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Using foreign films | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Spinchäeb Ape Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4475 days ago 146 posts - 180 votes  Speaks: English*, German | Message 1 of 11 21 January 2013 at 10:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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I had hoped to add a French language channel to my DirectTV, but they don't offer any in my area (boo, hiss). Instead, I've been viewing every French language film I can get my hands on, including films from France and Canada. Of course, with the film on DVD, you can turn the subtitles on and off. I'm at the point where I can understand bits and pieces without subtitles. However, a big breakthrough was when I realized how much better it is if you can get a film with both French and English subtitles (or whatever language you're learning). I can try to understand a section with no subtitles and see how well I do. Then I go back and watch with the French subtitles, and after that with English. It's been very effective. I just did this last night with the French-Canadian film, Incendies. The vocab used in films tends to be that which is used in real life. I've been focusing on practical vocab with Anki and was pleased that this film reinforced a lot of it. Many of the very same words and expressions I had just been studying in Anki showed up in the film. When you're watching a film, you're getting a ton of context and there tend to be emotional scenes. It's not a sterile flash card. The film served as a major reinforcer. Then if any expressions came up that I had not been studying, but thought, "That's a great one to know how to say," I would pause the DVD and write down the subtitles to it. I would then add it to Anki later, and not as just the word; it would include the context of the sentence used in the film.
My Rocket French program includes conversations. I've taken to memorizing them to instill the vocab in context and the grammatical patterns. I used to do acting, so learning lines is no big deal. With the French subtitles to a French movie, I essentially have a transcript. I could therefore memorize those lines also. I might try that next. I just wanted to report on this, as it's helping me. When you run out of Pimsleur or Rocket or whatever lessons, there's always movies. The only down side is you can't always get subtitles in both your native language and your study language. However, I'm making it a priority to get films with both English and French subtitles whenever possible. And it is possible to download subtitles created by third parties and put them in. Sometimes they're good quality; other times they're poor translations or out of sync. If you're not familiar with this and want to know how, PM me. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5537 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 11 21 January 2013 at 11:07pm | IP Logged | ||
Good idea! Some resources which might help: French movies and series with accurate subtitles on the HTLAL wiki My subs2srs experiment and creating Anki cards in bulk (heavy card deletion is necessary) I did about 35 minutes of Amélie dialog with subs2srs and I rather liked it, and ended up keeping about 20% of the cards. The only problem is that my phone's speakers are too weak and it's hard to do audio cards without using headphones. Oh, and getting movies into subs2srs is crazy difficult. And of course, any of these techniques based on native media are a lot more successful and fun if you can find French movies that you want to watch 20 times. :-) 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4363 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 3 of 11 22 January 2013 at 7:30am | IP Logged | ||
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Yes, this is the most fun way to learn, especially if you love the movies anyway. There are also documentaries if you are interested in particular subjects, where you learn tons of vocabulary and jargon on specific things.
The poorly translated subtitles I am familiar with, and it is a small guilty pleasure spotting the silly mistakes! For me, English is a foreign language, and last night I watched "How to steal a million", which was delightful. Peter o'Toole is wonderful to listen to in terms of pronunciation. Now that I think about it, films are great if you want to practice your listening skills for yet another reason: some of them have the language spoken in accents, so you have great practice there as well. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Spinchäeb Ape Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4475 days ago 146 posts - 180 votes Speaks: English*, German | Message 4 of 11 22 January 2013 at 8:56am | IP Logged | ||
Hey, emk, thanks for the link. I didn't realize Amélie was one of the movies I've used. I just didn't remember the title. It's hilarious. However, I didn't have the French subtitles. I'm going to download those from that site and give it another go.
That's a great idea going with documentaries. They would certainly have a way different set of vocab than plot-based movies. To make sure I get a good translation, I've just been shotgunning. I download every set of English subtitles I can find (and French and German if I can find them) and I just put them all into the DVD. Then when I'm watching I can just go through the various subtitles and figure which ones are good and which ones suck. On my Incendies DVD, I have no less than 14 sets of subtitles, two of them French (and accurate transcriptions) the rest English (many which stink). Btw, I recommend that film. It's outstanding. It has a conclusion that blew me away. You're right about hearing the different accents. I've deliberately used films from France, Canada, and Switzerland because all these countries speak the language a little differently from one another. Maybe I'll even see if I can find a film from Algeria. Edit: One more thing -- that opensubtitles.org website annoys the @#$% out of me. It tries to dupe you into installing their software, which I don't trust or want. I just want to download a simple srt subtitle file. Is there some trick on that site to avoiding their BS? Edited by Spinchäeb Ape on 22 January 2013 at 9:00am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4363 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 5 of 11 22 January 2013 at 10:54am | IP Logged | ||
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How about Haitian creole accent?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m415YfsUBQs 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Spinchäeb Ape Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4475 days ago 146 posts - 180 votes Speaks: English*, German | Message 6 of 11 25 January 2013 at 3:10am | IP Logged | ||
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Frustrated. I went to the link recommended by emk and tried to download the French subs for Amélie. However, the link brought me to opensubtitles.org, a site on my @#$% list. Whenever I try to download subtitles from them, they try to get me to install their software. I don't want that. I seem to remember one time being able to get their subtitles without being bugged to install their software. Is there some trick to accomplishing this?
I did find the French subs at my favorite subtitle site (podnapisi.net), only to find that they're out of sync with my copy of Amélie. Very frustrating, as it does appear they're accurate, just not in sync. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ojorolla Diglot Groupie France Joined 4970 days ago 90 posts - 130 votes Speaks: French*, English | Message 7 of 11 25 January 2013 at 11:29am | IP Logged | ||
I never had that problem at the site you mentioned(opensubtitles.org.) When you enter a search query (amelie for instance), you see below the search box the columns 'Movie name', (country flag), '#CD', 'Uploaded', 'Downloaded', and so on, from left to right. In the column 'Downloaded', you see how many times the subs has been downloaded(1501x, for example) and the format of the subs. Click on the number(1501x) and you'll be directed to the download page which also tells you to download their player. At the top of the page you see 'Download of subtitles should start automatically. You can start download manually clicking here' so if the download doesn't start you can click on it. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5537 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 11 25 January 2013 at 12:07pm | IP Logged | ||
Yeah, sorry about not mentioning that. The commonly-available Amélie subtitles start about 14 seconds out of sync with US copies of the movie. What's worse, there's some kind of framerate problem (29.97 vs. 30?), which causes the sync to drift an extra 16 seconds or so over the course of the movie. One of these days, I'll write a script to fix it and make a new srt file available. If you use Anki, I've actually made two subs2srs decks with manually corrected sync, named Amelie-beginning.apkg and Amelie-rest.apkg. You can find them here, and they work in Anki 2. There are, however, a few places between minute 15 and minute 20 where the sync drifts a little. This is an interesting way to "watch" a movie, especially if you delete most of the cards once you've seen them. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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