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Hopeless without subtitles

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drkelso
Diglot
Newbie
United States
Joined 3502 days ago

4 posts - 6 votes
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Spanish, Portuguese

 
 Message 1 of 22
18 May 2015 at 12:17am | IP Logged 
Hello, all! I have been a lurker for a long time but have never posted.

I took many years of French in school and always was at the top of the class, but those classes heavily involved grammar, reading, and writing, while doing little to address listening and speaking skills.

I haven't taken a French class for a few years but I'm still trying very hard to improve and eventually become fluent. Right now, I'm very good at reading. I can pick up essentially any French book or news article and understand what it's saying without much effort. I've been reading the entire Harry Potter series in French (admittedly, not a super challenging read, but it keeps me engaged and interested) and I can feel how much faster and better I am getting with each book in the series! It's so satisfying and exciting.

However... other than reading, I feel basically hopeless. I have tried so many methods to improve my listening skills, in particular. I've tried to watch countless TV shows, listened to audiobooks, watched movies, etc. Yet as I'm watching/listening, the dialogue usually sounds like gibberish with a few words I recognize mixed in, going 100 miles per hour. I can only recognize the most basic phrases, or the ones that are said very slowly. But the weird thing is, the second I turn French subtitles on, I'm suddenly like "oh, OF COURSE that's what they are saying. How did I not realize that before?" Then if I turn off subtitles and try listening to more, I'm completely lost again. It's so incredibly frustrating because I know I should be able to understand what they are saying (it's not a vocabulary or general French comprehension issue), but I just can't.

Anyway, I'm about to be on summer break from college, which means about 4 months with no schoolwork to worry about. My goal is do everything I can in this time to improve my listening comprehension, and once I get back to school I can start taking some advanced French courses (maybe getting a French minor), or even start seriously approaching a new language (I've learned the basics of a few, but certainly haven't studied intensively) without feeling the guilt of "abandoning" French half-baked. So I would like to know: has anyone been in a similar situation to me, and do you have any tricks on how you got over it? Did you have any exercises or free online resources that helped you out? Would it be beneficial to keep watching TV/Movies even if I'm not understanding 80% of what's being said? Or should I use subtitles even though those make me not rely on my ear? Should I do something else entirely?

Thanks so much for the help!
1 person has voted this message useful



tastyonions
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4424 days ago

1044 posts - 1823 votes 
Speaks: English*, French, Spanish
Studies: Italian

 
 Message 2 of 22
18 May 2015 at 12:35am | IP Logged 
If you have not already, try listening to radio first. Not necessarily news radio, which can be delivered awfully fast and switch topics every minute or two, but things such as debate shows that center on a single topic, or shows where a host interviews one or two guests. These tend to have pretty clear, measured delivery and people who are practiced public speakers rather than actors who are simulating "real life"-style dialogue. France Inter and France Culture have lots of options, many of them downloadable as mp3.

Those kinds of radio shows were an important ingredient in my graduating from understanding Assimil dialogues to getting more difficult stuff like movies and comedy.

This advice is assuming that you have little trouble with most "learner" audio.

Edited by tastyonions on 18 May 2015 at 12:38am

1 person has voted this message useful





Iversen
Super Polyglot
Moderator
Denmark
berejst.dk
Joined 6462 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
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 Message 3 of 22
18 May 2015 at 1:11am | IP Logged 
TV shows is just another source of speech, and the problem any beginner has with listening also occurs here. And contrary to conversations you can get repetitions.

I like subtitles for a very aberrant reason, namely that I can turn down the sound and listen to something else instead of the sound of the TV programs, which often is marred by ugly background music and interrupted without warning by nerve ratching commercials. But I'm somewhat in doubt about the usefulness of subtitles if you also want to listen - which supposedly is the normal situation.

They have a tendency to grab your attention rather than just help you to understand the speech, and that is the case both with subtitles in the target language and in some kind of base language. I have in period got weird languages in the subtitles for certain programs from my cable provider, and it is quite amusing to listen to something in for instance English and then get subtitles in Dutch. But unfortunately that is not the case with any of my TV channels right now.

My general opinion about listening to languages which you don't yet understand is that you should suspend your interest in the general meaning and instead listen for those specific words and phrases which you do understand. With time they will organize themselves into a pattern and then you can turn your attention towards the content. In this situation subtitles can obviously be useful, and those in the target language are more relevant than those in a base language. However people are mostly more interested in the general meaning than in the building blocks, and then it is just too easy to get involved in following some plot with the help of subtitles in your own languages instead of actually listening to the things which are said. And the fact that most subtitles represent a shorten version of the original doesn't help you to use them as a guide.

So my advice would be to spend more time listening for thing you do understand and leave the general meaning aside - or maybe rather: first get your curiosity about the content or plot satisfied with the help of the subtitles and THEN listen again to the actual babble.




Edited by Iversen on 18 May 2015 at 1:15am

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iguanamon
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Virgin Islands
Speaks: Ladino
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2237 posts - 6731 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French)

 
 Message 4 of 22
18 May 2015 at 2:13am | IP Logged 
Welcome to the forum, drkelso! French learners can tell you more about French listening specifics than I can. I am an experienced language learner so I can tell you about listening in general, however; your mileage may vary. Listening can be trained but it's not easy and won't happen rapidly. Since your understanding of French is high, I would recommend listening with a transcript. I, myself used the news quite effectively to train listening to Portuguese a few years ago but I started with a transcript. The NHK news from Japan was what I listened to for the first few months, every day. At first I listened along with the transcript. After a couple of weeks, I started listening first then reading the transcript while I listened. Next, I would listen again without the transcript. The next week I switched it up and read the transcript first then listened. Afterwards, I listened again and took notes and checked it against the transcript. They do have a French Service also with a transcript: NHK World Service Français.

There are many ways you can use this by switching around what you do with the transcript. The key is to make sure that you listen without the transcript in addition to with it and eventually reduce that to completely without. The advantage of NHK is that the news presenters don't rotate much. The Portuguese ones were native Brazilian speakers. With a little searching by going to the English side of NHK through the language drop down list, you can also find the same stories in English.

I eventually graduated from NHK to RFI Brasil, which is a much more engaging and interesting news program. I listen to it five days a week and there is no transcript. The NHK news isn't very exciting. Learning to listen, though was worth it.

When I decided to get a tutor in Brazil via skype, I found one who spoke no English and that was important. Later we worked on a television series without subs. It was difficult. At first, I couldn't understand much at all. I would watch and listen a couple of times and write down every word I didn't know and would go over my list with my tutor. The pause button and rewind were my friends then. For my next session, I would listen and watch again and write a synopsis of what happened. Gradually after four or five weeks, I started getting better. After 8 weeks, I got to where my list of unknown words only took much less of my hour class. After 10 weeks. I just started to do the synopsis and mention my words as they came along in my synopsis (made by writing notes.) after 12 weeks, I started doing two 40 minute episodes a week. Eventually, I was up to three episodes a week and made short work out of the 79 episode series.

The series I used was a "novela" (Portuguese equivalent of a soap opera- but much better production values). French is obviously different with all the homonyms and liaisons. Still, I think my method would help and you don't need a tutor. I would start by finding a series, even a translated US series will do. There is a list of French DVD's with exact subtitles here. If you follow my approach, you can use the subtitles as your tutor to check your comprehension after going through the process. If you use a dubbed US series, you can search for the English subtitles and French subtitles online and even make a bilingual text out of them to thoroughly check your comprehension. If you've already seen the series in English, even better! Animated series like "The Simpons" and "Futurama" are good bets if the subs are exact. EMK used "Buffy".

Series are better than films, for me, in training listening because films are one-off. With a series, you can get used to the actors' voices. The situations and vocabulary often repeat in somewhat switched up ways. You'll have at least fifty or more hours with the same series. Whereas, with a film, you'll have at most a couple of hours and it's on to the next different film with different actors, different stories and situations. It doesn't allow for you to get comfortable and start to learn to listen, in my opinion. There's a time for films, but I don't think you should train listening with them.

EMK also used subs2srs for Spanish. You can search here for his log. Subs2srs requires some computer skills.

If you do follow my method, I believe that it can help you to train listening, but it won't be easy and it won't happen overnight. It's hard, no doubt about it, but it worked well for me. Good luck, whatever you choose to do. Recognizing the problem and admitting it are the first steps to solving it.

Edited by iguanamon on 18 May 2015 at 3:30am

3 persons have voted this message useful



AlexTG
Diglot
Senior Member
Australia
Joined 4397 days ago

178 posts - 354 votes 
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Latin, German, Spanish, Japanese

 
 Message 5 of 22
18 May 2015 at 3:21am | IP Logged 
I have two pieces of advice:
1.
Watch movies you know really, really well in English, dubbed into French, without subtitles. The sort of movies that you loved as a kid and watched an
inordinate amount of times, and still love now. Hopefully there's a few movies where you can be your own subtitles because you know exactly
what lines are coming up. Granted there's probably only a few movies that meet this definition for you, but watching them can be a real
confidence booster and it gets your brain used to focusing on French rather than treating it as gobblydeegook.

2.
Delay subtitles. [If you're using VLC player, press the the 'h' key to add delay]. This is great because it allows you to give listening a go
before you read. But if you do get lost, you can catch back up by looking down, and then go back to trying to listen to the next pieces of
dialogue by yourself. How much delay you need is very dependent. I'm at an early stage in German and often don't know words, so I usually
use a delay of 800ms, this gives me a chance to listen to the line, get what I can, and then check the bits I missed if I look down quickly. In
my more advanced languages I delay to about 2300ms. In Spanish I need different delays depending on the film's dialect. If I used a 2300ms
delay on German I would get completely lost, so experiment with different delays.

English subtitles are (IMHO) better than French subtitles because you can see what the speaker meant via the English and then realise
for yourself what they just said in French.

*btw, it might help you to know that the problem you're having is common in French learners. You're not going crazy, this god forsaken language really
is hard to comprehend aurally, much more so than most other languages.

Edited by AlexTG on 18 May 2015 at 3:43am

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Arnaud25
Diglot
Senior Member
France
Joined 3601 days ago

129 posts - 235 votes 
Speaks: French*, English
Studies: Russian

 
 Message 6 of 22
18 May 2015 at 7:36am | IP Logged 
I have the same problem with russian.
What I do currently is transform the subtitles into a transcript, and the movie into a mp3, then look for each unknown word in the dictionary and then listen to the mp3 of the movie by chunks of 5 or 10 minutes, and repeat the process each day while commuting.
As the days are going by, I listen again and again to the same movie and I can feel that I go from 20% or 30% of comprehension at the beginning to 60 or 70% at the end of the process, sometimes understand completly chunks of several minutes without problem.

For french, you can also try
Hélène et les garçons, a stupid serie for teenagers of the 90's: the actors speak at natural speed and use simple everyday vocab, and a few episodes are precisely subtitled (with a pdf transcript, if you need) on Youtube: watch them several times with the subtitles until you understand them completly and after that watch them again without subtitles. You should notice progresses, I think.
2 persons have voted this message useful



chaotic_thought
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 3301 days ago

129 posts - 274 votes 
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Dutch, French

 
 Message 7 of 22
18 May 2015 at 12:33pm | IP Logged 
In this situation I find a transcription exercise is a good fit. To do this you need an audio recording plus a transcript (digital recordings normally have subtitles that can be extracted into a transcript).

In pass 1, you listen to the audio along with the transcript - I prefer using transcripts so I can scan the text at my own pace. Highlight any words which you don't think you would have picked up on without the transcript.

Pass 2: Listen to the audio without the transcript. Since you've previously listened to it with the transcript, it should be fairly comprehensible at this point.

Pass 3: After having listened to the clip twice before already, listening a third time should now be "easy". So you're in a good position to do a transcription exercise. Open a word processor and get ready to type everything you hear. Play the audio clip on "repeat" mode. Don't use the "PAUSE" or "REWIND" button. You can play it in repeat mode for a fixed time (say, 30 minutes). During that time, you either type what you're hearing or you make corrections on repeated passes. Don't worry too much about minor spelling mistakes and so on; the reason you're typing is actually a way to "hear" better. No one is going to read it except you. PLUS - you already have the "official" transcript from pass 1 to compare it to later if you want to check your accuracy.

Arrange the passes in a convenient way to enhance your memory. For example, for pass 1, you might listen to the news with transcript on Sunday. For pass 2, wait until Wednesday. For pass 3, wait until the next week. Only do one "pass 3" exercise per day because it feels really time consuming (even if you limit yourself to 30 minutes).

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Cavesa
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 4768 days ago

3277 posts - 6779 votes 
Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1
Studies: Spanish, German, Italian

 
 Message 8 of 22
18 May 2015 at 12:49pm | IP Logged 
Hey, welcome to the forums.

I used to be quite exactly at your place several years ago. Good news is that you can
improve and it can be really fun! It just takes time and a bit of strategy.

I totally agree tv series are a better tool at this point than movies. You get used to
the speakers, the subjects are more or less similar over dozens of episodes and so on.

If you can already understand without problem with subtitles, than I suggest the next
step to be getting rid of them. Sure, you can use them like EMK or Iguanamon, but you
can as well just get rid of them at this point, from what I read in your post.

A sequence that worked for me:
1-one or more dubbed tv series I had already known and enjoyed(Grimm)
2-one or more dubbed tv series I hadn't already known but I knew I was likely to enjoy
them(Eureka, Lost Girl, Game of Thrones, Caprica)
//why dubbed series: just like with books, the translations tend to be a bit easier
than originals. I cannot describe precisely why but it seems to be quite a common
opinion not only on htlal
3-an easier original tv series I guessed I would enjoy (Profilage, Prophecie
d'Avignon)
4-more difficult tv series I could enjoy (Engrenages, Hero Corp)

An important point: the enjoyment. Fun and interest helps us focus for extended
periods of time. It is a huge chunk of motivation. It gets us over the harder times,
so that we can survive the long path to the goal.

You just need not to give up. I've met many learners who just turn the tv on, don't
understand after ten minutes and give up. Or they try to watch a bit every day, as
they know the strategy to work fine with other components of learning. From my
experience, ten minutes a day is a useless strategy in this case. I found it the best
to find a few free afternoons/nights and just immerse myself for several hours. Thanks
to this, I noticed first bigger chunk of progress after several hours of listening.
Much more after one season of a show. Then it gets usually slower but the progress is
still there.

I hope this helps a bit.


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