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"I learned English from watching..." | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Autarkis Triglot Groupie Switzerland twitter.com/Autarkis Joined 5953 days ago 95 posts - 106 votes  4 sounds Speaks: German*, English, French Studies: Italian | Message 9 of 97 29 August 2008 at 6:05am | IP Logged | ||
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My first contact with English was the animated series "Transformers" on Sky TV.
It's rough to have words like "quest" or special phrases like "roll out" on your "First 50 words" list. It's also difficult to have robot-like voices pronouncing "Autobots" as "orobots", at least to my ears it was. (I was 14) These fragments of language were started to being completed by school one year later, but I'd still say I learned English from watching Transformers. It's not the whole truth, but it's what made me excel at it compared to the others who enjoyed the same schools and teachers. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Rmss Triglot Senior Member Spain spanish-only.coRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6565 days ago 234 posts - 248 votes 3 sounds Speaks: Dutch*, English, Spanish Studies: Portuguese | Message 10 of 97 01 September 2008 at 12:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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Learning a language (especially to fluency) is just a combination of things. You don't get fluent by 'just watching television all day long in the target language' or 'cramming five grammar books' or 'doing 5000 SRS reps per month' or... whatever you do. But combining things like this WILL make you better, it's just what you prefer.
And in every case: more hours of input (in any form) will mean a better understanding/more fluency. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jez Diglot Newbie Netherlands Joined 6307 days ago 37 posts - 37 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 11 of 97 01 September 2008 at 7:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm Dutch and I have Dutch as my native language and I actually reached an advanced level in English around the age of 12. All because of the English language media that I was subjected to every single day.
So yeah, I'd have to say it's true, but only for younger people. Like how it gets more difficult for people to learn a new language after a certain age. Edited by jez on 01 September 2008 at 7:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kubg2 Triglot Newbie Canada Joined 6020 days ago 8 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Arabic (Written), Irish | Message 13 of 97 02 September 2008 at 10:17am | IP Logged | ||
This is key. It isn't a lesson or a chore it is just some entertainment - music, tv, movies that happen to be in English. If a non-English-speaker's favourite band sings in English they are just going to pick up a lot by listening to their favourite songs. They don't always get everything of course (I remember some amusing ideas about what "Jesus and Mary Chain" meant in Hamburg). The Netherlands is well-known for using subtitles more often on TV shows rather than mostly dubbing as in France and Germany etc. Once I learned enough German to enjoy some German books, entertainment, music and goofy internet ephherma I was able to just relax and goof off my way to a whole bunch of new vocabulary; much of it fun because it was idiomatic and made people wonder how I ever heard of the word/phrase. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Licel Triglot Newbie Mexico Joined 6045 days ago 10 posts - 10 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, FrenchB2 Studies: Italian | Message 14 of 97 02 September 2008 at 5:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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I started taking English courses when I was 7 years old and I started listening to music and watching t.v in English (without subtitles) when I was about 12 or 13 and it really helped to improve my fluency and grammar, of course by the time this happened I already had a very good foundation. I personally don't think it would have been possible for me to understand those tv shows and songs without the previous courses.
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| chelovek Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6088 days ago 413 posts - 461 votes 5 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Russian | Message 15 of 97 02 September 2008 at 6:50pm | IP Logged | ||
I don't think that's true at all. I lived in the Netherlands teaching English, and althuogh kids were exposed to tons of subtitled English media, they still were FAR from fluent in English. Those that didn't have English lessons couldn't understand or speak it at all, and those that were taking lessons still weren't proficient. You took English lessons at school, as well as watching TV, correct? Omitting that extra info is basically just telling a bold-face lie... Edited by chelovek on 02 September 2008 at 6:53pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 16 of 97 02 September 2008 at 7:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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I also learnt English in school so I didn't learn it from watching TV - even though I have spent a lot of time doing that.
However I have another more relevant case, namely the other Nordic languages - Swedish and Norwegian. In school I faintly remember that we had a look at one or two short passsages in each of these languages, that's all. I didn't make make any conscious effort to learn to speak or write any of these languages nor did I ever study them in a systematic way. However they are so close to Danish that any Dane who makes a minimal effort probably could learn them just from listening to TV. But this is of course not something that happened just by watching a single series in Swedish or Norwegian television - it took many years and an insane amount of different TV programs to get there. Plus in my case a lot of books, magazines, newspapers and a fair bit of listening to real living Scandinavians. But the point is that I could in principle have acquired at least passive skills from watching Swedish and Norwegian TV - provided that I had spent enough time doing it. Active skills is quite another matter. During my current language trip I have tried to accostume myself to thinking in Swedish, and I could probably put that language on my list now without lying too much. I have not done the same thing with Norwegian because I have had too little access to extreme New Norwegian which is the variant I prefer. So to get from passive to active use of a certain language it is necessary to make an extra effort. I doubt that the same thing could be possible with even German or English. The initial treshold of understanding would be too high. Edited by Iversen on 02 September 2008 at 7:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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