Cavesa wrote:I know lots of English learners that are using subtitles "until they don't need them anymore". The problem is: the moment never happens. They will never feel ready. Many of them try out, when they get a feeling like this, and then turn the subtitles back on after ten minutes, becase "I am not ready and don't want to waste my time". Noone is ever as ready as they would like to.
Exactly this. My listening in Dutch is B2, but what I say applied to when I was B1 in listening and B2 in reading as well.
You mentioned this in your post about timeframes, Cavesa, and others have talked about this, but I'll give a personal anecdote. Just a few days ago, I watched a few episodes of a couple TV programs. The first program went well. I could understand most of it and fairly easily follow the plot. The second program--not so much. It felt like people were talking faster and I felt like I could only understand half of it! After 30 minutes or so, I gave up and turned subtitles on for a few minutes, but, feeling guilty, I soon turned them off and decided to try again later.
On my second attempt, I watched an episode from earlier on in the season. Still ~50% comprehension of what people were saying, but I pushed through the 90 minute episode. I felt like I was missing a lot but I could still understand generally what was going on by the words I could understand and the actions. Second episode-- still missing a lot, but I felt it was maybe easier to understand. By the third episode, I could understand a lot more due to getting familiar with the accents and also getting more familiar with the plot. It felt like I was watching that other program--I was finally at a decent comprehension level. But this took 3 hours of watching one program without subtitles.
As long as you can understand the subtitles, you can understand the speech. It just takes a bit of getting used to. Of course extensive listening is just like extensive reading--it's ideal if you understand 80-90%+ of what's being said, but even at B2 it can take a bit of time to get used to the accents/whatnot, nevermind B1, so don't get discouraged. Of course it'd be better to start with unsubtitled programs that aren't too far away from your listening level. If you really like shows that are far away from your current level and need subtitles to really enjoy them that's fine of course, but I wouldn't count them as part of your listening practice. And like I said, don't be too quick in judging a program as too far away from your current level before you've watched a few hours of it or more. If you want to attempt programs that are quite far away from your listening level without subtitles for practice, I don't see any problem with that, but I'd also include programs that are closer to your level in your routine.