To answer the question, when I listen to the Spanish, with the English subs on, it’s my equivalent of being stuck in a foreign languafe homestay.
They’re always asking things like “¿Que haces aquí?” I can read books in other methods, but day-to-day dinner table conversations (and arguments) happen on television in a way they don’t happen in book lessons. That’s what I’m trying to pick up. There’s also word variations. Because of television, I can spot certain words that tell me where the recording (any recording) is coming from. Spaniards use marcharse to go, Latin Americans use irse. Echo de menos versus Te extraño. There’s “vale” versus “guey” Spain v. Mexico, and “chevere” versus “cool” (Central America v. Mexico). Even in podcasts, it’s more analytical and academic than the every-day language used in television. The characters in tv are often idiots, and so I should be able to understand how someone speaks.
These are some of the benefits of the television viewing - how do you say “I love you. I’m annoyed. Go away. I miss you. You’re a jerk. I’m leaving. Let’s get to work. (You’re crying…) What happened? See you soon. Gotta go.” Those types of phrases are scattered throughout the shows. It’s not about the vocabulary, it’s about how to speak basic life phrases like a native.
If you want to learn vocabulary, then “read” the tv show with language 2 subtitles. Absolutely in a new television show, I have to do more reading the first 5 to 10 episodes. I was watching a Colombian show, had to learn (from the scripts) what a cimarrón and an amo were - runaway slave and master. After four five episodes, I didn’t need to learn the laws of the land, because the keywords were largely introduced. (You can see this in English tv, too. A person studies English, but still has to learn what an Earl, Duke, and dowager are on Downton Abbey; what a “fit bird” means on the Outsiders; what a “bullet trajectory” and “epithelial” and “forensic analysis” are on CSI, and the words “lobbyist”, “campaign manager”, and “cabinet” when watching House of Cards.)
You’re absolutely allowed to toggle back in the subtitles, and watch using whichever is easiest for you at the moment. Before I had LingQ, reading Spanish television was my rough equivalent, minus the extra features (I could look up the rare unknown word on my phone.)
Also, since ease and comfort affect viewing, I watch via ipad, with Netflix, and it’s literally a touch of the finger to switch subs. It’s roughly the same amount of worn as when I highlight a LingQ.
If I were using a tv remote, or a more difficult set-upp, I’d likely go for an easier approach. But as is, I can hit “back 10 seconds” as many times as I’d like, either to enjoy the scene again or to figure out what in the world they said with that word. With no difficulty at all, I can switch from English subs, to Spanish subs, to figuring out that the character was slurring their words, not annunciating, audio quality was bad, and that’s why their sentence makes no sense.
You have enough vocabulary to watch tv. You know more Spanish now than I did when I started TV.
Have your SpanishDict app ready to type in the one new word on occasion. but you’re more than ready, Also, every new word they say is shown visually on the TV, another bonus. It’s like visual flashcards.
For example, I learned the word falleció because guy said that to somebody to describe someone’s death. When a native said it to me, I wanted to jump for joy because their conversation matched what I had studied in TV.
If you want to build vocabulary, keep the Spanish subs on. You’ll be reading 100% of the script, and spotting the ten/fifteen words you don’t know.
It sounds like you want to build listening comprehension though. If so, you don’t need to understand 100% of what the characters are saying with instant confidence. Can you understand the driving ideas of their conversation, ignoring the stray details?
I also like to use the Spanish television when I do the dishes. I’ll play the Netflix, only listening, not watching. To Prinz_PooBeard’s point, yes this means I’m not picking an Oscar movie here, a captivating must-watch show. I’m picking a filler episode of a tv show I have no problems watching again if I lose concentration, but I won’t lose concentration because I enjoy the characters.
There’s just nothing better to fill my dishes time with. So I listen, and within 15 to 20 hours of listening (and feeling a little “blind” doing it, it’s not something you can 100% since it’s conversations in your not-native languages) I could comfortably follow the conversations in a way that I felt I was missing nothing.
Mind you, by this point I had 100s of hours of TV “reading” and podcasts. This was just the time it took to adjust to the TV medium of two-person dialogue, always checking up on each other, always in conflict, talking about pleasantries like dinner and groceries, and figuring out what that third person fron the cast is doing next.
I also absolutely enjoy that there there is visual information. The vocabulary had visual hooks in my mind. I remember the character carrying a cordero, the guy saying his friend died, the rooftops of love, the “despachos” (office) in all the Spanish shows where the drama takes place. (Mind you, this vocabulary is ‘memorized’ when I turn the Spanish subs back on.)
Finally, there was a cultural element to it. I was taking an exam that would have culture, and I think it was absolutely useful to watch a Mexican show about soccer, Mexican telenovelas about the old wealthy of society, Spanish shows about Madrid in the 1920s and 1950s, Cuban television about Celia Cruz, a Chilean movie about Pablo Neruda. So much culture is shown through the television.
For comparison, if you need to know about Texan cowboys, and New York City immigrants, the British royal family, and the US presidents, and you do it watching “The Crown”, “Harry & Megan: the royal love story”, “Gangs of New York” (totally watching somethibg that with a crutch, not even trying to comprehend the English itself, because those accents), and the movie “Lincoln” and “Forrest Gump”, and “Remember the Titans” or “Selma”, you’ll gain a cultural understanding of what the US and Britain are like. You’ll notice that the British offer tea, the Americans bring each other coffees while always working. You’ll hear words like “sixth form” and “gap year”, and know in which country you’d use “college” and which country to say “uni”. You’ll understand landed gentry and electoral colleges, prime ministers and vice president, the abolition of slavery, the Civil War. WW2 war rations and Roaring 20s.
That was one of the other benefits - language isn’t about “words known,” it’s about knowing what affects the lives of the people in the culture. Gaining knowledge of the slang words that makes sense, knowing the foods that are cultural institutions, and understanding who Margaret Thatcher is (Most Americans don’t know…, but then again most Brits couldn’t talk at length about Nixon or Jimmy Carter.)
I’ve studied some of this culture through uploading biographies and reading them onto LingQ. But it’s more fun using my free TV hour to watch and absorb the culture, to learn from cheesy costuming and captivating storylines. Those stories were important enough to be a part of the public consciousness, let them become part of mine.
