Passive Familiarity With a Language Can Actually Help You Learn It Faster.
Learning a new language takes a lot of effort, but there are several things you can do to help yourself with this. While you can’t really internalize what you need to know with linguistic osmosis, passive familiarity with the language you are learning is helpful.
Veronique Greenwood of Scientific American Mind shares two studies that offer good news for language learners around the world. Both studies, one from the Journal of the Acoustic Society of America and another from the Journal of Memory and Language , suggest that listening to a language you learn outside of normal classroom time can speed up the learning process. Basically, your brain is able to pay attention to what you have already intentionally paid attention to. Your brain becomes more able to passively search for words and phrases you’ve learned, and this strengthens your mental control over what you’ve learned, even if it’s just something you hear in the background.
So listen to radio conversations, podcasts, music, and even television in the language you are learning. This will help. However, you still need to learn a lot and pay attention in class. An ideal combination of purposeful practice and passive exposure. You can read more about the benefits of passive exposure in the link below.
Learn New Jargon While Doing Something Else | Scientific American via Science of Us