To L2 subtitles or no?

[garyb]

I'm a bit late to the party here but I'm quite convinced that no subtitles, L2 subtitles, and L1 subtitles are all very useful in their own ways and all have their place in language study at any level. I don't agree with the common line that subtitles are like training wheels to be abandoned once you're "advanced enough". Unless you're at an extremely high level, you won't understand 100% of the speech 100% of the time, and L2 subs can help you catch these bits you wouldn't otherwise understand and improve your ability to decode unclear speech. L1 subs are great for getting an idea of similarly-used idiomatic expressions between the languages. No subs is important for training your "raw" comprehension and ability to fill in gaps, which is crucial for real conversations.

In practice I just take what I can get, and this results in a good balance. L2 content with L2 subtitles is somewhat rare, so if they're available I'll put them on. If I'm watching a film on the TV or at the cinema, it'll have English subs and I'll happily use them. Most stuff I watch online doesn't have subs.

[WingSuet]

I think reading subtitles and listening at the same time is a skill you need to practise, especially if you're not used to reading subtitles. I've noticed for example that my parents seem to understand the films we watch by reading every word in the subtitles and not really paying attention to what is being said, while I, and many other, use the subtitles as an aid when I didn't catch what was being said. One quick glance is enough to see what is being said and then it will be easier to catch what they're actually saying. But I've lived with subtitles all my life, so I'm used to them being there. Either way I think you need to actively practise reading the subtitles only a little bit and focus more on listening. That way subtitles can really aid your understanding and listening skills.

[Serpent]

I mostly agree with Gary. I do think it's important to check how much you can understand without the subs, but you certainly don't have to give them up for good, as long as they don't prevent you from actually listening.

[daegga]

I'll try to give yet another viewpoint on that topic, but I need to go back a step on more general grounds.

Let's define some levels of difficulty of listening material:
easy material: you understand pretty much everything even without text
moderate material: when watching with subs, you think you could just as well turn them off, but when you do, you realize it's not so easy after all and you have some black spots.
hard material: you wouldn't even think about turning off the subs, without them you would be lost

By turning subs on or off, we can make our learning activity easier or harder.
too easy: easy material with text/subs
easy: easy material without text/subs
moderately easy: moderate material with subs
moderate: 2nd half of longer moderate material without subs
hard: 1st half of longer moderate material without subs
too hard: hard material with or without subs

I don't find too easy and too hard learning activities very helpful. The rest you could cluster into "easy listening", ie. easy and moderately easy activities, and "challenging listening", which ideally would consist of moderate learning activities, but it usually goes hand in hand with hard activities, as you will need some time to tune in.
I think you should do both "easy listening" and "challenging listening", the relative amount of each will depend on your level, preferences and probably also language pair. For me I've found out that I can get away with mostly "easy listening", which turns out to be about a 50:50 split of easy and moderately easy activities.

Now to get to the original question. The toddler TV probably falls into the easy activity category. Proper TV with subs might either be moderately easy or too hard. If it is the former for you, then it is an ideal material. You can watch TV series with subs and then turn them off for the last few episodes of a season, this gets you both of the "easy listening" and "challenging listening" worlds. If it is the latter, I would prefer to go with only "easy listening" for a while and then reevaluate. Good "easy listening" alternatives to toddler TV would be audio books, audio plays, podcasts, webcasts, ...

Usually the mix comes naturally if all the materials are available, as garyb already pointed out. The only time you need to think about it is when most material falls outside of the useful and interesting range.

edit:
By the way, using or not using headphones can make quite a difference for listening comprehension. So if something falls into the wrong range, this could be a variable to manipulate in order to correct that for the time being.

[Tomás]

By the way, using or not using headphones can make quite a difference for listening comprehension. So if something falls into the wrong range, this could be a variable to manipulate in order to correct that for the time being.

Good point. I often find myself closing my eyes and pulling the laptop closer to my face when I want to listen more intently. I will have to buy some good headphones.