I'm always a little bit shocked by the results of listening practice when studying foreign languages. Maybe because it's such a passive method of study—I'm not going after books and new concepts and writing notes and examples. Instead, I'm just receiving instruction, honing my ear for Japanese—maybe that's why I'm always shocked at just how helpful listening practice is when learning a foreign language.

It really works though… if you really commit to it.

What I mean is, if you want to have listening practice improve your Japanese, then you need to Nihongo-ify your life. This can be very difficult to do, because it might mean cutting back on music, cutting back on TV.

I hate to say it, but it takes a bit of sacrifice. We're trying to do something monumental here, after all. And, like most worthwhile achievements, it's only possible with a little bit of sacrifice.

I have, for your perusal, a video & a playlist. I hope that it can give you a little boost when you're feeling less motivated:

If you're anything like I was before I knew Japanese, then every day is tinged with a little bit of frustration, frustration that you don't have this seemingly impossible thing: Japanese fluency.

But if you move towards the achievement of that goal every day, it can allay that frustration. I bring this up now, because listening practice can be incredibly inconvenient. We like listening to music. We like watching shows. And it is hard to deprive yourself of the easy path.

I write a lot about habits. I write a lot about limiting the expense of willpower, limiting struggle. But there is work involved in this. When you reach that level that you're striving for, you will tell people I worked for this. It won't be thanks to me, or some book, or some course, or some teacher. It will be because of you.

If I'm going to be honest, when I was at a low level of Japanese, I resented people that were better than me. I was jealous. I wanted what they had. I couldn't accept that they were so much better than me. But then, once I got to that level, once I passed (some of) those people, my perspective changed quite a bit. And the reason is that I stopped resenting people better than me. Instead, I started respecting them. They deserved what they had, because they had worked for it. And I finally understood just how much work they had put in. Maybe some of them were smarter than me, got to where I wanted to be with less trouble than me, but that just meant that I would feel a greater sense of reward when I reached their level.

Changing habits will make learning Japanese easier. But even changing habits will require effort, because that is in and of itself a goal. And goals, at their core, require us to put future wants in front of immediate wants.

I don't know why, but for some reason sticking to audio lessons is one of the most difficult aspects of language learning for me. The reason, perhaps, is that they can fill just about any form of low quality time. In other words, there are a lot of opportunities for me to utilize them and, in turn, a lot of opportunities for me to be lazy about them. If I really, really want to learn Japanese, then there's no reason why I shouldn't be listening to audio lessons while I eat breakfast, lunch. I should be listening to them while I exercise, drive.

Language learning is all about numbers. The more hours of lessons you listen to, the better your Japanese will become.

But what to listen to? For that, we've got…