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Learning a language by watching TV?

 Language Learning Forum : Music, Movies, TV & Radio Post Reply
134 messages over 17 pages: << Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 12 ... 16 17 Next >>
cordelia0507
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 Message 89 of 134
16 January 2009 at 3:15pm | IP Logged 
Cainntear - Thanks, yeah, in my case, if I lived in Edinburgh I'd prefer to speak English with a neutral Scottish accent! (Edinburgh..?)

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ANK47
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 Message 90 of 134
17 January 2009 at 3:31pm | IP Logged 
Well this thread has sure gotten off topic. I was hoping to read more about experiences with watching TV and learning a language but somehow the conversation got diverted to accents. =\

I personally am watching the Simpsons in Egyptian Arabic right now and after watching about 16 episodes (some of them twice) I do feel like I'm understanding more than before I had watched any. Now I do have a few years of hardcore MSA Arabic study under my belt, but I haven't studied Egyptian and it's much different.
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dolly
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 Message 91 of 134
17 January 2009 at 9:20pm | IP Logged 
I have four seasons of LOST on DVDs, I listen to the French dub and read the French subtitles, but of course they don't match. It's an enjoyable supplement to learning. There is some vocabulary that I first learned this way, but I'm not seriously monitoring "progress" or anything, just enjoying the show.
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ChristopherB
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 Message 92 of 134
17 January 2009 at 10:31pm | IP Logged 
Watching TV can be a great way to learn, provided you have some base in the language, or the language is close enough to one you know already, say Dutch from German (though I don't know how effective the latter scenario would be). I bought the French edition of Scrubs off Amazon.fr, and it comes with 5 language tracks for French, English, German, Spanish and Italian. All excellent, extremely well done dubs that make watching the show in those languages almost as much fun as the original English. To anyone who likes this show, and is learning one of those languages, you might want to consider checking it out. There are even samples on YouTube.
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nhk9
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 Message 93 of 134
18 January 2009 at 2:21am | IP Logged 
They don't call it the "idiot box" for nothing. It's simply a tremendously inefficient method of learning.
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slucido
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 Message 94 of 134
18 January 2009 at 4:16am | IP Logged 
If you mix watching TV and DVD series with reading pulp fiction, you have the best input method, because they have the real language. You will only need interaction with native speakers. Maybe drilling the basics ad nauseam is a good supplement.

The worst method is classical literature or cultural TV broadcasts.


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Cainntear
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 Message 95 of 134
18 January 2009 at 11:20am | IP Logged 
ANK47 wrote:
Well this thread has sure gotten off topic. I was hoping to read more about experiences with watching TV and learning a language but somehow the conversation got diverted to accents. =\

Well OK then.

There I was, in the Basque Country, watching the news in Spanish. Man, those Spanish newsreaders talk fast.

Anyway, suddenly I heard an unfamiliar two-word term. I stopped, translated it and realised that it was really just a literal translation of its English equivalent. But it was only when I had to translate that that I realised that I hadn't been translating anything else in the news broadcast -- I just understood it.

I used to think people were exaggerating when they said the news was good for the learner, but I kind of agree now. With a film, you can miss something important and you completely lose track of what the film's about and never be able to reconnect; but with the news, everything's short, so once you lose track of one thing, you know something new is coming along in a minute and you'll be able to follow it for a bit.
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slucido
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 Message 96 of 134
18 January 2009 at 12:27pm | IP Logged 
Cainntear wrote:

There I was, in the Basque Country, watching the news in Spanish. Man, those Spanish newsreaders talk fast.


Those Spanish newsreaders don't talk neither fast or slowly. TV news are the easiest REAL language tool we have as language learners.

Newsreaders (Spanish, English or whatever) speak plain language, without slang, at normal speech and their voices are very clear and articulate.

The most difficult audio skill is understanding native speakers talking between themselves. In you don't live in the country, the only training I know are telly sitcoms, gossip shows, chat shows and thinks like that.

One method is just watching those shows.

Other method is recording and watching again and again those shows and sitcoms.

If you have software, it's useful to extract their audios into mp3 players and listening them repetitively.

It's very useful if we find the scripts and subtitles and print them out. Then we can study them and look at words, slang or expressions we don't understand. Google and Internet are very useful in this regard and you can introduce interesting words and sentences in your SRS software.

With this approach we get global stimulation audio, visual and kinesthetic.

The underlying method is "repeat until you get sick". This is necessary if we want to fix language at a reflex level. I am sorry, but this is the true. No shortcuts here.

Side effect: we learn a lot of slang, ugly words and so on.




Edited by slucido on 18 January 2009 at 12:28pm



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