I have been watching television series for the last 18 months and also a handful of movies. I have come to the conclusion is that television series are a superior form of the learning resource from a language learning point of view.
Advantages:
1. More face-to-face interaction in terms of dialog density/language density.
2. The same collocations are repeated in every episode therefore you get to see them being used in different contexts. By the time you finished watching one season of the show, you have already developed a natural intuition for the word even without using a dictionary.
A huge advantage over movies.
3. Your subconscious mind is already used to the accents of various characters in the show so it is much easier to comprehend the language.
4. Since I am living in a target language country, the number of collocations I have picked up through television series is amazing; they are being used by local natives just verifies the efficacy of using such a medium.
In your opinion, is there a difference in difficulty between TV series and movies?
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Re: In your opinion, is there a difference in difficulty between TV series and movies?
I agree with those who say it depends, and also with Le Baron in that TV series have been on the rise recently, and a lot of them are better quality linguistically than most movies. Some series are like very long movies cut in parts. The most difficult series/movies for me are the ones that are closely linked to the culture of the country, contain a lot of colloquial speech, cultural references, dialects. When I was a beginner Spanish learner, I started to watch Aquí no hay quien viva. It's about some neighbours in a house, with a lot of references to the Spain of the era, and a lot of colloquial expressions. It was much harder for me than an average Spanish movie, but after the third season I understood most of what was going on. Did I get used to it? Maybe, or maybe my Spanish was improving. By the was, a movie like this for me was Ocho apellidos vascos.
This could lead to the conclusion that I also recommend dubbed series for beginners, but I don't. I have the impression that they are as artificial as course books. Language is not just words, it's also gestures, facial expressions. Difficulty is one question, another one is usefulness. If I start another language in the future, I'll try to choose a series that presents the everyday life of the natives with colloquial speech. I tolerate relatively well not understanding a lot, and I think I can keep a limit on looking up words and rewinding. I also understand and accept that amount matters, that if you watch 3-4 hours of anything daily, even dubbed series, you'll reach your goal. But I don't have this amount of free time, especially not for all of my languages, so I need to be picky.
This could lead to the conclusion that I also recommend dubbed series for beginners, but I don't. I have the impression that they are as artificial as course books. Language is not just words, it's also gestures, facial expressions. Difficulty is one question, another one is usefulness. If I start another language in the future, I'll try to choose a series that presents the everyday life of the natives with colloquial speech. I tolerate relatively well not understanding a lot, and I think I can keep a limit on looking up words and rewinding. I also understand and accept that amount matters, that if you watch 3-4 hours of anything daily, even dubbed series, you'll reach your goal. But I don't have this amount of free time, especially not for all of my languages, so I need to be picky.
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Re: In your opinion, is there a difference in difficulty between TV series and movies?
Le Baron wrote:However the gap between films and good TV has certainly narrowed. In the past TV used to be thought of as a place were once-famous film actors went when they were washed-up. Now you can get Hollywood stars to be in a BBC TV series. The production values are much higher and in some cases equal. Mad Men or Boardwalk Empire or any current series of that calibre is like a very long film. And the scripts are not much different than a film script.
Nothing that anyone said prior to your post said TV scripts programmes or scripts were in any way inferior to films -- we highlighted fundamental, practical differences in the mediums that transcend budget.
The difference between a film and a TV series is essentially the same as the difference between a novel and short story -- short stories and movies need to use language economically, and every word has to have a very specific reason for being.
Novels and TV series can afford to use words as background or scenery in a way that short form media can't. This is not a matter of being less skilful, it's just a different skill -- compare it to stage dressing vs set dressing for screen. You have limited space on stage and limited time to change the sets, so you have to place select objects in meaningful ways, whereas the goal of set dressing is to fill the space with enough things to make it look real.
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Re: In your opinion, is there a difference in difficulty between TV series and movies?
Movies generally have higher vocabulary and cultural knowledge requirements. Vocabulary also gets recycled in series. Some miniseries may have movie like qualities. Some movies have very little dialogue. Dubbed TV series, documentaries and cartoon series are a good way to practice listening. Translated entertainment is generally easier than original cultural products.
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