How do you know when words within an expression are silent?

Such as I hope that you are well, Je espère que ça va bien. It sounds to me as if the "va" is silent. I have listened to this dozens of times and I cannot tell. The pronunciation has been the biggest stumbling block for me and this is what makes me quit. How do I tell if words are silent. Thanks in advance.

Words are never completely silent in French (unless you're talking about "casual" French on the street, like saying "y'a" instead of "Il y a"). The "va" may just not have been slowly enunciated enough for this stage of the learning, but it is pronounced.

One of the difficulties of learning a new language is hearing its little nuances. Speakers tend to run words together so that as you wrote, John, some words may even appear silent. We also have so-called silent words in English, but our ears have been trained since birth to look for those "silent" words. Furthermore, we've also trained ourselves to fill in the "silent" words from context. Wouldn't it be nice if we could learn and understand over-night in our new language (French) what we learned slowly in English and have practiced for decades. I also struggle with those "silent" words when I listen to French. The only encouragement I can give you is to keep practicing; it will come.

Hahaha. Don't worry about it. Just keep listening. It's not your ears, it's their inability to speak properly, slowly, and carefully in order to communicate. Sometimes it's because they are inexperienced. Often it is just for fun. When I first started working in Paris I kept hearing che-pa. In fact they were shortening, "Je ne sais pas" (I do not know) Je ne was dropped altogether. Then they start playing games on you with verlan. They say ci-mer for merci and other stuff like that. You get an introduction to all of that here in Rocket French. Keep listening to lots of different material, ask lots of questions, and be really patient with yourself. Get angry, get upset, be happy, be sad, but don't quit. Good luck. In case, by chance, it is your environment, try to find a quiet place to listen or buy a pair of Bose headphones to cut the background noise. Also, J'espère que ça va bien = I hope that it is good. J'espère que tu vas bien = I hope that you (a friend or colleague) are okay. J'espère que vous allez bien = I hope that you (the big boss or a stranger) are well. I think the audio on the first one in lesson 1.1 is perfect. Each word is clearly pronounced. If you are not sure, copy them into translate.google.com. Google pronounces all the phrases just fine. Show us another example, perhaps.

Thanks to torusan, Diana S1, JasonD1 for your answers to my question. That helped a lot!