Getting over the listening hump?

Watching films and series in my target languages with subtitles in the same language was helpful, as was listening to audiobooks and referring to the text of the same book when I didn’t understand something. Essentially hearing the spoken language and seeing the written version at the same time, without involving your native language at all.

With English, TV shows/movies helped a lot. It's not perfect yet (I still struggle with certain accents, badly mixed audio and TBH sometimes I even struggle with content in my native language), but I'm definitely able to have a conversation without missing half the words. TBF I spent a LOT of time on it, it's not a good approach for a less common language or one that's more difficult for you than English was for me (my native language is also Germanic).

reading aloud is a great idea, and great practice! you might find even authors who write the language very much as it's spoken regionally, dropping out silent letters, etc.

if you can find any conversation groups in person or on discord etc, you'll have the benefit of practicing listening and working on your active skills / language production.

for me, listening to a soap opera that includes people with multiple accents & dialects is really useful. the earlier seasons don't have any subtitles in that language, so i was forced to figure out what they were saying either by listening, or sometimes going back with english subtitles & translating it back to that language.

soap operas will follow multiple storylines, you'll get the gist and learn related vocab about particular topics from context, but you'll also be hearing native speakers speaking naturally & in various situations or while they're laughing / shouting / crying / etc, which you'd never get from a monotone slow news podcast etc.

soap operas might be a bit overacted / overdramatic too, so even if you're not understanding every word or phrase, you'll be able to tell someone's angry at another person, etc. i started out with several characters i couldn't understand at all, and now on season 8, i very rarely need to rewatch a scene to understand it & i'm picking up a lot of conversational phrases.

another oft-repeated piece of advice is listening to a daily news & special interest radio programme/podcast, maybe in the dialect you're focusing on. it'll all be native speakers speaking at their usual pace, you might hear athletes being interviewed while out of breath right after a match, or someone angry about a political situation, or someone doing a weekly comedic feature last thing on a friday, etc.

tl;dr: nothing helped my overall understanding as much as working on my reading & listening & speaking skills, rather than only one or two of them. although i'm still guilty of neglecting my writing skills and it shows!

In my case, saturating what I listen to with stuff from the target language. At first what I hear is mostly noise, but as my understanding in the language overall improves, so does what I can understand from listening. And as I listening improves, the more I can pick that isn't covered by lessons, helping in the overall understanding and in the lessons. A virtuous spiral, I think is the saying. =)

I just listened to podcasts mostly. I get the point about speed, but I never really did any "slow talking" podcasts. Iirc there's science that agrees with you, that you have to hear fast talking specifically to learn to understand fast talking, that a strategy of slowly turning up the speed doesn't work as well as you might think.

Instead I just paused (to give myself time to collect my thoughts) and replayed bits, and it didn't take as long as I thought to get to a point where I don't need pausing or replay. I also did a lot of reading aloud.

The game changer for me was switching from podcasts to videos. I started this most recent stint of study a few years ago at the upper beginner/lower intermediate level, so slow-speed content was already at the point where it wasn't helpful. But because I couldn't control the speed of input easily like I could with reading, I kept blanking out during podcasts and getting more frustrated than anything. There aren't a ton of intermediate Japanese podcasts, so it wasn't long before I ran out of options.

I finally started to try videos, and it was this What's in My Emergency Mini-Pouch? one that made it click for me: when I'm being shown what the speaker is talking about and pre-loading expected vocab in my brain, it's far easier for me to keep pace. I already had the vocab in my brain, it was just a matter of connecting auditory input to that database. This sort of content is like a children's TV show, or even an unboxing video.

If you're able to find this kind of content at your level, I think it could help. Just keep in mind it will require focused, active listening.

A couple other notes, if your brain is anything like mine (or, in other words, things I would tell past me):

• I'd avoid re-listening right now. Pattern recall overriding decoding is definitely a thing, and you'll need practice in both phonetic automaticity and word processing at speed to get your decoder online. My research has told me that needs bulk input. The only exception here, since you mention you're not producing, is that your familiar content might be a good place to start shadowing. Flashcard sentences are another good spot.
• Interesting content tends to come later, and at some point you just have to put in the reps. The intersection of "interesting" and "appropriate for my level" dips dramatically as one moves into the intermediate stage until, eventually, native content opens up. You might have to stick with easy and/or boring content for a while until listening becomes effortless, and you move from "what did they say?" to "I don't know that word."