Limits (and value) of TV drama for listening.

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iguanamon
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Re: Limits (and value) of TV drama for listening.

Postby iguanamon » Thu Nov 18, 2021 6:51 pm

SCMT wrote:For me, watching TV was one of the best exercises I have done to improve my listening, although it was done in a structured, intentional manner. At the suggestion of one of my italki tutors, we chose a show, and I watched it, once with target language subtitles, and then again without. At times, I watched with subtitles twice, once stopping every time I couldn't follow, and another time letting it play uninterrupted. I would then discuss the episode with my tutor, with conversation ranging from plot discussions language usage.
The show lasted about 35 episodes of 30 minutes, so I guess I had somewhere around 45 hours of focused listening practice and follow up with it, and it is some of the most productive work I have done.

This is very similar to what I did with Portuguese. I watched a series chosen by my tutor- "Gabriela"- 79 episodes around 50 minutes or so with no subtitles available. I did this after having finished DLI Portuguese Basic Course, Pimsleur and basic conversation with my tutor- plus reading.

It was mind-numbingly difficult at first. In our tutoring sessions we would go over unknown words (with time-stamps) and then I would give a synopsis and be corrected with my output. It got easier and easier over time. By the time I had finished, I felt like I had made a huge breakthrough in Portuguese. I visited Portugal on my own and had a great time. I was understanding and understood. I went on to watch more series- novelas; sit-coms, drama, dubs- another couple hundred hours.

Artificially scripted or not, like SCMT, it was one of the most useful things I have done with a language. It worked for me. Spontaneous speech, sure it's useful. It's also not as engaging as a good TV series like "Mandrake"; "Sai de Baixo"; and Toma Lá Dá Cá. Half the battle of language-learning is consistency, staying engaged, habit. Listening to RFI Brasil's news magazine show and the Café Brasil podcast on my morning walk became a habit. Watching Brazilian series was also a habit. I enjoyed them and it really helped/helps my language skills. If I had to watch several hundred hours of people talking about brushing their teeth, making coffee or other routine daily life situations... I'd be bored to tears.
BeaP wrote:There is no perfect resource. Everything has disadvantages, especially when used as a sole resource.

This is so true! If I only watched TV, I would not have gained the benefit I did. Speaking, reading, writing, listening, my courses, concurrent grammar study together was what worked with me. I couldn't have gotten the benefit from the series if I hadn't already had a good foundation in the language. It's the basis of my multi-track approach.
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Re: Limits (and value) of TV drama for listening.

Postby SpanishInput » Thu Nov 18, 2021 6:55 pm

Hi! I've been thinking about this very same problem lately.

Netflix-style Spanish is full of drama and conflict. Your real life is (hopefully) not like that. So now I want to add YouTube content to my Spanish corpus, to make it more balanced and less "full of conflict". I'm perusing channel after channel and I'm happy to report that there are indeed several Spanish-language channels that consistently pump out videos with accurate captions and which have content such as history, science, interviews, cooking, humor, documentaries, geography, etc. I've even found a streamer/reaction channel from Spain where almost all videos have human-made accurate captions.

Channels where most of the videos have accurate captions are a minority, however. Most don't do it consistently. In Chinese there's the odd situation of lots of videos having hard-coded subtitles and no accurate closed captions. This makes dictionary lookups cumbersome when you encounter unknown characters. So it would be great if we could keep one spreadsheet for each language of the Channels that have accurate human made closed captions in the majority of their videos. This would certainly be a resource with more variety than Netflix.
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Re: Limits (and value) of TV drama for listening.

Postby Dragon27 » Thu Nov 18, 2021 7:36 pm

Matt vs Japan has discussed the issue of learning Japanese from anime in his two-part series of videos. His basic argument is that the difference between "anime Japanese" and "real life Japanese" is mostly surface level, and, once you've learned the bulk of the language through one type of media, it shouldn't be too difficult to transition to more natural language by adjusting your speaking habits. Even though the argument explicitly addresses the speaking skills (sounding like an anime character vs like a normal person) it easily extends to the listening ability - learning to understand anime (or TV drama) is about as simple as learning to understand regular speech (some shows are quite easy, others are fiendishly difficult), all the different phonetical phenomena that make the natural sounding speech so incomprehensible for the learners is still there (because the natives use them without being consciously aware of them), so the core listening ability developed through those means will serve you perfectly well.
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german2k01
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Re: Limits (and value) of TV drama for listening.

Postby german2k01 » Thu Nov 18, 2021 10:33 pm

My personal opinion. TV series is the superior form of learning aid. The number of collocations I have picked up is amazing and they are being used by local German speakers is the icing on the cake; that simply shows that you are developing a feeling for the spoken form of the language. However, you should use a mixture of sources not just rely on a single medium. In terms of developing a variety of vocabulary they fall short; watching 3 hours of television series is not the same as listening to an audiobook or a podcast. I have watched television series every day for the last 19 months; Now I am venturing out into other mediums that offer a better variety of language content, for example, listening to podcasts, using L-R as a system, watching youtube videos made by German speakers, etc As you said, they may have a limit but after a while.
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Re: Limits (and value) of TV drama for listening.

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Thu Nov 18, 2021 10:45 pm

I just finished my 500th hour of French series TV, so I have some skin in this game. First, no media can claim to be 100% “real” French. The French of a police procedural is artificial, but so is the French of an international affairs podcast. Each has their own conventions and idioms. That’s just how media works. But hundreds of hours of police procedurals makes it way easier to understand international affairs podcasts. (I was pleasantly surprised too!) So pick the media you actually enjoy as your main course and dip into other genres as side dishes. They all work together nicely. (And we are so lucky to be spoiled for choice today!)
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