I think it depends on how well can we do without text. Also, some people prefer listening over reading. In addition, it can be the content. If it is interesting or engaging, then it is possible to do it without text or can do with text. I think it depends on where we are, in terms of fluency as well as preference and content.

I believe that it is very effective, but only if you know a majority/are learning a majority of the words. When you are learning new words you might forget them quickly, but if the words are re-introduced you remember them quickly. The more often those words are re-introduced to your brain the quicker you will retain them long term. Audio books will allow you to go through many more words than a tv show would. For example, there are no awkward pauses, blank stares, no dead space between scenes. Another point is that you will experience many more words, mainly descriptive words, through audio books. I'm not saying I think you can learn solely on audio books, but it will defiantly help as long as you know a large portion of the content. Just pick your level and go with that.

Kids learning their first language versus educated adult language hobbyists learning an L2 are an apples and oranges comparison.

Kids aren't in a language lab 24/7, even though it's often quoted that they are. They're picking up the language because they have people interacting with them in simplified language they can understand. My pediatrician told me the average (not advanced) young child uses sentences equivalent to their age, i.e. a one-year old utters single words, a two-year old mostly two word sentences, a three-year old three word sentences....And of course, the goal is to stretch that...adding to the two-year-old's sentences to make 3, 4, or even 5 word sentences to get them to progress even faster. Soon, they're also picking up on the random noise around them, but it won't happen without the sympathetic communicator who got the ball rolling up front.

As for L2 learners., I've heard anecdotal claims that 30% plus listening comprehensibility is the minimum for immersion without wasting your time. The trouble is, it's very unscientific because a lot of language hobbyists are perfectionists. My guess would be that there are many folks who are understanding 50 or 60% of what they're listening to and calling that 30% because it feels unsatisfying to them. Calling something 30% will vary greatly depending on the subject (the person), so it's unreliable. The experienced language learner needs to go by feel.

Listening to noise isn't very helpful. Listening (L2) Reading (L1) makes the language comprehensible.

And, no, an adult doesn't have to go through baby steps and take years to re-learn shapes, colors, and go through kindergarten., etc.

I know absolutely no Korean. Take a newborn born to Korean parents and take away all my responsibilities except to learn Korean. Pick your time period.. 4 years, 5, 6, 7, 8 years. I would destroy that child in vocabulary size and creativity in using Korean. Even if I had the worst possible luck and the child ended up being a national prodigy ready to enroll in college at age 12, I'd still be destroying his skill in the wonder years before that. It just isn't a fair comparison. I'd be having adult conversations about politics and philosophy already at the 6 or 8 month point, albeit making a fair number of mistakes, but I'd be amazing after a few years, again, with no other responsibilities like raising my own kids, working, paying bills, shopping for food, maintaining the house and cars.

Give me a place to live and food and no responsibilities, and I'm dominating any language on the same timeline as any native newborn.

Listening to audiobooks helps with listening comprehension, pronunciation, motivation, and learning some new words or phrases in context (when you already understanding nearly everything else).

Audio is not helpful if you don't understand what you're listening to. Then it's just oganized noise. You'll need to import the text into LingQ to learn what the words mean.

It’s definitely beneficial for language acquisition but not easy to quantify.

I re-listened to a chapter I downloaded last night about a group of people getting ready for a trip. Last night I heard they all had to bring some of the group gear along with their personal stuff. Today, I heard 選んで, so I picked up that extra granularity of meaning between taking and choosing/taking something.

That’s all I remember differently this time listening, but that probably doesn’t mean it’s all the benefit I received. It’s just the only thing I consciously recognized as an improvement to my understanding of the chapter.

I indeed think they are! You not always have the possibility to follow the text. You can just put on your earphones and listen to some audiobook or podcast just for listening a target language. You don't have to understand everything. You just remember the phrases, constructions which later you'll recognize easier from context.

I think that only audiobook is not enough for me. I usually cannot understand what I am listening to. So I prefer the Whispersync for Voice of Audible (). That helps me a lot.

It really depends on your level at the language you are listening too. It has to be high if you are to be doing something else while listening. If the audio book would otherwise be a little too difficult to understand, having read the novel beforehand really helps your understanding.

An important point is that when people are performing two tasks at the same time their performance deteriorates. People think that multitasking is productive and efficient for learning or getting work done, but the evidence is in the opposite direction.

Language learners are often advised to listen to audio while performing others tasks, as you note, but you will likely have a better learning experience if you focus on listening by itself.

Related to this, There is very likely a value to listening to an audiobook while following along with the written text. This permits you make the link between spoken and written language. In many cases spoken language will be unclear, for example in determining where words begin and end. Following along with the written text will help reinforce your recognition of where words begin and end.

Anyone can do the experiment. If you read, perhaps several times, the same words as are in an audio book (perhaps per chapter) and then listen to the audio chapter, you'll understand far more than just listening to the audio 'cold'. Exactly the same as dialogues and their transcripts.

Knowing this the question I would pose is: do you learn to understand and recognise such language in general, or do you learn to understand only THAT particular piece of prose/dialogue in isolation? I've found that I can understand audio very well in this way, but applying this to general listening is not so easy.

I think audiobooks are great for polishing your listening skills when you already have a certain base. If you are only starting with your language learning, they won't help you at all.

I think a couple of points should be clarified in this discussion. The OP asked whether audiobooks without text were effective. The simple answer to that is: Yes. Very effective.

But that answer takes two presumptions into account:

1) People don't listen to audiobooks unless they want to. It's a form of entertainment that appeals to a lot of people who'd like to read more, but don't have the eyeball time to read all the books they want. As such, in the vast majority of the cases, an audiobook is a voluntarily selected content with a presumption of interest in the story itself.

2) It is rare for someone to listen to an audiobook without a reasonable level of understanding that would allow to follow the story. For most people, these recordings cost too much money for something that you won't understand enough of it to enjoy.

So, since no one listens to audiobooks unless they want to, and those who do listen to them tend to understand enough to follow the story, this form entertainment tends to be a classic example of "engaging comprehensible input" for most people who use it regularly. And as such, it's a very effective way of engaging with the language, and building up comprehension and vocabulary. You can learn a lot of words from the context of audiobooks -- you won't know how to spell them until you look them up, but you will be able to pronounce them.

If the idea is that someone would just start listening to audiobooks by themselves as a primary method of learning a language from early stages, that's not a question effectiveness -- it simply doesn't happen. No one does that. No one would suggest to do that. No one would succeed at doing that. AND, no one, in this "free, free, gimme, gimme, free" time we live in would spend $14 on a recording that bombards them with 20 hrs of audio they don't understand a single word of. So that angle is simply pointless to discuss.

Yes, people like to claim they listen early to native podcasts "just to get used to the sounds," but they do that because the podcasts are FREE and you don't need to understand so much of a podcast to get something out of it -- it's usually just people chatting, who cares if you only get 10% of it. A book is different. I've never heard anyone say they listen to books without having reached a reasonable level of comprehension.

if you are not advanced enough to understand a good portion of what you listen to it's useless in my opinion i don't believe in this theory floating around the internet that you can just soak up the language by hearing it even though you don't understand a great deal of what you hear . and it can be confusing especially if the language you are learning has a pronounciation that differs dramatically from the way it's written or if the sound of the letters differ dramatically from your mother tongue

The key question to ask, IMO is what is the purpose of listening?

For me, the purpose is to train my brain to get used to the way phrases are actually spoken rather than the way they look on a page. But if I don't know the words and phrases that are being spoken, what good is it to listen to it?

If I know, oh I don't know, maybe 90% of the content, then perhaps I can take figure out the meaning of the occasional word from context or if it's important enough, make a note to look it up later. So for me, comprehensible input for listening would be something that I know nearly all of the words in the material. I can then focus on getting used to the sounds and rhythm.

Personally, I think that if you can't follow the story, then it's just a wash of noise with the occasional word or phrase being caught. It really depends on your level. If you're at upper beginner, then listening to "beginner" stories might be effective. If intermediate, then perhaps some podcasts. As long as you can get the gist of the conversation.

But books? I don't know. If you are able to read the book in print, then perhaps it might be somewhat effective as passive listening.

My answer would be that it depends. In my opinion, if you have a good grasp of the sounds, rhythm and flow of the language and can link those sounds and nuances with the words/phrases/sentences they are linked to; that is, in text (bonus points if you can spell the words out in your mind). Then that is good enough for a beginner/intermediate

However as you acquire vocabulary I believe listening becomes relatively more effective in terms of the value gleaned from the usage of your time. If you are at a point where you can listen, recognize words and guess/fill in gaps then that is a great way to practice building up the language within yourself.

In any case, you will eventually have to immerse yourself in listening eventually, it's more of a matter of when and how much?

It's no more effective than any other activity you would do, but also no less effective. You can walk or sit and listen intently, but that would be a totally different activity. I think the most important part is picking something that you want to hear because it's interesting, not something that you're listening to in order to improve your language skills. If you really like music for example, I think you'd be better off listening to music in your target language because you'll pay more attention to it. Certain people just love audiobooks! Audiobooks alone can be great, but as you and others have said, of course your attention is divided. I always played lots of computer games through high school, and I always had music on during it. I can definitely tell you that my attention is on the game, but every time it flickers to something else, it's just nice to already have on something that your brain enjoys. So if you don't like the story that you're hearing from the audiobook, I believe it's effectiveness will be very low.

One other thing! I think people get too caught up in individual words. Don't worry about getting every word perfectly. Do you really look up every word you're unsure about when reading in your native language? I know that I don't. It ruins the fun and breaks the flow. Let it be a little ambiguous if it's just a word here and there. On the other hand, if you have no image in your head of the story, change the book. It's probably not interesting, or too difficult, which would make it less interesting.

I came across this tweet today:

It depends on the activity for me. Driving, I can follow along quite well. It's where I do most of my listening. Certainly there are times I get distracted here and have to rewind a bit. Cleaning/Organizing, on the other hand, I can't for the life of me concentrate on any audiobook, including in my native language. I get instantly distracted.

Also, as t_harangi points out, the difficulty of the material (how much you understand) plays a big factor. If I only understand a certain amount, the effort to really concentrate and grab the bits of information you recognize is very strenuous and I can only do that for so long before the mind aches, or it wanders. When doing other activities it's even more difficult.

I think, beyond all this, you can still listen even while distracted, or missing large chunks due to the lack of comprehension or multitasking the brain....You may not be getting enough to understand what's going on all or even most of the time, but those times you are able to concentrate and hear and understand words you know is still valuable I think.

As you point out it may not be all that efficient, so that has to be weighed, but every little bit of exposure does help to some degree I would think.

I can only share my experience. I found listening to audiobooks while doing multi-tasking activities kind of counterproductive as I am not concentrating 100% on the listening so I pick up things here and there and miss out on a lot of details. However, for my time and efforts when I am listening to an audiobook, I just want to get lost with the voice and shut down all external noise/distractions. In a nutshell, for me, active listening is very important this is where I get more value for my time even if the content is very difficult and beyond my current language level. That being said, your subconscious mind has the ability to decode a lot of noise/difficult language content given if you're concentrating 100%. This is based on my personal experience.

Yes, listening to audiobooks without reading along can be hugely effective. It's very good at building up listening comprehension by reinforcing stuff you know, along with teaching you new words from context. And it allows you to engage with your target language in an entertaining way and keep you improving indefinitely.

Of course it's VERY important that you pick material that will engage on you the story level -- this is more important than with a book that you're reading along to, because your mind will wonder more with audio if the story is not engaging enough. This is why I only listen to mystery / adventure stories, since I'm more likely just to enjoy the "movie" they create in my head, than with a classic or literary novel.

Another criteria is that you have to build up enough comprehension to understand a significant enough portion of the narration for it to hold your interest. I don't know what the percentage is but at the beginning, even if there are passages that are "foggy" to you, you have to be able to get enough just to follow the story. This is of course subjective -- I myself am comfortable with a fair amount of fog at the beginning. But in the beginning, you have the excitement factor of being able to understand just enough, and that will fuel you to keep going even though you might get lost at times.

You can make this listening more part of structured study, by re-listening to stuff you already read, or by listening first and then reading later. But I think that once you're past the comprehension threshold mentioned above, it's best to just use listening time for books that you're only listening to forcing yourself to make due without assistance.

Also, you can drop bookmarks into the audible app when you come across a word that stumps you and look it up later. This is super easy when the app is in "car mode."

I typically have 4-5 different books that I'm in the middle of, rotating between languages, and combining listening only time with another book that I'm also reading along to when I have reading time.

Another neat feature to play with is Whispersync on between Kindle and Audible, which is available on a lot of English and German titles. It allows you switch between audio and reading and on iOS apps it can read along to you while visually following along the text with a highlight. You can incorporate that into your routine in various ways.