Listening is basic to language learning. Without good listening, the student will have great difficulty speaking well or writing well. Not for nothing do we say that someone has a good ear for languages, for listening is the primary - the first - skill to be developed when a language is learnt.

It is not necessary to speak. Some language students will sit in a classroom and say hardly anything for the first six months of their course. Then they suddenly begin to speak quite fluently, with few mistakes. Other students will stumble along trying to talk from the first lesson. However, by the end of the course, both the chatty students and the silent ones will be on the same level.

Speaking doesn't seem to help too much in gaining fluency. Listening does. Of course, in order to listen effectively, besides being able to hear the language, you have to be interested in what people are trying to tell you. The student with wide interests is far more likely to learn the language quickly than the student whose world stops at the end of his nose. So, it is fortunate if you have a "good ear", but it also helps to be interested.

Listening especially dominates the early stage of language learning. At that time, speech and meaning are not particularly important. However, it helps if you can quickly master a number of elementary questions. They will encourage other people to talk to you, and give you more listening practice. In fact, the ability to ask questions will help the EFL student at any level.

Apart from asking questions, the student should make every effort to act like a native speaker, to imitate his physical movements when he is talking. You will find by acting the language that you have to make movements with your mouth (tongue and lips) that don't occur in your own language.

Listen as much as possible. One serious language student fitted loudspeakers in every room of his flat so that wherever he went the language followed him at a low, relaxed level.

Remember, don't worry about meaning. Meaning always comes second. First, the sound; then, the meaning. The first six months of language absorption are mainly unconscious. As a result, students think they are not making progress because they are not aware, not conscious, of any learning taking place. Because of this lack of conscious awareness, students feel they are failing to get anywhere. They either give up, or else they struggle to remember, to acquire the language, to build vocabulary and sentences, to understand, to translate. Such a struggle is almost entirely unproductive.

Patience is the keyword. You need to immerse yourself in the sounds of the language, and relax. Listen to pop and folk music, to children's nursery songs, to football match commentaries, to lectures on whatever subject interests you. Of course, you won't understand most of it, perhaps any of it. It doesn't matter. Swim in the sound. Be patient. Meaning, and speech, will come.