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English: What to do next? | ||
Tags: Advanced Level | English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4524 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes  Studies: German | Message 9 of 25 05 February 2014 at 10:38am | IP Logged | ||
Perhaps this is the problem. I would not watch anything more with subtitles. Just listen. If you don't understand everything that's fine, you just need to practice. And you need to do 100s hours of watching. Not just one or two shows. Try to see a film or a couple of episodes of a TV show a day. If you vocab is has high as you say it is, then you don't need to learn more words. Edited by patrickwilken on 05 February 2014 at 10:39am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4135 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 10 of 25 05 February 2014 at 11:29am | IP Logged | ||
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Listen, listen, listen. Find a show that you enjoy and watch it without subtitles. Don't worry if you don't
understand every word at first - it will come with lots of exposure. I think it's a bit odd to say that - since you already know x number of words - watching TV shows is useless. After all, you've already said that you don't understand when you watch. You've also said that you struggle with understanding children's novels. (I suspect that you might be overestimating your listening/reading level as C1, but that doesn't really matter.) What you need is lots and lots and LOTS of exposure. If you don't care about reading fiction, then don't force yourself to read novels - you've already said that you understand non-fiction well, and your writing is obviously very strong. But TV? Definitely! Lots and lots! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4656 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 11 of 25 05 February 2014 at 12:09pm | IP Logged | ||
Surely you're watching to try and improve your English comprehension not your vocabulary? In which case it's most certainly not a waste of time. The only way you'll improve listening comprehension is by doing lots of listening. Why not try watching without subtitles. If you feel that you didn't understand, then watch again with subtitles. It will obviously take longer doing it things this way, but you might find that you catch ore than you think. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7196 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 12 of 25 05 February 2014 at 12:48pm | IP Logged | ||
Naughty, naughty, naughty at your level. At this point, you need to drop the subtitle crutch. The main thing is to find things you want to listen to in English. There should be a ton of stuff available, whatever your tastes are. Listening is the most important skill and it has the most transfer to other skills (reading, writing, speaking). If you can find something you really want to know more about, find video, or audio on the subject in English. You will begin to improve dramatically and it will be interesting and you need to enjoy English content at this point. No flashcards for you! Have you watched Seinfeld? That may be a tough one to begin with, but if you like it and start doing it without subtitles, there are lots and lots of good seasons and episodes in your future! Native speakers watch reruns of Seinfeld all the time. Not because they are difficult, but because they are funny and well produced and beautiful. Edited by luke on 06 February 2014 at 3:13am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5013 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 13 of 25 05 February 2014 at 3:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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Definitely drop the subtitles! To put things in context, I probably don't even know 10,000 Spanish words, yet I can watch most shows with good comprehension without subtitles in either language. I just listened and listened, and eventually I was able to understand.
Your background in watching all that TV with subtitles should mean that you can make the jump very easily. If you'll permit me an almost irrelevant aside, as an Englishman I never cease to be amazed at the success enjoyed by Seinfeld. That type of humour just doesn't work over here.Were you aware that there was a big difference in British and American humour? Perhaps a good exercise would be to compare the two and work out what the differences are. Have you seen The Inbetweeners ? You might have to brush up on your English slang though. Edited by dbag on 05 February 2014 at 3:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4512 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 14 of 25 05 February 2014 at 5:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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TV without subtitles is the way to go, as others have mentioned before. Aim for 1000
hours and you'll get enlightened somewhere on the road. One addition I want to make is that "easy listening" can be very beneficial too. Grab an audiobook and just listen for 0.5-1 hour every day in addition to the TV watching. Get hold of audiobooks from different narrators from different areas, North America (Frank Muller is great), UK (Roy Dotrice is great) and if possible even Australia/NZ. The audiobooks should NOT be challenging. Who wants to sit the whole day in front of the TV anyway? Edited by daegga on 05 February 2014 at 5:07pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| PeteP Newbie United States Joined 5028 days ago 27 posts - 48 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Romanian | Message 15 of 25 05 February 2014 at 5:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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Cavesa's list of books was GREAT! I would add a few books to the list.
Hunger Games is good. The writing is simple and easy to read. It is a trilogy, so you can read a lot from the same author. The first 40 or so pages may be a challenge but then you start to "get" that author's style. The biggest advantage of Hunger Games is that the non-dialogue parts are usually written in present tense, so it feels much more conversational. I need to take a look at Cavesa's list again, since it made me think of another book or two that has escaped my memory. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| PeteP Newbie United States Joined 5028 days ago 27 posts - 48 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Romanian | Message 16 of 25 05 February 2014 at 5:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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More reading suggestions:
Anything by Dan Brown. Long books with extremely short chapters. This is great for learners because the short chapters give you lots of feelings of accomplishment but the book itself is long so you once again get a feel for the author's style in around 40 pages and then read VERY efficiently for hundreds more pages. If you are a fan, these books tend to elicit the "I need to read another chapter NOW" response. Anything by Hemmingway. Short, crisp sentences and LOTS of dialogue. Deep stories but simple writing. I have found Narnia VERY easy to read in Romanian, so I'm sure the English original would make a good book for an English learner. The books are short (around 100 pages) but there are 7 of them, so once again, you feel good finishing a book, but there is a lot more to read in the next volume and you already know the characters and the author's style. I wish I had the Romanian audiobook!!! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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