Listen/Hear
What’s the difference between listen and hear?
Listen and hear have similar meanings but we use them differently.
The easiest way to remember the difference is to think of listen as active and hear as passive.
Read to learn more about the difference between listen and hear, then test out your knowledge in the free exercise.
Can you hear Jack practising the guitar? He’s getting better every day.
When he first started learning, he was terrible. We could hear him practising every day, and we tried not to listen to him.
These days he’s very good and we quite enjoy listening to him play.
Hear
- hear = to perceive sound or noise using your ears
- Example:
- Can you hear Jack practising the guitar?
- hear is passive; we can hear something without wanting or choosing to
- use hear to talk about a complete piece of music, radio programme, speech etc. that you have listened to (in the past)
- Example:
- I heard him playing the guitar on the radio last week.
- use can + hear to express that you hear something at the moment of speaking. We do not use the progressive form (-ing) with hear.
- Example:
- I can hear strange noises.
- not:
I am hearing strange noises
Listen
- listen to = actively pay attention to sound or noise
- Example:
- We quite enjoy listening to him play.
- listen is active; we only listen to things when we choose to pay attention
- don’t use to when we don’t say the object
- Example:
- When Jack plays the guitar, we don’t listen.
- but: We don’t listen to Jack
Compare: listen vs. hear
Take a look at the following sentences for a clear comparison of the difference between listen and hear:
- Compare:
- Person A: You’re not listening to me when I talk!
- Person B: I am listening to you, but I can’t hear you! The radio is too loud.
Although Person B is actively focusing their hearing on Person A, they cannot help passively taking in the noise of the radio.
