I haven’t used LingQ to read movie or TV subtitles yet. It seemed like since I don’t have the video I won’t understand the context so reading it won’t make sense. But that might not be the case. Obviously, if I watch it and then read it in LingQ then I should be able to remember the video while I’m reading. I’m not really one for rewatching/reading material unfortunately. So I’m wondering, for people that use Netflix subtitles what is your strategy?
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You’ve highlighted the problem. It’s really difficult to know where you are or even understand what is going on, even if you have already seen the movie. There’s no indication of who is speaking. There’s no indication when a scene is switched. There’s often actions the actors are doing or stuff going on around them that provides a context you aren’t necessarily getting in the subtitles. Because of these things I find it it a bit tedious and boring to go through them in LingQ as it honestly just feels like a bunch of random sentences thrown together at times. Documentaries are not bad, but regular movies or tv shows it’s difficult for me.
I think this is where Language Reactor is a lot better for this as you can go through the movie itself, with dual subtitles if you wish. You can let it pause after each subtitle if you like. The biggest problem with this is just time…it takes longer to watch a movie or a tv show and if you do want to review then you need to watch the entire movie or show again, and the density of language is really small in these (i.e. you’ll encounter more words in a 13 minute podcast than you will in an hour long tv show episode). So it might be best to just use the subtitles in Lingq to just skip through to all the yellow words and blue words and discover them that way…reading in context. Or if the context isn’t great there, ask chatgpt for some example sentences for those words.
Another thing that could be useful about the subtitles is just finding some phrases and sentences that you think you can use for your own output and learn them.
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At -->B2 level, my strategy is getting subtitles using LR. I don’t import stuff into LingQ, for the reasons that ericb100 lists and also this reason: a lot of info is expressed by either voice intonation or non-verbal means.
Is she teasing him? Chastising him? Standing up to him? Sucking up to him (flattering him)? I get all that from face expressions, body language and voice intonation, not from the set of words she uses.
It is is easier if there is one speaker, talking to you (a narrator). In that situation it might work to import it into LingQ for word-by-word study. In LingQ you can even hear the sentence spoken, if that matters.
Personally, I use LingQ at lower levels (A1, A2, B1), where I wouldn’t learn by watching content targetted at fluent adults.
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