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Better not to watch with subtitles? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4698 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes  Speaks: Czech* | Message 49 of 64 10 February 2012 at 6:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
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But where did I say that if you know enough to pronounce words, you know enough to pronounce whole sentences? You need not only words and sounds, but also how these sounds interact.
Also, saying that you should master phonology before going to (pronouncing) sentences makes no sense. It's like saying you should master declension before going to grammar.
So you disagreed when I said it's a matter of interpretation and now you're saying it's a moot question? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4700 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 50 of 64 10 February 2012 at 9:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Could you guys (LaughingChimp and mrwarper) please just cut it out? It's kind of annoying to read through all of this fighting. Thanks.
Now back to the topic. I agree that listening to the TL without subtitles is more useful - especially in a language that's so different from yours. I noticed the same being true for me with Japanese. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5297 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 51 of 64 10 February 2012 at 11:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
As this is a recurring problem, that either the subtitles are too fast, because one can't read well enough (understandable when one deals with a very different writing system, of course) or that one feels that structure and syntax of the target language are too different from your native one, what makes a comparison of spoken L2 and written L1 hard to manage because of synchronization problems, what can be done? - no subs well, this means no/little comprehensible input; good for a general feeling for the language, good for internalizing the sound pattern of your L2, but not much more - Learn how to read faster Would be very desirable, but is not as easy. - Get a better knowledge of your L2, so that you don't have a problem with the structural difference (very desirable, but again not as easy) and finally: - Separate the process of reading from the process of listening. I don't understand why the latter idea seems to be unpopular. Why not really either print the subs and make them a transcript you can study before you watch and study after you have watched? Or if this is not possible, because the subs are hard coded in the movie: Why not just mute the audio and run the video slowly, backward - forward, backward ... without listening, just reading and checking the language, with the only goal to make the content comprehensible? Let me repeat one thing, because it is not said so often: If you can make a single complete 45min episode of your favourite drama comprehensible, and really get it, from a language point of view, that's a giant, really amazing achievement, and may very well be worth investing about 10 times the time the actual watching takes. Further progress becomes easier, and I really believe that if you manage to comprehend 10 episodes of your Korean/Japanese/Mandarin drama or whatever: Then you have essentially got it, the rest can really become fun (and of course, there is still much to be done, of course, don't get me wrong, this should go without saying). When I have to read that people have watched 100, 200 and even more episodes of this stuff without any obvious improvement I feel kind of sorry about all this waste of time. If you just want to watch for fun: Fine. From time to time I do watch Japanese horror movies, it's good entertaining exotism (for me). Of course I don't understand more then hello and goodbye. Who cares? But if your goal is some progress, then this is an extremely slow way, and makes your life harder than necessary. Later, when your comprehension level is better, you may learn much more by just watching and listening. Edited by lingoleng on 11 February 2012 at 12:03am 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4700 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 52 of 64 11 February 2012 at 3:08am | IP Logged | |||||
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How do you use subtitles in your L1 effectively, especially when it comes to Japanese? Longer sentences are split into 2-3 parts, with the thing being said first being displayed last ^^
Also, most subtitles are what I'd call "freestyle", not at all accurate. I agree with above poster on seperating the process of learning to read and listen. These skills are totally different things. If you get only some of the words being spoken, you have to work on your vocab and listen more than just one time to the same thing, to actually notice what's going on in the speech. Contrary to that AJATT belief on mass input, I believe that intensive listening is the key to success, and subtitles don't help with that. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5765 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 53 of 64 11 February 2012 at 8:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I believe that switching between different methods is the most effective way, even though, depending on the target language, the content, your target language level and your personal strengths and weaknesses watching target language media can be a relatively good way to use your time, but it can also be pretty ineffective.
The two main factors contributing to how successful one can use target language media are: -Rate of comprehensible new information and repetition of shaky knowledge -Sustained attention paid to target language content As long as your level in the target language is relatively low, you can't use contextual clues and redundancy to make new information comprehensible like you do in your native language. Media content that targets native speakers also doesn't mark contextual clues and redundancy to teach information new to you, but not the average native speaker like native speakers will do when talking to you.* This means that you have to find ways to render the target language content comprehensible, in a way that doesn't take away too much of your attention from the target language and/or your motivation. Which ones of those possible ways work best (alone or in combination) depends on the situation and is subject to change. Some ideas are: Watching without subtitles: -pause and jot down unknown words and grammar points to look them up Works with languages whose phonology makes it fairly easy for you to catch words from listening. In my case, I can usually do this with Spanish and Japanese -rewind scenes or rewatch entire movies/series until you have understood as much as you believe you currently can Works with media you watched before and liked a lot, works when your reading comprehension is much higher than your listening comprehension so you need time to catch on -watch after watching in another language/with subs, after reading the book, after reading a summary Works when you liked the work or have good repetition tolerance. -watch together with a more proficient speaker Can work when the person is willing to explain some points to you, and doesn't tell you to shut up. (It actually seems that simply repeating target language phrases and talking about what they (might) mean helps me to concentrate on the spoken language and retain those phrases, so watching together with another learner might work just as well.) Watching with target language subtitles: -simply watch with subtitles, delay subtitles a bit or let them appear sooner May work when there's a gap between your listening and reading comprehension Watching with subtitles in a native or near-native language: -simply that Works when you read fast enough and the content of the sentence spoken matches the content of the current subtitle. Doesn't work when you have to keep too many bits of information at once in your working memory. (Fanmade subtitles for Japanese and Korean series often follow the source language more closely than they follow natural English syntax.) You also need to have a certain tolerance for 'vague' information, as even in professional subtitles there often are oversimplifications, sometimes mistakes and because translations tend to prefer readability over literalness. (I can't fathom why. By the way, that's the reason why I don't use bilingual texts.) Also works only when you can focus on the spoken language. -delay subtitles or let them appear sooner Same conditions as before, but may help if you find it difficult to ignore the written language in favour of the spoken -watch with subtitles of a third language that's structurally more close to your target language: May work when your level in the third level is good enough and you find it easy to keep both languages separate. (I learn Korean better using Japanese subtitles than using English, even though my Japanese isn't that good yet.) Work through the dialogue before watching: -as mentioned by other posters Should work when you find it difficult to watch with subtitles, will make it more difficult to ignore the points that are too difficult for your current level which can drain away your motivation -rip audio and listen to it (entirely or in snippets) before watching Makes you concentrate on the actual sound, means you don't get as many contextual clues, but your attention isn't drawn away by visual imaginery either. Does work when your level of comprehension is fairly high already. Repetition Works as long as you can keep up your motivation to actually watch the stuff. So, favourite movies/series. *LaughingChimp, if you want a layperson's analysis of this phenomenon, open a new thread for it as now is the time to ask for it as I have some time to waste next week. The use of common ground information in real-time comprehension and production (mp3) by Daphna Heller, University of Toronto could be a starting point, their findings about how the participants introduced new information is very interesting. Edited by Bao on 11 February 2012 at 11:47pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5225 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 54 of 64 12 February 2012 at 10:51am | IP Logged | |||||
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Excellent post, Bao. Just what I was looking for as a starting point to analyse this in more depth. I have to digest a few things first, though.
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| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5765 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 55 of 64 13 February 2012 at 11:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I still hold with my previous statement that watching movies should mainly be a leisure actvity, though. Meaning, their main benefit is adding to one's motivation - even if they also help with language acquisition. And I made the experience that the more I want to do something 'well', the more time I spend on thinking through strategies to get more out of my time, the less I get done (after all, I've been wasting my time thinking about what I want to do instead of trying it out.)
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| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5225 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 56 of 64 15 February 2012 at 9:39am | IP Logged | |||||
I agree but there are always nuances. I had this group of students (who were teachers themselves) ask me if I though it was better to watch films in the original or dubbed. I told them it just depends on how comfortable you are with the original language and why you're watching a film: if you speak no Chinese or whatever and you're not learning it, why would you want to watch the film in the original? Unless the dubbing is truly terrible I doubt what is not lost in translation when watching it in the original makes up for what is in lack of comprehension. Even if you're somewhat familiar with the TL, you need to think a bit - if you're still struggling with the language and just want to have some fun, why torture yourself? Original version films only make sense if you're advanced enough or you really want to work on the TL.
Well, 'perfect' is always the enemy of 'good'. To try and cut the feeling of how much time I waste watching and reading fiction (a recent obsession of mine) I'm in the process of switching entirely to TLs. I am getting more steady practice than ever, but at a low level -- the net result is I'm reading and watching less stuff than ever, because I still struggle a lot. I was really hoping to bump my languages via my 'addiction' rather than getting off the hook, but I guess settling for second best isn't always that terrible. Edit: I forgot to mention that at the higher levels, practice and studying become less and less distinguishable, and that sometimes, watching some series they like (subtitles or not) is the only practice students will tolerate, so for me it makes a lot of sense to study this as a tool. Edited by mrwarper on 15 February 2012 at 5:21pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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