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Understanding of English movies | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Music, Movies, TV & Radio |  | |
| albertly Triglot Newbie Israel Joined 5472 days ago 3 posts - 4 votes Speaks: Modern Hebrew, Ukrainian, Russian* Studies: English | Message 1 of 5 26 June 2013 at 5:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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I wonder, why it is so difficult to understand English movies ( i.a. serials).
For example : there are about 800 unique words in a serial. I didn't know about 20 (I've actually made measurements). So ratio is 2.5% . Nevertheless I understand a serial very badly. Something different when I watch a lecture from coursera.org. The same ratio of unknown words, but I understand it completely. Edited by albertly on 26 June 2013 at 5:28pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5011 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 2 of 5 26 June 2013 at 6:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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A lecturer is usually one person who speaks with only one purpose on mind: to be understood. The awesome content of his lecture will be worthless if his/her public doesn't get to it through the form, too much unusual vocabulary for the particular public, a too notable speech impediment and so on. Or if he speaks so fast that he loses the listeners early on and they spend the rest of the lecture trying to catch on, often without success. A good lecturer knows all that and acts (speaks) accordingly.
In movies, you get a lot of actors playing a lot of characters, both have their personal characteristics including the way they speak. And that gives a colourful mix and tons of combinations. And the speech includes more colloquial language and is much closer to the usual speed than the lecture is. So it is harder at the beginning for many people as it is much more of a mess than a lecture, an audiobook or a videoblog on youtube. TV series are similar to the movies but you have one advantage. You can get used to a smaller amount of people (and one central theme like crime solving or exploring the universe or gossiping) and spend much more time with them. During the time, you are very likely to get used to the English "by itself", as you no longer get confused by a new crowd of speakers every 100 minutes or so of watching. Than the next series will be much easier to get used to. What helps me: large amounts of tv series that are fun for me so that I keep my attention easily. Even a few episodes make a difference. One season makes a world of difference! It's like reading the first few books, speaking with the first few natives etc. By the way, where did you find the numbers? Do you have a source (did you count?) or is it your estimate? Edited by Cavesa on 26 June 2013 at 6:22pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| albertly Triglot Newbie Israel Joined 5472 days ago 3 posts - 4 votes Speaks: Modern Hebrew, Ukrainian, Russian* Studies: English | Message 3 of 5 26 June 2013 at 8:10pm | IP Logged | ||
I've got exact count. Recently, I've found a very useful and free of charge web site: http://wordsfromtext.com . This site is somehow underestimated and not well-known among language learning public. Maybe because it's mostly oriented to russian speaking audience. However, it does exactly what I always wished. You load your text : it can be a file or url link or just copy/paste. It counts unique words and you mark what you know. It remembers words that you marked previously and allows to make "bulk marks" with "shift key" - so it goes really fast. By the way to memorize words I use - Anki. Hope it helps Edited by albertly on 26 June 2013 at 8:11pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4830 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 4 of 5 26 June 2013 at 9:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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In my opinion, one of the problems might be that actors in movies and some TV series
don't speak as clearly as they used to. It might be a fashion, it might be an attempt to sound more like "real life", it may be that actors are trained differently nowadays, or perhaps they aren't trained as well. I think that in sitcoms, the speech is usually clearer. The humour is often verbal, and US comedy shows employ vast teams of joke-writers, so they aren't going to want you to miss their best gags. Have you tried watching comedy shows? If so, was it any better? Edited by montmorency on 26 June 2013 at 9:14pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4255 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 5 of 5 26 June 2013 at 10:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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I watch tv shows and movies in English all the time, namely Hannibal and Game of Thrones nowadays, and I don't have much problems understanding the speech, other than Mads Mikkelsen due to his Danish accent (underarticulation=DANISH ALERT). You just have to watch, watch and watch without subtitles because that really engages you into listening to what they're saying, paying attention to how they're saying the things and eventually learning to listen to English.
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