I would recommend that you learn the basics before you immerse yourself in movies, TV series, podcasts etc. I don't think you'll get much out of it if you're a total beginner. You might be able to pick up a few words and phrases, but that's about it.

I would recommend watching series/films/news on SVTplay.se, you can turn on subtitles in Swedish. But to be able to understand everything I recommend learning vocab and grammar on duolingo/ another app and if you have the money/are really motivated you could buy the Rivstart övningsbok :) good luck!

Hi! I would definitely recommend that you listen to Swedish, since we usually don't pronounce words the way they're written. We tend to drop the last syllable, and slur words. Also, as you might have heard, the melody of the language is important in Swedish, and by listening to the language, even without understanding, you'll be able to learn so much faster. If you're a Netflix user, there's an add-on for Chrome that I can recommend, called Language Learning with Netflix. It gives you the opportunity to watch things with different audio and different subtitles than you would normally have access to, as long as you have a computer with chrome and a paid Netflix account. Then you'd be able to watch things in Swedish with English subtitles, and vice versa.

Hej Amanda! I've been learning Swedish for 18 months and would definitely recommend listening to as much Swedish as possible. In my opinion, listening is the most difficult aspect of Swedish, because people don't always pronounce things the way they're written (e.g. "Hur mår du" is actually pronounced "Hu må ru"). When I travelled to Sweden last summer, I found out that I could read, write and speak really well, to the point where I didn't need English at all... but I was incapable of understanding spoken Swedish. Today I'm much better but I'm afraid that my listening is still much worse than other skills. I would definitely recommend listening to Swedish as much as possible to get your ears used to the sounds of the language. Look for a podcast called "Radio Sweden på lätt svenska." It's the news in easy Swedish. You can find transcriptions in their website if you don't understand something. It's great for practicing listening and after a month or two studying Swedish you should be able to understand what the podcasts say. As for music, I'd really recommend Melissa Horn and Nordman. Their lyrics are not very difficult and their pronunciation is clear. Good luck! :-)

I'm learning Mandarin, and I listen and watch a lot that I don't understand. I feel like it helps a lot with intonation and cadence, and your brain will begin to pick out more bits here and there that it recognizes. So I recommend it :)