to use cliches and be confident enough to initiate speaking.
What can you do?
You should speak to native speakers or hire a teacher because you need a language partner to listen to and talk to. You also need a good textbook with cliche phrases for various communicative situations.
So, successful Ukrainian listening looks like this:
I completely agree with this post about successful English listening – there is no magical solution. It is as true of Ukrainian as it is true of English learning.
What Ukrainian listening resources would I recommend?
General guidelines
If you are a beginner, you need to listen to such things, for which you have a written version (a transcription). Because you want to compare what you hear and what is written and understand why you have not gotten some part (a new word? unknown grammar? merging words because of the fast speech?).
You need to focus on listening to the things that are really relevant for you. If you're going to travel to Ukraine, you need to listen to the street Ukrainian, to the waiters and service workers (look for those in TV series), etc. If you want to sing Ukrainian songs, you need to listen to Ukrainian songs (and not the news 🙂). If you're interested in how your Ukrainian grandparents spoke, listen to old people from your grandparents' region talking about their life. Find real-life Ukrainian, fast and unabridged, from the sphere you need and listen to it. You'll never understand a paramedic talking about splints if a year long you've been listening to slow Ukrainian about the weather and ordering coffee.
Ukrainian Listening Courses
Ukrainian podcasts for beginners
«Автостопом по Україні» with an audio supplement (an audio course for advanced students)
Other resources
Videos
3ears.com (they give you the written version of the phrases – a must for beginners)
“Slow Ukrainian with Yevhen” (for A2 students)
Verba (an online Ukrainian school with nice videos for beginners)
«Голос Америки» (news and reports for intermediate and advanced learners)
BBC українською (news and reports for intermediate and advanced learners)
DW українською (news and reports for intermediate and advanced learners)
Audios
Казки українською
Listening tools
When you watch Youtube videos, you may find this tool helpful. It creates subtitles. Though the subtitles are not always accurate, they can help to clear up the meaning of a video part.
If you are looking for more teacher's tips on Ukrainian learning, check out my blog and join our community where we learn Ukrainian together and where you can ask questions.
🎧 Good luck with Ukrainian listening!