Thoughts on listening to podcasts while playing a video game?

Listening to podcasts is a form of passive listening. Passive listening is good for you. The more your brain is exposed to the language, the better. By doing it you signal to your brain that the information is important.

Listening to podcasts in your TL is a good idea if you're at a stage where your level of comprehension allows you to understand them without much effort. Mind that podcasts are usually harder to comprehend due to a lack of visuals and transcriptions. If you end up listening to white noise, it won't do anything for you. The content must be comprehensible.

If you immerse while playing a video game, you artificially decrease the quality of your attention. I don't see why you'd want to do that.

I recommend quitting playing video games completely. They are totally unnecessary and avoidable. Most games these days are proprietary, and proprietary software should not exist. Moreover, games are made to be addicting. They try to pull you in and have you play more and more.

I know just one good game that is actually worth spending time on. It's called vimtutor.

Tags: faq