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Better not to watch with subtitles? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Balliballi Groupie Korea, SouthRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4691 days ago 70 posts - 115 votes  Studies: Korean | Message 1 of 64 05 February 2012 at 2:25am | IP Logged | ||
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In the last six months I've been spending a lot of time watching subtitled Korean dramas. And I also watch KBS World television occasionally when I am overseas (many of the programs have subtitles). (In Korea, I just watch the normal TV stations, which do not have subtitles.)
From the amount of watching of subtitled dramas I have done, I would have thought my Korean would have improved a lot more than it has (from the exposure to the Korean language.) It could just be because Korean is so difficult, but has anyone else had the same experience as me of not seeing much improvement in their language skills despite watching many hours of subtitled programs? Admittedly, I don't watch them to study but for fun. I am starting to think that watching subtitled material is bad for my language-learning. I think what happens is I focus almost exclusively on reading the subtitles and I pay very little attention to what I hear. So watching subtitled movies perhaps becomes mostly an exercise in reading English. And the grammatical mapping is not one-to-one in the case of Korean and English. When the verb appears in the middle of an English sentence in a subtitle, the verb appears at the end of the spoken Korean sentence 99% of the time. So it's less useful to learn words this way than it is for, say, French, where the grammar is very similar to English (including word order in a sentence), and you can listen for and find the words you are looking for easily. I think it might be more useful to try watching dramas without subtitles when it comes to Korean. Of course, if I am actively watching dramas to study Korean from them, the subtitles are helpful. By 'actively watching to study', I mean purposefully listening to the language and pausing the drama to write new words down and looking up translations and so on. But if I passively watch a drama (watch for fun), I don't think I pick up a lot of language that way. ("Drama" is a Konglish word by the way. A "soap" - or "miniseries" for historical dramas - would be the closest word to describe the sort of TV series I am talking about. But I am used to using the word "drama" now so ...) Perhaps a combination of active studying of a subtitled drama and passive watching of that drama will be helpful. The active studying part will help me gain a list of new words in the target language with their English definitions. When I watch passively, I might hear the words I've recently learned over and over again, with the subtitles below to remind me of their meaning, reinforcing the learning of these words. Maybe spending hours watching these dramas is helping me to learn the language but in a subtle way so that I am not even aware of how it's helping me. On the other hand, the time I spend watching these dramas might be better spent doing some other kind of language study. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| birthdaysuit Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4816 days ago 48 posts - 101 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Swedish | Message 2 of 64 05 February 2012 at 3:05am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't see the benefit of watching TL material with your native language subtitles.
However, watching with TL subtitles is a different matter. 4 persons have 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 3 of 64 05 February 2012 at 4:37am | IP Logged | ||
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As it's your leisure activity - do what you enjoy. It would probably help to re-watch programs you really enjoyed, and to switch between watching with and without subtitles and when you have them, also use Korean subs at times.
I actually benefit from watching TV shows in my other languages, both with and without subtitles, but it doesn't seem to work in the same way for me with Korean, so I decided to simply accept watching TV/movies to be a leisure activity until I'm at a solid intermediate stage. 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 4 of 64 05 February 2012 at 5:21am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm an enemy of learning the language through total immersion because it sucks in terms of efficiency, especially at the lower levels. A language you understand is immensely helpful in that it really speeds clearing things up, but as any kind of crutch, you want to walk, not limp forever clinging to it, and thus you want to get rid of it as soon as possible. The big question is, when should you drop your native tongue? The answer is, there's no definite point, but a good idea is to do it gradually and see for yourself how ready you are for the real thing at every stage.
This is a universal principle, and applies all the same to subtitles. A little specifics: Note that I mean TARGET LANGUAGE subtitles. [Near-]Native language subtitles for target language shows doesn't sound like the best idea, especially with a different word order, little to no cognates, or if you use subtitles for something other than checking your comprehension, or if you simply read too slowly. You should try Korean subtitles to see if you can follow the shows, or drop watching videos altogether until you can read Korean at a level reasonably close to your understanding of the spoken language. That way you don't get distracted nor waste your time watching something you don't really understand (which maybe fun, yeah, but not really useful/productive). Once you pump your Korean to a level where you can follow what you watch with Korean subtitles on, you need to keep doing it until you reach a point where you don't need to look up too many things. That's the other critical point, and it's only loads of practice (and clever vocabulary expanding strategies that are discussed everywhere else in the forum, because they are not essentially linked to subtitles) that will get you there. After that you want to get to the point where you can watch your stuff with subtitles off, for the very simple reason that real life has no subtitles, and that's your ultimate goal in language learning. Get a good media player (Media Player Classic is good for Windows, or VideoLAN for almost any platform) for your computer and download subtitles separately from your dramas so you can manipulate them. You can try making them run a bit fast or slow, delete every other or a lot of other useful things we can elaborate on when the right time comes :) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5380 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 5 of 64 05 February 2012 at 6:03am | IP Logged | ||
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If you read English subtitles while you listen, your ability to hear what's being said inevitably decreases. Not
to mention that what you read may not directly match what you hear, which in turn may only appear in the next line of text. I wouldn't go as far as to say that watching subtitled shows is useless as it is possible to listen very attentively, but over time, it's more or less useless, indeed. I think there is a lot to gain from allowing your brain to learn to parse spoken language in real time, without interference. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5470 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 6 of 64 05 February 2012 at 7:54am | IP Logged | ||
I have reached the same conclusion about subtitles, even those in the target language. They draw my attention like a magnet and I just can't convince my brain to work hard at understanding the audio. I do however think that you need to be able to understand about 50%, more or less before you turn them off or else you will be totally lost and not enjoy the show at all. With a comprehension level of 60 to 70% I watched a TV series multiple times, slowly chipping away at the remaining missed dialog. I found it more helpful to use a series for this rather than movies because I slowly gained familiarity with the voice and choice of words used by the characters whereas with movies I would be starting over every 90 min. It was like a large jigsaw puzzle, eventually a character would say something more clearly or slowly than usual and the meaning would hit me and seem so obvious. I would realize that it was the same thing I heard from other characters in previous episodes and the next pass though the series I understood them all as well and the story made a bit more sense. I estimate I have increased my comprehension level to about 90% or more this way. A final observation on this is how important my level of interest was. Even within the same series, some sub-plots interested me more than others and my brain seemed to work much harder to understand every nuance of those that did than those that did not. The scene would change to two characters that I found boring and wham, my comprehension drops to about 50% again like "not these two again, who cares about them" and I couldn't convince my brain to work hard at understanding the details. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6908 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 64 05 February 2012 at 11:32am | IP Logged | ||
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Subtitles in the target language are only useful if they match the dialogue 100%. I see no harm in using native language subtitles if they help me understanding the movie. I watch movies for enjoyment, not for learning languages.
Arekkusu wrote: "If you read English subtitles while you listen, your ability to hear what's being said inevitably decreases." microsnout wrote: "They draw my attention like a magnet and I just can't convince my brain to work hard at understanding the audio." It seems as if our reading experiences differ. I definitely don't read subtitles. I just watch the line for a split-second and then I can keep listening. How slowly do people here read? Where's the simultaneous capacity? 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6549 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 8 of 64 05 February 2012 at 12:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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Over the years I've changes how I watch dramas. I've discovered that being interested is much more important to me than I used to think it was. This is what I do
now: 1) in the early stages, I watch without subtitles or with L2 subtitles, then with L1 subtitles 2) in the middle stages, I watch without subtitles, then with L2 subtitles There are other possible combinations, but I find I need to do the hard step first, then the easier one is my reward. Also, watching a show more than 2 times doesn't interest me, so I won't retain much if I do that. Even 2 times is stretching it; if I find I understand it pretty well the first step, I might skip the second step. Now to the op's question - why haven't you improved as much as expected? Because you are essentially listening to a bunch of material that's way over your head, and not devoting all your attention to the audio it because you are reading the subtitles. Either one of those things would severely diminish your returns by themselves, but together it's a wonder you've seen any improvement. Try watching without subtitles first, then with later. You should see a little improvement, but since your level is pretty low, it won't be earth shattering. That's why you are doing your other studies - up your level so your drama watching will be of greater benefit. Right? 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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