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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6582 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 81 of 170 23 October 2014 at 8:21am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Well, Swedish and English are closely related languages, and Swedes also learn English in school, we use it to play computer games (nowadays many Swedish children have voice conversations with American peers when they're eight), our parents speak it and encourage us, etc. It's not a fair comparison. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4533 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 82 of 170 23 October 2014 at 10:03am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
The obvious difference is that Swedes have English as school, and so they start watching TV with at least B1 level English. The real question is whether you can extract out enough comprehensible input when you are A0 to start learning words and sentences. Some years ago before I started effectively learning, I watched all the episodes of LOST without subtitles in German. I'd been living on and off in Germany, but working in English and not getting anywhere with my language studies. This was a show I knew well in English, was simple to follow, and in a language that I had some sense of (sort of), and that was much easier to learn than Mandarin. Lots of people had told me that you can just pick up a language by listening, in a completely natural way, like a child, and I thought why not, let's give it a go. After 87 hours of German listening - which in Victor's experiment is approximately six months of video watching - I had managed to learn about four words (monster, island, run, Others); perhaps there were more but I certainly learnt less than ten. Edited by patrickwilken on 23 October 2014 at 5:25pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| syrichw Diglot Newbie Taiwan syricfreising.blogsp Joined 4267 days ago 6 posts - 10 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, English | Message 83 of 170 23 October 2014 at 10:27am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
People will not pay attention on the sounds if subtitles are available, so I guess the reason might be that there are no Swedish subtitles on Swedish TV. However I am not really sure about that. Besides, I do not believe that Hongkongese learned nothing after watching Japanese show. Most Taiwanese do speak and understand a few Japanese phrases and I believe that is the result of TV language acquisition. In my opinion, whether a person does want to acquire the language or not plays a dominant role. I know many Taiwanese do learn Japanese after watching a huge amount of anime.
There is no necessary to study the tones. You will be able to distinguish it yourself after a huge amount of natural sentence listening (whether L-R or TV method). Taking pinyin notes may not work because sound varies between dialects. For example, we speak in, z, c, s instead of ing, zh, ch, sh and I have heard that people from Zhejiang and Hong Kong consider n and l the same.
I have tried L-R several months ago and it bored me to death. I believe L-R works but I don't like novels so much. But since I love watching Korean dramas I am wondering now if L-R TV scripts would work. Edited by syrichw on 23 October 2014 at 10:42am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6582 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 84 of 170 23 October 2014 at 11:12am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
English is always subtitled in Swedish on Swedish TV. But as I described above, there are many other reasons why Swedes learn English so easily. The "dubbing" argument is often exaggerated. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 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 85 of 170 23 October 2014 at 11:52am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Subtitles are a skill. I can't really ignore them but I have no doubts that I could learn to, even without deliberately trying. (Watching dubbed shows is also a bit of a skill. I keep hearing how it's jarring when people's mouths aren't synced with the speech, but for me it's completely natural)
And yeah, I think all the exposure with no dubbing mostly provides the motivation. Also, learning a language at school doesn't automatically mean B1. I'm sure that nowadays all young Scandinavians reach this level, but my impression is that nobody waits for B1 before starting to use native materials, and this is exactly what makes them different from other learners. Edited by Serpent on 23 October 2014 at 11:56am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5308 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 86 of 170 23 October 2014 at 1:10pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I learned nothing. I asked my mother just now, and she said she learned "baka" (but as I remember, it was the tour guide in Japan who taught us that). She also watches a lot of Korean drama, and she said she learned "anni... something" but doesn't remember what it means. Let's say we learned 0 to 5 words.
That's my point there - victorhart isn't just enjoying the videos; he's making an effort during the process, likely trying to match L2 with L1. So, watching videos like that is similar to (my understanding of) L-R. In any case, whether video-watching is similar to L-R is probably not too important. If they're similar, then one doesn't need to test the usefulness of video-watching; one just needs to look at the usefulness of L-R. Whereas if they're different, then one needs to test the usefulness of each separately to really know. That's all.
Great, so how the Swedes acquired English is irrelevant, and I can confidently generalise this statement: "Most Hongkongers who have no intention to learn Japanese learn only 0 to 5 Japanese words after watching subtitled Japanese TV all their lives" into this: "A person who has no intention to learn a certain remote L2 will learn next to nothing despite watching subtitled TV for a long time". That's one end of the extreme, a starting point. Now, which part of that do we want to tweak and prove? The with or without intention bit? The remoteness bit? The TV bit? I'm just thinking aloud. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6582 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 87 of 170 23 October 2014 at 1:19pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Well, to be fair, the amount of Japanese movies and TV series Hongkongers watch is probably pretty small compared to the amount of English media young Swedes are exposed to. In Sweden, around 80-90% of TV programming is subtitled English, the rest being Swedish. Most HKers watching TVB aren't exposed to that amount. That said, I still think your argument is totally valid. I also know that there are a lot of people watching loads of anime with an intense desire to learn the language (but lacking the tools to do so effectively) and they usually end up with very minuscule progress. Desire isn't enough, you need to do things like rewatch the clips, listen carefully, write down words, etc., and the process becomes a lot less relaxed (and remains stupendously ineffective compared to using for example Assimil). 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4533 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 88 of 170 23 October 2014 at 2:35pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I wonder if the English is just easier for Swedes to pick up since both are Germanic languages, compared to say Japanese for speakers of Mandarin/Cantonese. Cool experiment idea: Force the entire population of Sweden to watch 80%-90% of TV shows in dubbed Japanese with Swedish subtitles for a decade and then see how well they can converse in Japanese. Or has the reverse experiment already been done elsewhere in Europe, where a population of non-Germanic/Romance speakers watches 80%-90% of their TV in English with subtitles? And if so, how well do they speak English? Edited by patrickwilken on 23 October 2014 at 2:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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