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"I learned English from watching..." | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
 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 18 of 97 03 September 2008 at 5:50am | IP Logged | ||
I don't believe in miracles. You can certainly understand some single words because Spanish has adopted many words from English, and you may be able to identify and guess the meaning of a few very common words, but you will soon get bored when you can't follow the flow of talking, and then you will just give up watching and find something different to do. Or you will fall asleep. The problem is that English and Spanish aren't sufficiently mutually intelligible. I guess that Portuguese, Spanish and Catalan speakers over a period of several years could learn to understand each other's TV programs, and the same applies to speakers of subgroups within the Slavonic languages, but English and Spanish - no way. 2 persons have 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 20 of 97 04 September 2008 at 4:40am | IP Logged | ||
As soon as you you can understand to some extent what is being said you can benefit from watching. If you watch enough you will eventually understand almost everything. But it still doesn't guarantee that you can speak the language and even less write it - turning a passive (and predominantly auditive) language into an active language is a task in itself. However using heavy TV watching as an addition to your 'other means' is certainly a good idea. Above I used the other Nordic languages as an illustration to the process of learning a related language purely through passive means. I could mention Portuguese and Dutch as languages where watching lots of internet TV has been very important in my learning process. In the case of Dutch I had been reading snippets here and there, I had done my word lists and read some grammar - . Then almost overnight I discovered that I could understand AVRO Museum TV (still my main source), and from that moment it suddenly made sense to watch even more Museum TV. But my active Dutch is still somewhat influenced by German patterns, which illustrates the problems of turning a passive language into an active one. And learning a language passively from watching television through another language WILL result in a passive language heavily influence by the 'gate' language. 2 persons have 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 22 of 97 04 September 2008 at 2:47pm | IP Logged | ||
Not really, the important thing is to start thinking, speaking and writing the other language - then you will inevitably become painfully aware of your shortcomings and do whatever you can to bridge the gap. And the methods you use for this are exactly the same that you would normally use to learn a language. The only difference is that having a solid passive background in the language will speed up the process. EDIT; Sybaritic asked me whether I had any special advice for the person who already had some passive skills in a language and wanted to become an active speaker. Edited by Iversen on 11 December 2010 at 6:34pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6448 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes Studies: German | Message 23 of 97 05 September 2008 at 5:24pm | IP Logged | ||
I did it with Italian and to a lesser degree with German. I think it took thousands of hours per language but I wasn't keeping count nor was I consciously trying to study. It is important to follow up with extensive reading. I intend to learn Spanish this way. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Autarkis Triglot Groupie Switzerland twitter.com/Autarkis Joined 5953 days ago 95 posts - 106 votes 4 sounds Speaks: German*, English, French Studies: Italian | Message 24 of 97 06 September 2008 at 9:58am | IP Logged | ||
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Actually, I did a part of my current French watching quiz shows. What occured to me was that quiz shows are very formulaic.
"Bienvenu chez 'Questions pour un champion'. Voilà le champion!" (Questions pour un champion) or "Et qui veut prendre sa place? C'est Dominique!" (Tout le monde veut prendre sa place.) or "Le compte est juste." (Chiffres et lettres) It's always the same phrases, making quiz shows some kind of paradoxically fun language drill. I guess the new opium for the masses in all its repetitive glory has some benefits after all! :D 1 person has voted this message useful |
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