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Learning a language by watching TV? | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Music, Movies, TV & Radio |  | |
| SlickAs Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5868 days ago 185 posts - 287 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, French, Swedish Studies: Thai, Vietnamese | Message 49 of 134 12 January 2009 at 10:17pm | IP Logged | ||
Yeah, it is amazing, and increadibly cheap (given you can rent the DVD for a couple of bucks, watch it [with subtitles even], rip the audio, and return it). Then, a 2 hour movie usually edits down to about 45 minutes of dialogue once the music, action, mood silence, etc is removed. It takes 1 complete listen through at 2 hours on audacity to remove the spaces. Then it is a bit over a half hour, and yours to listen to in its condensed form as much as you like. But it is better than just 45 minutes of audio, because when you listen to it, you already know the story. Only now you have all other cues removed. You can't see the picture anymore. No image. No facial guestures. No body-language. Can't see the action. So you are entirely reliant on your ears and your hearing capacity in the language. But at the same time you have seen the film, so if you are following the dialogue, you can kind of see the picture in your head from memory. It means that the language is 100% in context. Not like Assimil where you have to imagine that a Mr Smith is at the airport without any idea or even element of caring of who Mr Smith is, or why he wants to fly, or anything else. In this dialogue, if there is an airport scene, we know exactly what the character looks like, why he is flying, why it is urgent, and his personality has been developed. And there may be some phrases that you did not catch the first, or even on the second listen or third. But you know the picture, remember the subtitle (so you know what it means in context), and you dont need to worry about it. Don't stop it ... it is only a bit over a half an hour and the whole story will be told. And you wont even realise that you did not catch it properly because you are caught up in the story. But on the 5th listen you will pull it out. And it will hit you like a bolt of lightenting that it is different to what you thought and that you missed it all these times. I am still not saying it is better than Assimil or similar (since the dialogue in the airport of a film will hardly give you the requisite dialogue to buy your own aeroplane ticket the way Assimil will), but it is surely more enjoyable. Somewhere between just watching TV / listening to music and studying from FSI or Assimil. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dmg Diglot Senior Member Canada dgryski.blogspot.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 7002 days ago 555 posts - 605 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Dutch, Esperanto | Message 50 of 134 12 January 2009 at 10:23pm | IP Logged | ||
Oh man am I guilty of not following this advice... (which is odd, because I frequently give it other people, including people in #learnanylanguage...) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| FSI Senior Member United States Joined 6350 days ago 550 posts - 590 votes Speaks: English* | Message 51 of 134 12 January 2009 at 11:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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^ That is good advice, although I don't always remember it. It's kept me away from many a Pimsleur course.
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| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6002 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 53 of 134 13 January 2009 at 4:18am | IP Logged | ||
Just as an aside: despite all those languages you see to the left of this text, I still only ever buy travel tickets in English. No matter how much I study or practise in advance, the girl behind the counter always says something I don't understand... then starts talking to me in English. If I try to switch back to the other language, she says something I don't understand and from there on it's impossible to get her to switch back. IMO, the airport is a pretty useless topic for lessons, and a poor example for comparison... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| SlickAs Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5868 days ago 185 posts - 287 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French, Swedish Studies: Thai, Vietnamese | Message 55 of 134 13 January 2009 at 8:18am | IP Logged | ||
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A few too many glasses of wine to be posting, but I offer this anyway:
It is reasonably easy to learn a language with the accent that the "language people" decide is the good accent. BBC Southern Standard English in English, Madrid Spanish, Parisian French, Stockholm Swedish. But what if you have good reason to speak another accent? Then you will be relying on media. For example, my Spanish got to a point where it was so good that I now needed to decide on an accent to take it further. I was in Argentina at the time. I learned Argentinian Spanish. But I have not been to Argentina for over 5 years now. And the Latino's I speak to are from all over. The films I see are mostly from Spain. To continue to speak with an Argentian accent is a pretense? Even though I am not exposed to it? I don't think so, but I need recorded Argentinian Spanish to keep it current. Guess where that comes from ... film, TV, utube. Same with Quebec French. I listen to French learning materials, and I feel false in immitating that accent. Posh. Toffy. But give me a Quebec film and I feel at home ... the language I speak, the language I want to perfect. My GF (Francophone) wants to step off the plane when we return to Quebec in May with an Australian accent. She speaks beautifully fluent English, but with an accent. I told her that she needs to be able to pass herself off as an Australian here, and with my reinforcement she will speak with a colloquial Australian accent all her life. I told her of how I learned my Swedish accent: that I walked into the streets of Stockholm, having been misunderstood, and spoke more Swedish than the cliche, more Abba, more sing-song than the chef from the Muppets, more than the Swedes and completely overdo it, and suddenly they understood. And I started teaching her Australian English "FOrget what your teachers taught you ... speak more Australian than the Australians ... Oi wanda spoik with an o-stoilian occoint" (I want to speak with an Australian accent) more Australian than the Australians. We would never speak like that, but you need to lean on the things she keeps too clean from her language classes. She will feel goofy, but if she does not exaggerate, she will not be getting close, and the Australians will not correct an over prononciation ... go out and try it and see what happens. She did, and her accent is coming. Does not sound foreign anymore, even if it does not sound Australian either. If you are learning English, where else are you going to learn colloqial English other than the media? It does not matter what breed ... you learn Manchester colloquial English, and your English will be considered fluent across the English speaking world for the rest of your life, you just need one. Let me say that again ... if you speak with one dialect / accent quasi-natively, you will be considered native by all, and not some accented foreigner. THere are many people here who get all snobby about language learning and get into "I learn this language to read Plato in the orginal" or some such guff. What snobbery to say that learning from "high-literature" is valid, but from "low-culture" (i.e. mass media) is beneath you and inferiour language learning. You are getting your snobbery confused with language proficiency. I will see you "literature" people in the bars, clubs, streets, and we will see who speaks it better. Maybe you will see me on a spelling-bee or literature quiz show, and I still might beat you. I reckon this prejudice comes from Professor Arguelles who is all into literature. He speaks Persian apparently, but "has never had the pleasure of speaking to a native Persian speaker"! Despite living in California! *I* have Persian friends who live in California, and I have never lived there. There are over 3 million of them there. What, has he never felt tempted to walk into the local Persian carpet / coffee shop and sa "Hi"? How shy do you have to be? It is all cool to read "1001 Nights" in Persian, but with respect for the 20 languages he speaks (and I listened to his Swedish video, his accent is far better than mine), he has a different philosophy to learning languages to me, and I feel his shyness has infected the world-view of this community. We all need not get caught up in this literature craze. Media has a place in language learning. That is all. Equal to literature. People saying that they learned from media are telling the truth as much as people who say they learned from literature. If you drop your snobbery, you will see it clearly. Edited by SlickAs on 13 January 2009 at 9:03am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6002 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 56 of 134 13 January 2009 at 9:25am | IP Logged | ||
You give the guy too much credit. I've never seen his name mentioned anywhere but this website and YouTube, and maybe a couple of blogs pointing to his reviews. Yet this same literature snobbery exists elsewhere, perhaps worse than here -- many people here are more interested in pop music and cinema than classical literature and opera. Your rant is somewhat misdirected, methinks. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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