About Passive Listening

Passive listening is a Refold activity to try and fit in as much exposure to the language as possible. Here is an article to learn more about types of immersion, including passive immersion, to get the most out of resources here.

Why condensed audio?

Condensed audio, especially early on, is highly recommended for passive immersion. Condensed audio is taking a show or movie or video you watched during active immersion, turning it into a pure audio version of itself with all the dead air removed, and listening to it during your passive. This is recommended because it gives you extra exposure to content you already consumed with full focus, allowing you more chances to get exposure to those fresh elements (vocab, grammar, etc). It also helps with comprehension, which is already very low early on and made even more difficult when consuming pure audio content, because you have already been through the content one time during an intensive immersion session.

At it’s most basic, just put anything on, even if it’s not perfect, and listen to it. Even if you never listened to it before. But if you aren't feeling overwhelmed and want to learn to get more out of passive, here is how.

  1. Use the resources contained here to find or make condensed audio.
  2. Find an easy workflow to get audio onto a convenient device.
  3. Listen to it as much as possible without negatively affecting things that are more important (like work, health, relationships, grades, etc).

Condensed Audio Tools and Resources

Easy : Find already made condensed audio

The easiest way is to find audio files already made by somebody else. If you are able to enjoy a wide variety of content, and this doesn't negatively affect how much you enjoy your immersion time, you can even go so far as to find condensed audio for a show first, to ensure it’s available, then go watch it. Here are some resources for finding already made condensed audio.

Untitled Database

Advanced : Make your own condensed audio

If you feel up to the learning curve and a little extra work, you can make your own condensed audio. There are many tools and tutorials out there to help you do this but here are a few options for you.