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"I learned English from watching..." | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6475 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes  Studies: German | Message 25 of 97 06 September 2008 at 11:17am | IP Logged | ||
The whole darn concept of television programming is formulaic, repetitive and predictable. This makes it an excellent language learning tool and a terrible way to spend your time if you're watching it in your mother tongue. It's called the idiot tube. Your shows will have numerous reruns, the same commercials will run every 20 minutes or so - some hairy maniac surrounded by mattresses shouting materassi at you (yeah that's a hard one). The next scene - the same guy only he's selling rugs. You will learn dozens of words just by looking at different titles: The Lord of the Rings - The return of the king, The two towers etc. BTW, subtitled shows for some reason don't work very well - at least that's my impression. My guess is that the language sort of becomes more of a mood setting device where you may make out individual words but your attention is mostly focused on the text. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6731 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 26 of 97 06 September 2008 at 6:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Subtitles are generally much shorter than the original spoken version, and they may even have been reformulated to make them even shorter. So even though they give a rough idea about the content they are of dubious value for the average language student. The splendid thing about them is that the original sound is retained.
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| 545allen Bilingual Triglot Newbie United States Joined 5960 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, Cantonese*, English | Message 27 of 97 10 September 2008 at 9:18am | IP Logged | ||
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I learned my English by watch TV for my listening, speaking. However, if I watch movies at home, I like to have sub-title ( English), because for me, I want to know what they really said, some English language in the movies are not in the book!
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| vusalgustav Tetraglot Newbie Azerbaijan Joined 6304 days ago 23 posts - 56 votes Speaks: Azerbaijani*, English, Russian, Turkish Studies: German, Spanish | Message 28 of 97 22 February 2010 at 8:46am | IP Logged | ||
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OK. Allow me to narrate my experience about the language learning through TV watching.
In the beginning of the 1990th the USSR collapsed, Azerbaijan gained independence and iron curtain was lifted. During the reign of the Soviet Union only couple of state TV channels were available; some in Azeri language, bur majority in Russian language. As an independent Azerbaijan failed to produce its own quality TV channels, the Russian channels still were in demand. However, another country's TV channels started to challenge the position of the Russian TVs and consequently Russian language. Those were Turkish TV channels. Actually, Panturkism ideas were one of the pillars of the independence. So it was not surprising that Turkish channels were so successful. From here I will relate the learning Turkish and Russian through the TV separately. 1) Turkish language and Azeri language both are from Oguz branch of the Turkic language and therefore have many things common. First my encounter with Turkish language was on TV in 1994 (I was 11 years old). At first it seemed to me funny language, as I could understand some words similar to my own language but I could not comprehend the conversations. It took me 6 month more or less to start to understand the sentences and the differences in our languages. After 3 years I could understand nearly everything. I had not taken any Turkish language courses, I had not read any Turkish book or conversed with any Turkish speaker. I just watched TV. I watched it at least 1-2 hours per day. After 2000 I had couple of opportunities to visit Turkey and first time to try my Turkish. Soon I realized that although I don't have any problem understanding, I had huge problems expressing myself. Usually, after saying the sentences I was realizing that I actually used Azeri words in some occasions rather than Turkish. As Turks themselves were exposed to the certain extend to the Azeri TVs as well, it was not big problem. In worst case scenario, they could ask me what that word meant. After couple of visits to Turkey, the problem with the expression had gone away, although still I could use some Azeri words unconsciously. I haven't had any formal test regarding the Turkish language, but probably my Turkish knowledge is C1 in listening and reading, B2 in speaking and writing. 2)As I was born in the USSR, probably I have been exposed to the Russian language since my birth. However, my first conscious encounter with the Russian language was at the second year of the primary school. We had Russian class once a week. These classes lasted 10 years, without teaching any useful stuff, apart from the basic grammatic structures. I started to watch the Russian language TV in 1993 and primarily because of the cartoons. First I could understand only little, but steady increase in the comprehension was obvious. It took me 4 years to me to understand that, I could nearly comprehend everything on TV. After that I started to read classic Russian literature; Dostoyevski, Pushkin, Lermantov, Chekov,Tolstoy, etc. Those were joyful times. During the reading or watching I had never used dictionary. Actually still I don't have any Russian-Azeri dictionary. On contrary, I started to learn English language with Russian books, including English-Russian dictionary which I used to learn English words. By 2000 I had confidence in my Russian. But I must confess it was a little bit funny knowledge. I had never written in that language and although we did have huge community of the Russian speakers I had practiced it rarely. And in the reading, although I could understand nearly everything, there were the words, which exact translation I did not care to know (This is true for my own native language as well). For instance, I knew that word "мансард" means part of the house, but I did not know which part exactly. The reality of my Russian language came to me, when I traveled to UK to study English language in 2006. I met there a lot off Russian speakers, and first time I was involved in active conversation with natives. I must say, sometimes it was embarrassing. As with the Turkish, I could understand everything but could not express myself properly, making a lot of gender related mistakes, having a slightly archaic language. Fortunately, I was involved in a relationship with a Russian girl and after one month active contact with her, my Russian looked like proper, modern Russian. Nowadays, I would estimate my Russian as C1 in listening, reading, B2-C1 speaking, B1 writing. As can be seen, the TV helps only with the passive knowledge, which requires activation. & nbsp; & nbsp; Edited by vusalgustav on 22 February 2010 at 9:13am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6039 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 29 of 97 22 February 2010 at 2:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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Learned English from Star Wars, did I, Mmmmm.
Effective it was. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Pyx Diglot Senior Member China Joined 5763 days ago 670 posts - 892 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 30 of 97 22 February 2010 at 2:21pm | IP Logged | ||
Are you guys planning to make that joke a couple more times? How about you get it all out of your system now, and then we can get back to actual experiences? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5458 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 31 of 97 22 February 2010 at 3:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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After reading the entire thread, I get the general impression that most people would agree that looking at a lot
of television in the target language is more useful for persons having some foundation in the language or some linguistic proximity. I totally agree. Nothing can be said against massive exposure to the target language. To me, however, the real issue is how to efficiently use one's time. Generally speaking, consuming lots of television or radio is good for the sounds and intonation patterns of the language. So even if one doesn't understand much, just hearing the sound patterns is useful. Here I think it's important to make the distinction between kinds of programming, e.g. newsbroadcasts, documentaries, dramatic, comedic shows. But to really make good use of all this material I think one has to work in a structured systematic way. I'm a strong believer in the repetitive use of excerpts with closed-captioning where that is available. Note that this is not the same as subtitles of films. Closed-captioning in North America is the actual transcription (admittedly not always very accurate) of the spoken words. I find this is a wonderful way to see how the stream of sound is actually broken up into words that we can actually study. In my opinion this can lead to rapid improvement in oral comprehension and eventually production, This is particularly important with dialogs because one can see and hear how the language goes to and fro between speakers. So when users say they learned a language from watching a television program, I think they are right in a sense, but, as others have pointed out here, it's usually because they have used the program as a resource combined with other impicit or explicit techniques. Edited by s_allard on 22 February 2010 at 6:04pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6300 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 32 of 97 22 February 2010 at 4:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Nobody ever learned a language just by watching TV, though it certainly helps passive comprehension, and is useful if combined with active study.
During his US Marine days, Lee Harvey Oswald took and failed a Russian language test in February 1959. That summer, a fellow Marine who knew of his interest in Russian invited him to have dinner with the other Marine's aunt, who was studying Russian for a US State Department exam. They spoke in Russian, and Oswald's Russian was apparently quite good, especially considering that he had done badly in a formal exam only months before. He explained his relatively good Russian as resulting from listening to Radio Moscow. There is however speculation that Oswald received intensive Russian-language training at some point that year, perhaps from an intelligence agency. That, rather than radio listening, might explain the surprising L2 skill. How well Oswald knew Russian before defecting to the USSR is one of the minor mysteries of his life, but an interesting one for linguists to ponder. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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