A language learners’ forum

emk wrote:Well, maybe French is a bit of a special case, at least for me. As an English-speaker, I've always found written French to be relatively easy, thanks to the transparent grammar vocabulary. But idiomatic spoken French is trickier, and in my experience, books are a surprisingly inefficient source of dialog, because so much of the text is actually narration. What's worse—from the perspective of somebody looking for sources of spoken French—is that French narration uses verb forms that are never used in speech.

I watch a lot of shows that are subbed in french for that reason—it gives me a lot of dialogue. It probably looks weird to my family who often see me just sitting there watching a show with no audio (I turn off the source audio and just focus on reading the french subtitles), but it is none the less great exposure to some more casual spoken french than I find in books.

@Fortheo - good one.

Takra jenai wrote:Inspired by this thread, I listened to 'The Little Prince' read by Peter Ustinov.
It's basically a fairy tale, somewhat funny, somewhat sad.
But forgive me a stupid question, why is it considered to be 'great literature'?

It is truly useful since it is beautiful.

"Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them... Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. "

I think it's absolutely amazing there's all these different ways of learning languages. Movies, TV shows, books and audiobooks included. I probably wouldn't even be learning languages if the only way to do was to sit down and study "conversational Italian/Spanish/anything" (which is ofc something I do, but it's only one part of the language).

Sure, learning how to say "there's a cat reading a map" and that afterwards "Mr. Dursley jerked his head" might not help me when I speak with people (although it would be awesome to see a cat reading a map), but it's still a part of the language I'm not familiar with, so I don't exactly mind if I learn the language in the "wrong order".

I'm from Finland anyway, and I'm pretty sure I learned most of my English by watching Schwarzenegger and Stallone films with subs, so..no complaints there

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The article you linked is completely devoid of scientific rigor. It's literally just more noisy blogspam polluting the internet, and it's just trying to push its own product, which is ironic in light of your criticism of the latest electronic gimmicks.

Obviously people can read faster than they can listen, but those are different skills. You can also listen in many situations where you can't read. And as for the subject of what constitutes "great literature," reading Shakespeare or even a more modern author like George Orwell will leave you utterly unable to comprehend or produce informal language and slang, whereas a popular television show will prepare you for that.

Then there's the issue of diglossic languages, which are written completely differently from how they're spoken, often to the point of the written and oral languages constituting different languages altogether. In that situation reading "great literature" will do almost nothing for your speaking or listening skills.

The digital age is what you make it. I find that internet technology makes it far easier to read in my target language (German). I have daily access to media and can download e-books with a few clicks of a mouse. I still of course buy newspapers when in Germany and books to take home, but I'm only in Germany for 2-3 weeks per year. In fact, I often wonder how much of a hassle it must have been to get access to your chosen literature before the web came into being.

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I say yes!!!

Here is the example I always give:

A long time ago I was watching a TV show in Spanish. My listening skills weren't the greatest so I decided to turn on Spanish subtitles. This worked great at first, since I was able to hear the Spanish audio and match it up with the text on the screen. After some time I decided that I needed to force myself to listen more and not rely on the subtitles....so I either turned them off or completely ignored them while I was watching, only using them when I really couldn't figure out what was being said.

I reached a point where I was constantly looking at the subtitles because I couldn't make out the audio....only to realize that I could barely read the subtitles! At the time this was mostly due to lack of vocabulary and perhaps some grammar issues (exposing myself to verb tenses that I had not yet studied). I came to the conclusion then that if I couldn't read what was written on the screen, then there was no way I would understand it if it were spoken.

For me this makes perfect sense. I'm learning Spanish, a language that sounds the way it is spelled. When I am reading I can take my time to comprehend things, make sense of verb tenses, look at pronouns and their relation to other words. With listening, once you hear something you can't go back and listen again (during conversation). This makes reading a lot easier for me...and once again...if I can't read something in Spanish then I probably won't be able to understand it if the same text is spoken to me.

I know this came up in the past and some people disagreed with me...these are my observations that I have experienced. I'm currently making an effort to increase the amount of reading I do by a lot, in hopes that it will result in better listening comprehension.

NoManches wrote:I say yes!!!

For me this makes perfect sense. I'm learning Spanish, a language that sounds the way it is spelled. When I am reading I can take my time to comprehend things, make sense of verb tenses, look at pronouns and their relation to other words. With listening, once you hear something you can't go back and listen again (during conversation). This makes reading a lot easier for me...and once again...if I can't read something in Spanish then I probably won't be able to understand it if the same text is spoken to me.

I know this came up in the past and some people disagreed with me...these are my observations that I have experienced. I'm currently making an effort to increase the amount of reading I do by a lot, in hopes that it will result in better listening comprehension.

As I understand it, you have been practicing, rather diligently, all the four skills. Whatever you do you'll be fine. If you keep rotating your practice you may end up crediting your last activity for any breakthroughs.

The graphemes reflect the phonemes and not the other way around. The spoken and written conventions are different and language is primarily a spoken phenomenon. Italian, Spanish, and Croatian all have a high degree of grapheme and phoneme correspondence. They can also be described as having a simple phoneme inventory yet plenty of learners regularly make pronunciation mistakes in these languages. While the vocabulary demands of TV programs are relatively modest, people who are competent readers complain of listening comprehension issues.

All this is a long way of saying that the logic of the spoken language flowing from its rich, elevated written counterpart is not entirely sound. That said, I see nothing heartbreaking in reading great literature and time spent reading is time well spent.

Some learners study subtitles and transcripts prior to listening exercises as a way of boosting their vocabulary and listening comprehension skills.