jeffers wrote:bombobuffoon wrote:golyplot wrote:bombobuffoon wrote:The goal is to be able to watch TV shows and understand 90%. Films also. My reasoning is that if I can understand TV shows (like reality TV) then I should be good enough to begin to converse.
Be careful with this. While there is some synergy, they're still largely independent skills. In my experience, where I practice comprehension almost exclusively, I'm still really bad at actual conversation.
What do you count towards comprehension?
For me anything listening or reading counts as CI.
I feel CI is important, yet I would not say I am particularly enamored with the results so far, especially the more passive forms. It is however difficult to judge what impacts results the most and least.
In regards to listening I may have spent too much time on passive CI as opposed to active CI.
Although too much active I would regard as counter productive, I think there needs to be space as well.
Since you asked....
Comprehensible Input should be pretty much fully comprehensible. There should really only be a small amount you don't understand, and that part
ought to be able to be worked out from context. In practice most people would say that for a book this would mean just a few words per page you don't know. Technically, for it to be Comprehensible Input you wouldn't have to look up the unknown words. The problem is, I don't think anyone has ever made CI materials that fully follow this concept, and anyway, most of us are happy to look up a couple words per page.
When you are watching in Finnish, do you use subtitles? Anyway, I didn't notice if you mentioned it. I would suggest that if you need English subtitles, the video is too difficult to use as your main learning tool. Many people watch a lot of hours of TL content with their own subtitles, and I think it's very useful, but if that is all you're doing I don't think you will make much progress at all, even with thousands of hours.
If you can reasonably understand it with Finnish subtitles turned on, that would count as Comprehensible enough, and I think this is the best way to
learn from videos. It is also possible to watch video on Netflix with the TL subtitles as well as English subtitles using the Language Reactor tool on Chrome, and you can even set it to pause after each sentence to give you time to examine each sentence closely. I would suggest that this would be much more efficient for learning. Meanwhile, if Peppa Pig is at your level, watch that without subtitles at all and see how you get on.
One more thing Language Reactor can do is allow you to download the subtitle text, with or without English in parallel. I'm planning to use this feature to watch some Netflix series in Hindi. I plan to watch the episode first (maybe with English subs), then read the episode's text, and then watch it again, either with Hindi subs or with no subs. While reading, I will do whatever vocabulary lookups and grammar checks I need, depending on my mood.
It seems to me CI is one of those fuzzy terms that mean different things to different groups of people.
I am clear on the n+1 idea. I have also read the argument that "CI" comprehensive need not be so high such that you understand almost everything. I think we can make the distinction between
should and
ought tohere.
My version of CI, would ideally be n+1, yet for a small language which in practice is heavily colloquial this is just not practical. Sufficient subtitled material for all levels just does not exist. Hence I have to work with what I can get.
I have refined my approach to CI over 3 years and I am not too unhappy with the passive reading and listening aspects. I feel my lack of progress with CI is more down to sourcing novel level appropriate material than my approach (and of course I need to do more active output but I guess that's not typically counted as CI).
Language Reactor I really like and use extensively. I use this for transcription, listen first, if I don't catch it after a few goes I will read the subtitles, then finally if I can't read it I will translate it.
I do think TL subtitles with English audio are really useful. However, this does not make up a huge amount of my practice nor I don't use them for listening practice at all.
Rather I use them for learning about phrasing structures, learning expressions. If I hear in English the expression and then have the Finnish text that matches that expression that explains how to phrase that structure...that's super useful. Much much harder to do the other way around.
And then just like you do, I sometimes watch first a show in English to get familiar with the story so I can go back and then re watch in Finnish, and repeat etc. This is a way of getting closer to n+1 material. But yeah its still a lot of searching around.
Otherwise sometimes I also really push myself and try for something without subtitles but any adult material is almost all beyond me.
As far as where I am I can listen to Peppa Pig and understand virtually everything, except for example certain quirky nouns like "bubblestick". Its very very slow with long pauses. Hence no need for subtitles. The obvious problem with this is....nobody talks like Peppa Pig in real life (that I am aware of). Paw Patrol I need subtitles. While the speech is still very slow by Finnish standards its too fast without subs for me. Yet I catch a lot, again provided no quirky nouns. But there's only so much kiddie TV I can stand.
Reality TV or equivalent youtuber is generally ok with subtitles and I can follow broadly speaking. I try for this area yet very difficult to get any non trashy subtitled content here. I wish I could get more of that kind of stuff, as this is where I would make progress.
Compared to films, I cannot follow any films with Finnish subtitles. Sometimes I will watch them but I treat that more like reading a book, pausing at each new sentence. Also any shows or films with heavier slang, subs or not is entirely out of reach. These are generally words and formations not even in dictionaries, Google translate may or may not guess at these correctly. So I don't bother with these.
The official A2 test sample materials are also very difficult (no subtitles), which I periodically check. So I have a pretty good idea of where I need to be.
