Sija,

I am certainly not an expert concerning language learning, however what you described is very characteristic when learning a new language. In my experience, you have to listen, and listen and then listen some more to develop your ability to comprehend what is being said. Steve Kaufman, the creator of LIngQ has a wonderful assortment of You Tube videos that addresses your concerns. You might want to check them out. Best of luck on your journey.

I can't recommend watching shows (without subtitles) highly enough.

Most other media has the native speakers using a public speaking mode which is very abstract and well pronounced.

But you get something out of dramatized speaking you don't get in other media. How people really speak (or a close approximation of it) in lived interpersonal experiences where it's much harder to parse out words and phrases. And using all of the little words and phrases people use in everyday speech. I call this "interpersonal speech"

I would continue to read and listen simultaneously. And then listen only to content that you have already read. I had that problem in French and now I read novels in French and follow up with the audiobook since I am already familiar with what I will hear.

Whichever manner in which you practice listening/watching, listen/watch to media 3-10xs more than reading. Steve even recommends this. I use LingQ very little, maybe 15 minutes a day. It's for my intensive reading to prime my recognition of words and phrases in my immersion.

LinQ isn't to teach you the language, it's to make the media you use comprehensible. If used too much, it'll make you too reading dominant and fussing over knowing words.

Unfortunately listening and reading are not the same thing. They both have to be practised to a minimum level until you can get cross-pollination.

Watch some relatively easy youtube videos for an hour a day for a couple months: something like "slowly spoken portuguese" or "news in portuguese read slowly" or TPRS portuguese.

After about 100 hours of that your listening should be better.

After about 400 hours of listening to a lot of different things in Spanish (usually watching Netflix shows while reading the subtitles), my listneing comprehension was a lot better.

Repeatedly listening to the same thing over and over again has worked for me. Whether it's a show (right now it's Extraordinary Attorney Woo) or individual sentences while editing time stamps.

I think I've "watched" Extraordinary Attorney Woo at least 30 times. Sometimes I put it on and listen to it as I would background music. I find it much less helpful to watch a new Kdrama every week or so.

The difficult part is trying to find something you can tolerate watching so much, over and over again.

You need to have at least a few hundred hours of listening before it's decent. At 1.2M words read and 350 hours of listening, I can watch certain TV series in Italian for children/teenagers without any aid. To be good at listening, you need to do a lot of it.

At the beginner level, I had the following workflow of a lesson:

1. Read + lingQ New Words + look up forgotten words with TTS on + use Sentence Mode if the sentences are hard and use 'Translate Sentence'

2. Turn off TTS, switch back to Normal View, and reread the text with the audio playing looking up words you forgot

3. Reread while listening + looking up forgotten words

4. Listen to the audio while washing the dishes, walking, doing chores, in your 'dead time', etc.

5. Listen

6. Listen

...

15. Listen

I ended up listening to the Mini Stories maybe 15x each and lots of other beginner content 10x each over the course of several months to maybe half a year. I have always preferred to listen to the content after I have read it multiple times. To me, this makes more sense because I actually understand the story.

The way I think about it is to expose myself to new vocabulary through reading and reading while listening, where it's possible to look the word up in a dictionary, but to really drill the new vocabulary into my memory by relistening to the material. Obviously, you are also encountering the same word many times in other lessons too, but relistening to content you've read many times over does a lot of the heavy lifting.

As others have said, you need to do a lot more listening. A LOT...i.e. way more than you ever thought.

Are the things that you are listening to ones that you have read? i.e. is it just a difficulty in understanding spoken what you have already read? Or are you trying to listen to things you haven't read before?

Listen, a lot. If you think you don't understand, listen more.

The answer is easy. You need to listen more.

Depending on your level there's different things you can do:

Listen while reading

Listen then read then listen again

watch movies without subtitles - start with dubbed cartoons if too difficult (cartoons have very clear pronunciation )

Spend a lot of time doing all of this. I like to think of below table I saw below somewhere on the forum and in my experience so far seems more or less correct.

I'm having this problem a little now in spanish. Initially I was only working with videos and audio but then started reading A LOT because its just a faster way to pick up vocabulary. However, my comprehension tanked. I'm giving myself a little space to read more because its helping my speaking and language formation - just because my vocabulary has sky rocketed. But then I need to go back to listening intensely too and focus on comprehension. I know this is repeated a lot but just listen as much as you can. Its jarring at first because your brain wants to comprehend 100% of everything you hear and you just cant. but if you can past the initial discomfort you'll find that you can understand quite a lot.

Also on this app, when you start studying a new lesson try to listen a few times before reading the transcription and see how much you're understanding. Train you ears to lead, instead of your eyes. And especially for languages like portuguese and french where the pronunciation is quite difficult its important to link the written word to the actual sounds in normal speech. It'll take a lot of time, but you'll get there.