How to improve your Swedish listening skills without it getting boring
With a test in Swedish listening skills in the pipeline for permanent residency applicants, we've collected together our best tips for the Swedish TV, music and podcasts you can use to get your language up to scratch.
Sweden plans to introduce language tests for permanent residency from 2027, with the language level for the tests planned to be around A2 in the EU's CEFR framework.
Most estimates state that it takes anywhere from 120 to 300 hours of work to get up to A2 level, although that includes hours spent practicing the language.
It will be a listening test, so hours spent listening to Swedish radio, podcasts, music or TV would all count into that total.
Although talking to Swedes is the best way to practice your Swedish listening and speaking skills, it's not always possible, either because you don't know many Swedes or because the ones you do know keep speaking English to you.
Below are some of our suggestions you can use by yourself to help you practice your Swedish listening skills.
Our best Swedish TV tips
This list contains four Swedish series including sci-fi, a historical detective drama, and potentially Sweden's most famous soap.
If you fancy something lighter or if you want to understand what makes Swedes laugh, why not try one of these three comedies?
For those of you who are sick of Nordic noir, we've got four more tips here, including comedy, family drama, and one of Sweden's most popular TV programmes in recent years.
Finally, for lovers of lifestyle TV, we've got a list of Swedish shows which will give you garden envy, house envy, but probably not food envy.
Podcasts and news
In this article, we collect together our best tips for podcasts, news programmes and even a YouTube channel for practicing your Swedish listening skills, split into different sections for beginners and more advanced learners.
Just exposing yourself to Swedish as much as possible will help you. P1 is good for pure spoken radio with radio documentaries and podcast-style shows, P2 has a mix of speech and classical music, P3 is more focused on modern music, and P4 is local radio.
Music
You probably listen to music during the day anyway while you commute to work or do housework. See if you can find your new favourite Swedish artist from this article below.
You can often find Spotify playlists entirely in Swedish too, like this one of popular Swedish songs. If you click on the 'lyrics' button in the Spotify app (it looks like a microphone), you can also read along to the lyrics as you listen.
You might surprise yourself and find a new favourite artist or genre. Here's another top tip for finding music in another language: search Spotify for "The Sound of" followed by the language and genre you're looking for, like The Sound of Swedish Pop, The Sound of Swedish Indie Rock or The Sound of Swedish Folk Pop.
This obviously works best for lyric-heavy genres, and there will usually be some songs in English in these playlists, but they're a good way of exposing yourself to a wide range of dialects and vocabulary you might otherwise not hear.
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Sweden plans to introduce language tests for permanent residency from 2027, with the language level for the tests planned to be around A2 in the EU's CEFR framework.
Most estimates state that it takes anywhere from 120 to 300 hours of work to get up to A2 level, although that includes hours spent practicing the language.
It will be a listening test, so hours spent listening to Swedish radio, podcasts, music or TV would all count into that total.
Although talking to Swedes is the best way to practice your Swedish listening and speaking skills, it's not always possible, either because you don't know many Swedes or because the ones you do know keep speaking English to you.
Below are some of our suggestions you can use by yourself to help you practice your Swedish listening skills.
Our best Swedish TV tips
This list contains four Swedish series including sci-fi, a historical detective drama, and potentially Sweden's most famous soap.
If you fancy something lighter or if you want to understand what makes Swedes laugh, why not try one of these three comedies?
For those of you who are sick of Nordic noir, we've got four more tips here, including comedy, family drama, and one of Sweden's most popular TV programmes in recent years.
Finally, for lovers of lifestyle TV, we've got a list of Swedish shows which will give you garden envy, house envy, but probably not food envy.
Podcasts and news
In this article, we collect together our best tips for podcasts, news programmes and even a YouTube channel for practicing your Swedish listening skills, split into different sections for beginners and more advanced learners.
Just exposing yourself to Swedish as much as possible will help you. P1 is good for pure spoken radio with radio documentaries and podcast-style shows, P2 has a mix of speech and classical music, P3 is more focused on modern music, and P4 is local radio.
Music
You probably listen to music during the day anyway while you commute to work or do housework. See if you can find your new favourite Swedish artist from this article below.
You can often find Spotify playlists entirely in Swedish too, like this one of popular Swedish songs. If you click on the 'lyrics' button in the Spotify app (it looks like a microphone), you can also read along to the lyrics as you listen.
You might surprise yourself and find a new favourite artist or genre. Here's another top tip for finding music in another language: search Spotify for "The Sound of" followed by the language and genre you're looking for, like The Sound of Swedish Pop, The Sound of Swedish Indie Rock or The Sound of Swedish Folk Pop.
This obviously works best for lyric-heavy genres, and there will usually be some songs in English in these playlists, but they're a good way of exposing yourself to a wide range of dialects and vocabulary you might otherwise not hear.
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