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Learning exclusively with authentic video | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| victorhart Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie United States mandarinexperiment.o Joined 3710 days ago 66 posts - 155 votes  Speaks: English*, Portuguese*, Spanish, French Studies: Mandarin | Message 1 of 170 05 October 2014 at 4:55am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm conducting a language acquisition experiment in which I endeavor to learn Mandarin
exclusively by watching authentic video sources--especially Chinese films and children's shows. Due to personal time limitations, I put in an average of only 30 minutes a day. Besides the desire to learn Mandarin in a relaxing and fun way, my main goal is to test the hypothesis that watching movies and other authentic video sources can be an effective way to learn--even for a beginner. After my experiment is over, I hope to add speaking and reading to my skill set, using a different approach. I don't claim that this is the best method. On the contrary, in my opinion, the best method for most learners may be to immerse yourself simultaneously in reading and listening, while practicing speaking and writing with the help of a native teacher (or native friends, colleagues, etc.) Furthermore, given sufficient motivation and some type of contact with native speakers and authentic sources, a wide variety of methods can produce excellent results. The use of authentic video can be a fantastic component of any language acquisition strategy. I'm taking a rather extreme approach in order to isolate the variable. I hope to stimulate some discussion on using authentic videos as a learning strategy by sharing the gist of my experiment. Edited by victorhart on 05 October 2014 at 5:10am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| luhmann Senior Member Brazil Joined 5336 days ago 156 posts - 271 votes Speaks: Portuguese* Studies: Mandarin, French, English, Italian, Spanish, Persian, Arabic (classical) | Message 2 of 170 05 October 2014 at 5:38am | IP Logged | ||
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If you mean to learn by passive assimilation and little of no study, you are heading into a huge waste of your time.
7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5062 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 3 of 170 05 October 2014 at 7:45am | IP Logged | ||
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I think there's a general consensus that cuts across both the language education and independent language
learning communities that learning exclusively by passive video watching is a poor method, and generally ineffective. Watching movies and other native videos is a decent way to improve your comprehension once it is already at a decent level, but at the absolute beginner level, some kind of study is really useful. If you're learning a language closely related to one you know, some people can shortcut the absolute beginner stage and go straight to partially comprehending movies and shows. In this case, the method, though far from the best, will eventually work. It seems precarious, though, for a speaker of only European languages approaching Mandarin. It may be extremely difficult to begin to crack the code of what anything means and what the pieces even are--something that can be done much more effectively in a few weeks or months of study. I guess my question is what are your goals? If your main goal is to learn Mandarin, I would advise to abandon the experiment. If it works at all, it'll slow you down. Watching videos is a good way to improve comprehension, but it's an ineffective way of breaking into an opaque language. If your goal is to show that exclusively using video is a good method, I would also say don't bother, as we're pretty sure that it's not. Unless you feel really strongly about the matter, have had an epiphany and want to prove everyone else wrong... If your main goal is to investigate what it's like to try to break into a language exclusively by watching authentic videos, then I think it's a cool experiment. It would be interesting to hear about the difficulties involved and the degree to which it's feasible at all. There's merit in trying impractical things, simply to discover for yourself and show for others what it's like.
This basically hits the nail on the head. Authentic video is useful, exclusive use of authentic video is ineffective compared to balanced strategies, but maybe you can learn something from the experience. Edited by robarb on 05 October 2014 at 7:48am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6912 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 170 05 October 2014 at 10:44am | IP Logged | ||
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Related thread:
Hours of listening to fluency There were some posts about the TV method some years ago. Also for Mandarin. I was not impressed by anything else than the poster's patience to stick to the method for >1000 hours without knowing the language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5602 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes | Message 5 of 170 05 October 2014 at 10:49am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, someone did the experiment Tibetian by osmosis: He tried to learn Tibetian by listening to the radio. You can read his blog about his experiences. After 46 days of daily listening he understood his first sentence. After 134 days he quit frustrated.
I think there is no need for further experiments of this sort in order to prove how poor the method works... Edited by Cabaire on 05 October 2014 at 10:50am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Michel1020 Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 5020 days ago 365 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Dutch | Message 6 of 170 05 October 2014 at 11:51am | IP Logged | ||
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There are many ways to use "authentic videos" - just watching them, playing with speed and or looping on scenes, sentences, words, sounds...
Watch the video in one of your languages or have some subtitles. Listen to the soundtrack without the video. Documentaries about things you know or the news are a little more easy than big movies with Gong Li and co or other fictional things. Audio books and radio speeches will expose you to more chinese than most videos. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4536 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 7 of 170 05 October 2014 at 12:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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This guy did 2000 hours of Mandarin TV and apparently got to a point of understanding quite a bit (frustratingly he doesn't really quantify what that means but I think I read elsewhere that this was perhaps 25% comprehension).
To be generous let's assume he got to 50% understanding. 2000 hours / 30 mins/day = approx. 11 years TV watching to get to 50% understanding. http://natural-language-acquisition.blogspot.de/2011/01/two- thousand-hours.html On the other hand this guy apparently learnt Italian as a child by watching cartoons during the holidays: TV method, or how I learned Italian I am using TV a lot to learn German and it works, but you need to do a lot of input, much more than 30 minutes per day. And German is an easy language for an English speaker to learn. 30 minutes a day for Chinese with no other help is just going to be frustrating I think. The Tibetan link is I think misleading as the person was apparently passively listening, which is very different from actively watching a show and trying to work out what the words mean as you watch. Edited by patrickwilken on 05 October 2014 at 12:39pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5433 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 8 of 170 05 October 2014 at 1:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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Although this can be seen as an experiment of sorts, I consider this idea on par with the approach of young man
some years ago here who attempted to listen to Michel Thomas recordings continuously for 72 hours without sleeping. We've never heard from that individual since. I can't for the life of me understand why one wouldn't try to use at least a grammar book or a method and a dictionary when approaching a language. Why make things hard on oneself? 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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