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How to study while watching live TV | ||
Tags: TV | Learning Strategy | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4852 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 1 of 14 12 February 2013 at 3:26am | IP Logged | ||
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Do you all have any ideas about how to study a language while watching live television in that language?
I do realize that it is more convenient to have a TV program or drama recorded, so you can rewind and refer back to the parts that you did not understand. But it is not always possible for me. Even if I record a program, I may not have the time later to go to the TV and watch the recording, rewind and go over every single weak point I have. One thing that I've been trying to do is to watch Japanese TV with the subtitles turned on. I'll sit down in front of the TV with my computer or tablet open in front of me, or at least a paper notebook. If I come across a random unknown word, I'll jot it down, and compile a list of words or collocations. Later on, when I have some computer time, I'll look up the words, filter out the ones that I think I could use myself, then put it into Anki with an example sentence found from a dictionary or from Tatoeba.org. (The problem with watching live TV is that it is hard to remember the sentence I found the word in.) This seems to be working well, but do you have any other ideas? Edited by kujichagulia on 12 February 2013 at 3:27am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6708 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 2 of 14 12 February 2013 at 11:06am | IP Logged | ||
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Some years ago I made VHS tapes with Low German and Catalan, and I have watched those tapes since then -but right now I don't have a 'media setup' that includes the possibility to record TV programs. Once in a while I see something that would be nice to have in my private collection, but I have already hundreds of VHS tapes - more than enough to last the rest of my life (or that of my old hardware).
Instead I could have collected digital downloads, and yes, I do have a number of files representating languages like Afrikaans, Scots and Low German, but in practice I use the internet to find new things instead of listening to the old ones. I may be a collector, but I don't hoard things indiscriminately. So basically most of my TV and internet TV viewing is a one time affair - I watch it and then the show is over. Which means that TV viewing is an extensive activity whose main purpose - apart from entertaining me and teaching me new dinosaur names - is to train my ability to follow speech in a target language without dropping out every other minute. And this in turn means that it would be contraproductive to take notes or -even worse - look words up in a dictionary. Word collecting can be done much more effectively from written sources. Edited by Iversen on 12 February 2013 at 11:09am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4694 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 3 of 14 12 February 2013 at 6:30pm | IP Logged | ||
Agreed. I use TV shows to train my ear for listening comprehension. I just try to follow the gist and pick as many details as I can. As Iverson says above, TV shows should be an extensive (rather than intensive) exercise. Recorded movies and other media like that are much better suited to intensive study than one-time TV shows. On a side note, I have been known to record some audio(via the voice recorder on my smartphone) portions of some of my favorite TV shows and load them onto my iPod for intensive listening at a later time. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4449 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 4 of 14 12 February 2013 at 11:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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Movies & TV series in Chinese Mandarin usually comes with subtitles (for people who may
not speak the same dialect). There are Chinese videos you can get with English subtitles. For other languages I'm not sure if they all come with subtitles on TV. Where I live all the TV shows do come with Close Caption for the hearing impaired. Depending on the TV converter you use to receive the signal the CC feature may not be available but... if you're using a digital recorder that burns a copy to a DVD, you can put the disk into a computer and practically all video software on computer has the CC feature so you can get subtitles while you are listening to the audio in another language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4852 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 5 of 14 13 February 2013 at 2:04am | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah, that's the problem.... My TV doesn't have a DVD recorder built in, and I don't have an external recorder.
Until I get one, I guess I'll just use TV for extensive study, like Iversen and BaronBill said. Thank you very much! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6602 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 6 of 14 13 February 2013 at 3:05am | IP Logged | ||
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I'd add that this depends on the learning style. I'm an aural learner so I love picking up words from the audio - it just has to be easy enough. I usually start with watching football, get passively fluent in a small subset of topics and then expand from there. It might also be a good idea to consciously identify your favourite topics and learn some of the needed vocabulary from e.g. GLOSS (which features audio lessons too).
when I'm in the mood for that, I also like sort of shadowing the commentator, repeating after him - even just for the intonation, for getting the tone right or to mock an incorrect pronunciation of a (usually Slavic) proper name. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4852 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 7 of 14 13 February 2013 at 3:22am | IP Logged | ||
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@serpent - I really need to get back into watching actual football games. That is such a motivator for me.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Avid Learner Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4667 days ago 100 posts - 156 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: German | Message 8 of 14 15 February 2013 at 3:55am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm not trying to learn as many words as I can while watching TV, but when I feel like it, I watch with my tablet close to me. I use the Google Translate application to enter a few chosen words I might be curious about as I'm hearing them. It gives me an instant translation, which can make following the program more interesting, and then through the "history" feature, I can keep the words I am interested in, check the gender, make sure the translation is accurate and enter them into Anki later.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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