A veces, me siento como un fracaso

[elektronj]

Voy a escribir en inglés porque lo puedo explicar mejor.

Ok, so I would consider myself an advanced-level Spanish learner. I know all the tenses and several hundreds/thousands of words. I am best at reading and writing in Spanish, followed closely by speaking. Unfortunately, I live in an area where there are very few Hispanics (in public, in the workplace, everywhere). I don't get to practice my Spanish speaking/listening skills as much, and I think this hurts me.

To combat this, I try to listen to Spanish music every day as well as podcasts (News in Slow Spanish Latino). If I have alot of time on my hands, I may watch a Spanish show on Hulu. To be honest, sometimes I think I understand a lot, but some other times I simply feel just down-right discouraged because I understand nothing. Sure, I know what the music/podcast is talking ABOUT but I don't necessarily know what they say from sentence to sentence. And this really bothers me.

My Spanish teacher tells me to not "think in English" or translate inside my head. She says to simply listen and hear in Spanish. This is where I get discouraged. Pretend for a second that the following is my brain understanding Spanish sentences spoken to me. This is what happens...

Yup--I understand--Yeah--Ok--What was that word?--What is that word?--Oh no, what are they saying now?--I'm totally lost!!

I understand many of the words they say in sentences, but there's always one word that I don't know that just seems to derail my whole experience. So maybe I need some advice or maybe I need some encouragement. Sometimes I feel like I'm pretty good at Spanish. Other days I just feel like a failure :(

[AngelicaDeAlquezar]

Try to listen for general ideas. If you try to understand word for word, frustration will always be present. Try listening to the same podcasts as many times as you need to be sure that you understand what they are about, but do not try to discern each and every word in each and every sentence. Relax and let it flow.

Personally, to me it's certainly kind of frustrating not being able to understand every joke in a British comedy program or specific parts of a debate between two American politicians, but it's not really a tragedy if I can't discern all the words in a speech. Normally, I can follow general ideas most of the time I listen to the same content repeatedly or I try to focus on the rest of the content.
I've also had to ask native English speakers to repeat what they'd said; much to my discomfort, this has happened many times, and sometimes with the same person. Getting used to an accent also helps to understand better.

It's just a matter of being aware that one has limitations and that one can overcome such limitations by relaxing and enjoying what one already knows and what one keeps learning. ;)

[wrholt]

What you describe sounds like a normal and typical stage of learning to understand speech outside of a classroom setting.

Different speakers speak different regional varieties, come from different social classes, have different amounts of formal education, and speak in contexts that vary from the most formal possible to the most casual possible that have corresponding differences in typical word choices and sometimes non-standard grammar and syntax.

It takes time and practice to improve one's capacity to understand speech regardless of the differences among speakers and among different contexts; it also takes time and practice to make the transition from listening/speaking by conciously translating into and out of English to listening/speaking in Spanish. One way to practice is to let words you don't recognize go by, and see if you can guess at what that word might mean based on the context, or even ask the speaker about that word when it's your turn to speak.

Listening to recorded material can help, but real-time conversations are more effective, in part because if you're having trouble understanding someone you can ask them to say it again, or to say it more slowly, or to define a word you don't recognize. Speaking can be harder; it takes a while to develop the ability to choose your words in the moment rather than stopping to think for a second or two after every 3 or 4 words. However, you do get to entertain your native-speaker listeners, especially when you make some mistake that seems funny/strange to whoever is listening.

[chileno]

It is normal to feel like that. It is part of the process.