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How to bring up English from B2 to C1 ? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| AlexTG Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 4629 days ago 178 posts - 354 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: Latin, German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 9 of 66 11 September 2014 at 4:56pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I delay subtitles by around 2 seconds. If they're in time with the sound then watching
the movie/tv show ends up as just more reading practice. But with a delay it's hard to follow the subtitles even if you want to. Your attention keeps moving back to what you're hearing and seeing and the subtitles are just so 2 seconds ago. BUT, when you don't understand something, you can flick your eyes down, check the meaning, and then get straight back to listening. In my opinion this method has only advantages over not using any subtitles. Even if you comprehend 98% of the words of a movie that's still 200 words missed in a 10,000 word movie. 200! Imagine the subtleties you're missing out on! And the monolinguals using subs aren't! You're losing to monolinguals! And instead you could be learning new vocab AND getting the subtleties! (I just realised I shouldn't have used the word subtleties in a post about subtitles, sorry dyslexic people!) Edited by AlexTG on 11 September 2014 at 5:01pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Enrico Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 3736 days ago 162 posts - 207 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Italian, Spanish, French | Message 10 of 66 11 September 2014 at 5:04pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
You can try to watch something like Shrek, Kung Fu Panda or Frozen. They are relatively simple. I think to do it with Italian after finishing Assimil. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4225 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek | Message 11 of 66 11 September 2014 at 5:12pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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AlexTG. unsynchronized subs are soooo annoying that you hate everything in the world, but I never looked at it that way, might be useful after some attempts...
Enrico, nah, I know what to watch, for me the best decision is to rewatch something I know well enough, and I had a plan for Life on Mars, but new series, 6WC and uni are more important at the moment :) Rewatching of movies you've already seen in other languages is great. One of the biggest actions I've done with my German recently is to watch 2 seasons of Doctor Who without subtitles (considering I only have watched the original with - alas! - Russian subs this July). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Enrico Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 3736 days ago 162 posts - 207 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Italian, Spanish, French | Message 12 of 66 11 September 2014 at 5:23pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Interesting to try but I think that it will also become just a reading practice, no? :-)
Haha :-) I've missed it :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5253 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 13 of 66 11 September 2014 at 7:22pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Extensive means a "broad range". Vary your input away from the internet. You should read more books, lots and lots of books. Fiction with dialog to start but a wide range of books, novels, even (especially!) comic books (graphic novels). Try to stay away from a lot of textbook science as that vocabulary tends to be rather specialized and therefore, easier to understand. You need wide exposure to how English is used everyday- to internalize grammar, usage and structure by seeing it used- a lot.
Start! Find something that may interest you out of the huge range of series available. Start soon and don't stop until you've completed one with at least 75 hours. 100 hours would be better. This may sound like a big number but at an hour a day that's a little over three months to complete. If you then follow it up with a new series of similar length, you'll be well on your way.
Watch without subtitles. It will be difficult and very uncomfortable at first. It was for me when I started watching my first telenovela in Portuguese. At first, I only got maybe 50%. I was working with a tutor. She had me watch once and write down any unknown words or phrases. Then we went over those words and phrases together and she gave me the meanings. Next I would watch the same episode over and write a review of it. I would then tell her what happened in the episode. I had no choice but to work without subtitles because there were none available. You are lucky, there are subtitles available for almost every modern US and British TV series. You can search for "Name of TV Series + Season and Episode number + subtitles, like this: "The Walking Dead S01E01 subtitles". The reason you're lucky is because--- You won't need a tutor for this exercise. You can use the subtitle file (opened in a text file) to find the words you missed and you can download a Russian subtitle (if it exists) for the meaning. You can write a review for writing practice and post it on lang8 for correction and/or search online for reviews/synopsis of the particular episode. That's what I mean about it being work. It sounds like a lot of work. It isn't that much really. Eventually your comprehension will increase so much that there will be little to no unknown words and you'll be able to write your review without having to pause or watch the episode again. After finishing your first 75-100 hours, your next series will be much easier and you will consolidate your knowledge. You can also make your own bilingual texts from a series subtitles and practice reading dialog. There are many variations you could use to make this a worthwhile exercise.
Everything counts at least in some fashion, but the type of material you are consuming, except for music and sports doesn't give you enough exposure to everyday English. Technology reading is not good for exposure to everyday English. That's why I am recommending a TV series- comedy, science fiction or drama. This will provide regular and consistent exposure to typical, non-technical, English. I also recommend a daily news magazine program/podcast because of the wide range of vocabulary used. I realize, you being Russian that this may have political overtones, in that case, try Radio Moscow's English service- they're not native-speakers but they are practically indistinguishable. I, personally, would listen to the US National Public Radio programs (NPR.org) or the BBC Radio Four or World Service for good practice of listening to native English discussion (and vocabulary) of many different subjects.
"Anybody" is a singular noun- any body. You cannot use the conjugation "Have" with "anybody". It must be "Has" since this is the conjugation of the verb "to have" that goes with a singular noun or pronoun. In "any of you", the "you" is understood to be a plural you and could refer to several people, therefore taking "have" as the proper verb conjugation. "Anybody" is any person, singular and not equivalent to "any of you". I am not a grammar expert. I'm just a native English-speaker. Reading and listening to English, watching a TV series and regular, daily exposure to everyday English will help you to see English constructions and internalize them. Writing and speaking will help you to consolidate them. A tutor would be ideal but I realize that you may not be able or willing to spend the money necessary to hire a tutor. In this case, language exchanges are free and there are many native English-speakers who are learning Russian. My preference would be for a native-speaker, other second language speakers can harm your learning with mistakes that they may be unaware they are making. Edited by iguanamon on 12 September 2014 at 1:50am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6588 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 14 of 66 12 September 2014 at 3:50am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Thanks for the nice words, iguanamon :)
Enrico, have I given you this link before? Basically, extensive reading is a technique. It's more about aiming for a large volume and understanding from the context than about the specific materials you choose. I think lang-8 hasn't been recommended yet. It's a good way to get corrections and identify things to work on. Consider using SRS too - antimoon offers some great ideas for that. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Enrico Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 3736 days ago 162 posts - 207 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Italian, Spanish, French | Message 15 of 66 12 September 2014 at 1:42pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Wow!
Iguanamon your post is a complete guide! Very useful, Thank you.
I don't like politics and prejudice.
I tried to find out some time before how to write correctly 'Has anybody' or 'Have anybody' and I found somewhere on a forum that if you mean by anybody "any of you"... so I remembered it and used from time to time. Thank you for your correction. From now I'm going to start using 'Has anybody' :-)
I will try to find some interesting TV series. By the way. Can I count for TV series any periodic TV shows with interviews etc? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5253 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 16 of 66 12 September 2014 at 2:34pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
You're welcome, Enrico.
The reason I recommended a regular series with the same characters and situations, i.e., a regular TV series, is for repetition and continuity. You aren't going to get that same benefit from random interview watching. While anylistening will help, watching and listening to a regular series will help more- much more, if you will just try it. Of course, you don't have to do so if you don't want to, but if you do try to watch a series with 75 to 100 hours I think it will do wonders for your English. Combine this with speaking, writing for correction as Serpent has suggested, on lang8- short texts, maybe just a paragraph, but regularly. Add in a good grammar book and extensive reading, and you could see a dramatic improvement in your English in a few months. HTLAL is not setup with a proper interface for corrections in the same way that lang8 is. Lang8 is designed for corrections with a text interface that makes it easy to correct. If you give good corrections to Russian learners there, by going beyond the minimum of just crossing out words- providing thorough and useful explanations of why, you will get better and more useful corrections of your English. Lang8 won't work for long texts. It takes too much time to correct them. Start out by finding Russian learners' texts to correct and befriend them by giving them useful corrections. They will be happy to reciprocate- in my experience. Sometimes, in language-learning we can get stuck in a routine because we find it comfortable- reading things we know we can understand with a minimum of effort, listening to content we can understand relatively easily. At the beginning stages this is ok and helpful. At the intermediate stage it isn't as helpful if you already understand your content exposure to the target language. If you find yourself in this stage, you won't advance very quickly, and perhaps not even much at all by continuing to do the same and expecting a different result. When you are trying to take a language to the next level you have to push yourself and accept a certain amount of discomfort in order to get to where you want to go. The discomfort is not forever. It will pass. Good luck, Enrico. Edited by iguanamon on 12 September 2014 at 10:20pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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