How efficient are TV shows for improving listening comprehension?

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Re: How efficient are TV shows for improving listening comprehension?

Postby rdearman » Mon Apr 25, 2016 5:57 pm

NoManches wrote:My ultimate goal is to be able to watch foreign TV and movies and learn idioms and slang this way.


Then you've answered your own question. Since practice makes perfect, and your goal is to watch TV & Films, then you need to watch TV & Films. You don't become a concert pianist by practising the guitar. So YouTube isn't helping you, it is distracting you from your goal.
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Re: How efficient are TV shows for improving listening comprehension?

Postby Marais » Mon Apr 25, 2016 5:59 pm

Two words: comprehensible input.

If you don't know many words then you're not going to notice a lot of what is being said. You need lots of words and lots of listening practice.... THEN shows will be very helpful for you.

My wife has an A Level in French and spent 7 years at school learning it. She picks up on phrases, slang, repeated words etc when watching French TV, whereas i'm a newbie to French and i only hear bits and bobs of it.

If it's slow enough you will actually learn something because you'll hear phrases and be able to make out roughly what they are. So for example i kept hearing the phrase 'encore et encore'. Any quick or heavily elided speech went right over my head, but now i am revisiting them shows now i have lots more listening and reading practice it's all making a lot more sense.

As someone else said, get into the B levels before relying on shows to teach you new stuff. B level usually means you've done a load of listening and know quite a few words i would have thought.
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Re: How efficient are TV shows for improving listening comprehension?

Postby iguanamon » Mon Apr 25, 2016 6:06 pm

NoManches wrote:...My ultimate goal is to be able to watch foreign TV and movies and learn idioms and slang this way. ...

If that's the case, then you are going to have to work at it. It isn't going to drop in your lap, in my experience.

As Cavesa said, the problem lies in expectations. The whole "I've listened for 10 minutes and I don't understand much" thing is what keeps a lot of people from becoming good at listening. Obviously, that's not nearly enough time. It took me one full series of a novela in Portuguese (this one was short, only 79 episodes) to get a huge boost to my listening. It was hard work and frustrating at first. I described it to you here in your first post. Apparently it went over like a lead balloon. The only reason I mention it is because you're still asking the same question. Since that first series a few years ago, I have watched a bunch of series in Portuguese.

If you work with a series and stick with it over many episodes, preferably a full season, you will see results and improvement in your listening- in my opinion. Few are willing to do that. It's so much easier to stay in the comfort zone.
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Re: How efficient are TV shows for improving listening comprehension?

Postby Brun Ugle » Mon Apr 25, 2016 7:14 pm

Listening used to be my worst skill in any language, because I didn't do enough of it. But listening is one of my strongest skills in Spanish. I'm probably a solid B1, maybe nudging B2 on a good day, but I can and do enjoy watching Spanish language TV. When I started my first telenovela, I probably understood no more than half of what they were actually saying, but I was able to follow most of the story by piecing it together from the dialogue I understood plus the action. In addition, I was watching on YouTube and found reading the comments to be helpful to my understanding.

Anyway, in my early days of language study, I probably would have given up after a couple of episodes when I could only understand half, but I didn't. Sometimes there were scenes where I understood almost nothing, and that would be frustrating and depressing. But then there would be a scene where I understood almost everything even the jokes, and that would give me the encouragement to keep going. And soon, I was hooked on the telenovela even though my understanding was still pretty low. It's probably also good that there were no subtitles available as it forced me to rely more on my ears.

The clue to improving listening comprehension is to keep going. I said I probably understood half when I started. After 60 episodes I was probably at about 75 %. By 100 or so episodes, I was probably getting close to 90% if there wasn't too much background noise. After 200 episodes, I barely noticed it was in Spanish. By the end (300 episodes), I'd experienced not only a great increase in my listening comprehension, but also in my speaking, reading and writing.

I still have a lot of work to do. I don't understand other dialects and accents as easily as that one, and I probably would have trouble with telenovelas with a different setting or with a lot of slang. However, I've made great progress and I do find TV to be great for language learning. The clue is to do a lot and not give up after ten minutes or even ten episodes.


One other note, Cavesa's comment about my Star Trek in German might be misleading. I'm reading it in German, not watching it. Though, if I can get DVDs dubbed in German, Spanish and Japanese, I'll definitely buy them and start watching.
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Re: How efficient are TV shows for improving listening comprehension?

Postby Tomás » Mon Apr 25, 2016 8:22 pm

I like to watch news and news magazine shows. The announcers speak clearly and with good grammar, and I learn about things going on in the world that I would never have known about otherwise. It improves my listening skills, and I learn a word or two every half hour. I also like "Animal Planet" type shows. The language is simple, and the video clips of animals are always fun to see.
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Re: How efficient are TV shows for improving listening comprehension?

Postby Serpent » Mon Apr 25, 2016 8:29 pm

Cavesa wrote:I wouldn't recommend them to a complete beginner but once you get the basics, it's one of the best things you can do.
In a related language it's possible to do them from scratch :) They have similar advantages to football/sports.
I watch shows too but not as much as others.
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Re: How efficient are TV shows for improving listening comprehension?

Postby sillygoose1 » Mon Apr 25, 2016 9:17 pm

Very efficient. However, you need to be comfortable with seeming like you're wasting time and just trucking through it. For me to get to the level I am now in French, it took me all 7 seasons of Fais pas ci fais pas ca, all 5 seasons of Engrenages, and all 3 of Braquo. That's not counting the short series that are 3-4 minutes per episode like Kaamelott and Bref as well as all of the movies. All of that, and I still miss sentences here and there. I watched about the same amount of stuff in Spanish and it's the same deal.

It's basically all about getting out of the study mold that you've set for yourself. Textbook lessons aren't how real life conversations are held and besides living in the country or speaking with others who speak your TL every day, TV shows and movies are the best you can do.

But, once you get there, it's all worth it and the feeling is great. It's cool knowing that I understand Spanish better and have a wider vocabulary than heritage speakers who have spoken it their whole lives. That's because they never bothered doing anything they didn't have to with it besides talking to family and friends unlike me.
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Re: How efficient are TV shows for improving listening comprehension?

Postby James29 » Tue Apr 26, 2016 12:45 am

TV shows are very efficient IF you already have a good solid vocabulary. They are not too efficient if you do not have a "critical mass" of the necessary vocabulary.

If it is a problem with vocab you should boost up your vocab by doing something like a ton of reading.

If it is not a matter of vocab for you, but, rather something like understanding accents or fast conversations you just need to stick with watching more and more TV.

Try finding the transcript of a TV show or telenovela. If you can read it quickly and easily while understanding nearly all of the transcript then watching a ton of TV shows will be a very efficient way to improve your listening comprehension. If not, think about doing some things to boost your vocab.
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Re: How efficient are TV shows for improving listening comprehension?

Postby NoManches » Tue Apr 26, 2016 2:18 am

I described it to you here in your first post. Apparently it went over like a lead balloon. The only reason I mention it is because you're still asking the same question.


First off, thank you so much for your advice! In that particular question I wanted to know how to improve my listening in order to watch TV in my target language. In this question, I just want to know if people think TV is efficient or not (since in my first question some people said TV wasn't that efficient because it contains a lot of visual distractions, and that I was better off listening to podcasts). In this post though it seems like a lot of people are in favor of TV for working on their target languages, and that has given me enough confidence to keep doing what I've been doing without feeling like I'm wasting my time. I will follow the advice you gave me in that first post which I truly appreciate. I only point all of this out because I don't want you to think I didn't pay attention to your advice. It was great advice and I will start using it this very night!

But, once you get there, it's all worth it and the feeling is great. It's cool knowing that I understand Spanish better and have a wider vocabulary than heritage speakers who have spoken it their whole lives. That's because they never bothered doing anything they didn't have to with it besides talking to family and friends unlike me.


THIS is exactly what I want. I want to reach a level in between a native speaker and a heritage speaker (it will be near imposible for me to reach a native like level, but I am already surpassing some heritage speakers). I think at this level you can earn the respect of native speakers and heritage speakers, and people will feel comfortable interacting with you in your target language (their heritage/native language). This has nothing to do with competition or trying to be better than anybody. Where I live there are a ton of heritage speakers, and unless you speak better than them and speak better Spanish than the native speakers who also speak English, it can be near imposible to find anybody to practice with. Basically, this is the level I think I can reach and will be satisfied with if I can obtain. Hopefully this made sense 8-)


Thanks all for the advice! I will continue with my plan of watching TV in my target language and will keep plowing through although I feel like some of the time I'm wasting my time. I suppose I won't see a huge difference until i get another 100 episodes under my belt
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Re: How efficient are TV shows for improving listening comprehension?

Postby s_allard » Tue Apr 26, 2016 11:32 am

Like many people here, I believe that TV shows are a fabulous resource for improving listening comprehension, and I won't repeat all the good advice. But I do want to make a few points. First of all, I get the impression that everybody is talking primarily about television fiction series. This is good but television programming includes many other genres such as advertising, news, sports, weather, talk shows, children shows, etc. All of these can be used for learning purposes. I particularly like talk shows because one is exposed to a wide variety of manners of speaking on contemporary subjects.

A second point is that TV shows are not inherently efficient or inefficient for improving listening. They are basically raw materials. It's how they are used that makes the difference. As many others have pointed out, you have to work efficiently with the material. For example, the number one problem that everybody has with any recorded material is deciphering what was said. This is why accurate subtitles, closed captions or transcripts are so important. If you can't figure out what was said you hit a wall.

It is true that the visual element of television does help overall understanding because we get a sense of the context. So, we can enjoy the program without really understanding all the words. But this can also be a bit of a trap because we are relying on the image and not only on the words to convey meaning. In that sense, listening to the radio or pure audio recordings can be more challenging and even more useful.

A third and final point is that ultimately we are looking for sources of good samples of native speaking for learning purposes. Dramatic television series are just one source among many others. On the internet there are many kinds of recordings of people using the language for different purposes. Songs for example are a great and entertaining resource. Podcasts have already been mentioned. The TEDtalks series of conferences can be very useful. It all depends on the genre of speaking that you are interested in. If it's dramatic television dialogue then a dubbed version of Game of Thrones might be up your alley. But if you're more interested in the language of conferences you should look elsewhere.
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