With listening the skill that takes a disproportionate amount of time, how soon should a beginner start focusing on it?

Obviously, listening needs development alongside reading, writing and speaking. It just takes a disproportionately long time vs other skills.

There seems to be a constant debate around comprehensible input. Specifically, what level of comprehensibility is too little. As a beginner, you naturally understand very little because you lack fundamental grammar, vocab, an intuitive understanding of natural native ways of speaking etc. However, a lot of people argue for throwing yourself into content designed for natives from day one, while working on frequency lists to up vocab.

The argument seems to be that you ultimately have to “jump in” to native content at some point, to speak a language with any fluency.

However, how much comprehensibility is too little? Is it better to focus on vocab and content specifically designed for beginners to get a solid base before attempting this content?

Comprehensible input at Peppa Pig levels of comprehension doesn’t massively appeal, in comparison to continuing to grind learner materials and study programmes, but I equally don’t want to go too far the other way and neglect parsing language as it’s actually spoken for too long.

TL;DR: Is there a sweet spot of comprehensibility as a beginner which makes watching / listening to content worthwhile? Is it worth getting vocab to a certain level before diving in, or just incorporating lattice content from the outset?

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