I am kind of confused of this,should I watch the movies with English subtitles or not?
Some say that watch movies without English subtitles may help you out to improve you listening.Coz subtitles may slow down your speed of getting the informations.Well,some say not,because subtitles do help you out to understand the contents and learn the new vocabularies,with the accumulation of your vocabularies,your may understand more and more,and one day you are able to understand all of them.
Extend the question through to reading ,when you read a book,and every page say you get 1/3 which you can not sure what’s the meaning of it( Well this could be new words that you might not understand or it’s a complicated long sentence and it’s just too hard for you to get it),if the suitation is like what i described ,what are you gonna do ?Will you stop to check the dictionary and repeat the sentence again and again ?Or you just passed leave them behind?
I guess my question is something like ask you guy a question ,which is better ?Listen/read extensively,or intensively?
To each his own. I do not watch movies for language learning. if I do not understand the language well I need the sub-titles and movies are hard to understand until we are very good at the language.
As for reading, if there are a lot of words I do not know I do not look them up in a dictionary. It takes too long, I forget the meaning and I lose interest in what I am reading. That is why I started LingQ.
Hi steve,
Thanks for your reply.but I am not acutally watch the movies ,what I do is extract the sound files from the movies,it’s almost like you are listening a movie without any videos in it.
I personally take great pleasure in watching movies and television series to aid my language learning and to keep myself interested when I don’t feel like reading or just listening to audio.
It’s also a nice way to really see how people talk and react in quasi real life situations, and especially to associate the meaning of what you hear with what you see, which is the most natural way the brain learns language.
However, as much as I like movies, I recommend using T.V. series more than anything because the episodes are relatively short and you can repeat them. I will usually watch each episode twice, once with subtitles and then once without.
It’s not important to understand everything you hear - as long as you understand at least 60% of what you’re hearing, your brain is learning.
I personally never use the dictionary except on LingQ when I’m reading, and that’s only very quickly just so I can understand the new words in context and then listen lots of times. If a text contains too many unknown words, it becomes boring to look them all up and I’ll just read it to get out of it what I can.
If you do look any words up, in your reading or when watching movies, make sure to save them on LingQ so that there’s a certain amount of ‘accountability’ for the learning you’ve been doing, and so you can see those words in new contexts on LingQ.
I like to watch Discovery channels in English (esp Travelling). But if I can’t catch the main idea of the show, I always switch to Russian, figure out what they discuss, and switch back to English. But as I am at LingQ for a year, now I usually don’t switch to Russian at all. now I started to watch TV shows about Asia and Africa in CNN (or BBC? I don’t remember, I have them both), as I realised that I have some difficulties with understanding different accents. But the last show about Africa featured the man who spoke English so well, and I did not train my understanding of African accent at all
@ Cakypa http://accent.gmu.edu/ is an archive of accents from around the world. You may find it fun to use for accent practice. The site comes from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virgina
I think that watching movies helps to learn a language when we use the right method.
Select one movie, and then watch the first part of it having sound in your target language and subtitles in your native. Repeat this many times. Then watch the same part without subtitles and repeat it many times too. Only after you understand virtually everything- move on to the next part of the movie and do again the same.
Also I find useful watching e.g. CNN or BBC, because the same news are repeated many times per day – just right thing for learning.
In general I agree with the ideas what DavidMartin posted.
subtitles are definitely a splendid way to learn. I also like to have the subtitles file (usually .srt format) open while I’m watching the movie/tv show and if an unknown word comes up I look it up in an online dictionary/translator
Yuirthebest,thanks for you reply.I guess my problem here is like asking you guys if we’re so much depending on the subtitles,(e.g you’re watching English movies with English subtitles all the time ,) will that be interfere our listening and the speed of understanding?
I am just worried about myself if I watched movies with English subtitles all the time,what if one day there’s not any ?I just don’t think I can know all of them.
You know the blind have a keen sense of touch or listen ,what about us?I don’t know.That’s why i am asking you suggestions.
