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Foreign Language TV Really Works! | ||
Tags: Foreign Languages | TV | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Music, Movies, TV & Radio |  | |
| tanya b Senior Member United States Joined 4781 days ago 159 posts - 518 votes  Speaks: Russian | Message 1 of 6 15 January 2012 at 6:34am | IP Logged | |||||
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I was having a conversation with a trilingual girl and native Russian speaker, and she said that Russian language graduate students at a major U.S. university wer given an assignment. They had to watch a Russian language TV program, probably the news. And do you know what? Not one of them could understand a word of it. After at least 4 years of eating, drinking, and sleeping in the language, and even after visiting Russia, they were clueless.
Why is this important? As a person who thinks of foreign languages as more than just a hobby, I can't imagine life without being able to understand TV in my 2 target languages, Russian and Armenian. Why bother studying at all if you can't at some point in the future use this valuable tool to raise your skill level? (Radio works almost as well) I think foreign language TV is almost as good as having a native speaker available 24/7 to correct your mistakes. Of course, TV can't literally correct your mistakes, but in a way it does, but in a more gentle, gradual way. By hearing native speakers of all walks of life, in just a few minutes a day, you can become almost like a native speaker. The target language is the background noise, or the soundtrack, which enters into your subconscious and influences your speech, and of course, dramatically increases your understanding. Here are the types of shows that I watch, from easiest to hardest, from a learner's point of view. 1) Talk shows--relaxed, informal, people talk more slowly. 2) Soap operas--yes, there are Armenian soap operas, and I could watch them all day long--very good practice. 3) Sitcoms--a little more difficult, bad laughtrack every 4 seconds drowns out dialogue. 4) News programs--they talk twice as fast, you really have to pay attention. 5) Standup comedians--not necessarily fast, but lots of jargon, slang, and mumbling--can be challenging. 6) Sports commentary--rapid fire, lots of scores and statistics thrown in--it can make your head spin. I don't recommend this for beginners, they should probably concentate more on speaking than understanding. 8 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6128 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 2 of 6 15 January 2012 at 10:10am | IP Logged | |||||
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Ooh, I'm afraid I'm kind of with those grad students. I'm passing my 4 year mark with Japanese and TV is still pretty difficult. I don't hear nothing, I'd say that I hear set phrases and I do pick up words. I've found some anime where they say the same things over and over every episode and this helps me pick up some of the language. But often I'm still just totally lost with TV and 90% of the time I have no idea what the plot is. Sometimes I do follow what's going on, but that's the special case.
It is pretty maddening actually. Though, I think maybe about 50% of my problem is just not enough vocabulary. I'm still learning more and more words and I'm hoping as I learn more that the audio will start coming in a little better. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6585 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 3 of 6 15 January 2012 at 11:05am | IP Logged | |||||
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It took me so long to be able to understand TV in Mandarin. Living in China, I was using the language every day,
understanding without problems everyone who was talking with me, but TV was still pretty impossible, even after a year of immersion. While I can watch movies in Cantonese without too much trouble now, the news is still mostly gibberish. I'm working ot in, though, and I agree it's a good tool, but it's for advanced students, in my experience. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5869 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 4 of 6 15 January 2012 at 3:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think the key point here is "from a learner's point of view". For me, news is the easiest because I am more interested in news than the others. And news is something that I generally already know quite a bit about. I spend a lot of time with L2 news. Other people may have other interests and spend most of their L2 time with other types.
In my opinion and experience, understanding is much more important than speaking, especially for beginners. It is particularly important in developing, from the beginning, proper pronunciation. And if you can't understand, you can't communicate. If a person could understand perfectly, learning to speak would be a whole lot easier. You wouldn't be panicking, trying to comprehend what is being said. You would be more relaxed and able to compose a response. That has been my experience. In my opinion, without understanding, even at the beginning, you are building problems for yourself that will haunt you for years. Think of it in another way. If you could understand very well but could not speak, that would be very useful. If you could speak very well but couldn't understand, that would be pretty-well useless. If your speaking is very much better than your listening, the natives will assume you can understand and speak even faster. So in my opinion, you can never have too much understanding, even from the very beginning. 8 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 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 5 of 6 15 January 2012 at 4:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Lol for me the easiest type are the sports broadcasts. Background knowledge, loan words, a limited set of vocabulary. Numbers are also actually easy once you absorb them. And the emotions only help<3
Besides, the language is usually quite standard. Though for me the main advantage is that it's the only kind of programs that I can watch while not understanding, like in Danish. Soap operas and news would require far more patience. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5474 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 6 of 6 15 January 2012 at 5:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
I agree with tommus on this, I have always found news the easiest by far because of interest yes but also the lack of slang and colloquial street grammar. Movies are still to be mastered. I recently realized how important 'interest' in the material is while watching a TV series with multiple continuing plot themes. I was understanding almost 100% of story lines that interested me and very little of ones that did not - all within the same show!! Even though it was all just a listening exercise I could not seem to convince my brain to work equally hard on parts that did not capture my interest but those that did, I almost forgot it wasn't in English. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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