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Watching TV and movies with subtitles is a great way for intermediate language learners (B1 and above) to progress. Kudos to Mate for thinking of capturing this

Watching TV and movies with subtitles is a great way for intermediate language learners (B1 and above) to progress. Kudos to Mate for thinking of capturing this in Netflix with a browser add-on. However, creating a flash card with a translation to your native language is not the best way to master vocabulary. A translation (or, "gloss") can be helpful initially, but it's more important to see the word in context. It would be great if a browser extension would include spaced repetition / flash card creation of both production cards (sentence with a blank usually) and comprehension cards (the word alone) and pull up the original video frame for context whenever checking one's recall. FD: I hold an MA in TESOL / applied linguistics / language acquisition, and I have several years' experience teaching ESL students. However, I am not yet fluent in my own second language (Russian). Working on that with the Fluent Forever methodology (though not their new app).

spraak 8y ago
> Watching TV and movies with subtitles is a great way for intermediate language learners (B1 and above) to progress. If they have patience, it's good for anyone. My children have been able to learn many languages this way from scratch to a very high level of fluency that I only minimally speak. I look for children's tv network apps for their iPad from countries with the target language.
- jeffwass 8y ago
  How do you do this? Target language audio with English subs?
  - Tharkun 8y ago
    Belgian here. Growing up, most of the stuff I watched on TV was either French or English (Belgian TV had little to offer at the time). There were no subtitles. I mamaged to pick up a good deal of French and a great deal of English in this way. I think watching things in their original language is key. You pick up on things using context, some of which is lost in translation.
    - r3bl 8y ago
      I've learned English the same way. A fair amount of people in my generation learned German the same way. It boiled down to which TV channels you had access to while you were a kid, and the lucky ones learned both. As an adult, I have way less patience to stare at a screen and try picking up stuff that I don't understand. I've tried finding some Dutch shows with English subtitles, but it was shocking how little content I could find.
  - spraak 8y ago
    No subtitles, just lots of patience and repetition. The visual context is the key. It wouldn't work with audio only.
AntonOfTheWoods 8y ago
I think you are underestimating how effective flashcards can be, particularly as part of a larger system. I'm starting a 4-year PhD in September to develop a system that will gloss words (in text/subtitles in a variety of clients, like FF, ebook readers, media players, etc.) that aren't in your (Anki-compatible) flashcards. That means you get to read "normal" text, enriched with glosses only for words you don't know. The idea is basically to provide automated scaffolding at exactly the level the learner is currently at vocab-wise. There is an extension to Anki that does what you suggest with the video frames (at least for Japanese?), and I want to integrate that (or similar) at some stage. But there are heaps of cool ideas to implement if you take the flashcard database as a first approximation of a representation of the learner's (lexical) knowledge of a language and then enrich real-world texts that the learner is interested in with enough help to appreciate the real-world content. The beauty with having a representation of the learner's knowledge is that you can take a number of different approaches (say depending on the % of unknown words) or even just let the learner decide how much help they want/need on a given content consumption session. With even a small number of users the data generated will also be pretty awesome for research purposes. It's pretty clunky still (I haven't started the thesis yet) but it is all going to be completely open-source and I definitely hope I'm not the only one to contribute to it, so hopefully it will get some momentum at some stage, and there will be heaps of clients that can talk to the server part. https://transcrob.es https://transcrob.es
- garfieldnate 8y ago
  Can I sign up to receive updates about it? I'm very curious. This could be pretty awesome!

spraak 8y ago

> Watching TV and movies with subtitles is a great way for intermediate language learners (B1 and above) to progress. If they have patience, it's good for anyone. My children have been able to learn many languages this way from scratch to a very high level of fluency that I only minimally speak. I look for children's tv network apps for their iPad from countries with the target language.

jeffwass 8y ago
How do you do this? Target language audio with English subs?
- Tharkun 8y ago
  Belgian here. Growing up, most of the stuff I watched on TV was either French or English (Belgian TV had little to offer at the time). There were no subtitles. I mamaged to pick up a good deal of French and a great deal of English in this way. I think watching things in their original language is key. You pick up on things using context, some of which is lost in translation.
  - r3bl 8y ago
    I've learned English the same way. A fair amount of people in my generation learned German the same way. It boiled down to which TV channels you had access to while you were a kid, and the lucky ones learned both. As an adult, I have way less patience to stare at a screen and try picking up stuff that I don't understand. I've tried finding some Dutch shows with English subtitles, but it was shocking how little content I could find.
- spraak 8y ago
  No subtitles, just lots of patience and repetition. The visual context is the key. It wouldn't work with audio only.

AntonOfTheWoods 8y ago

I think you are underestimating how effective flashcards can be, particularly as part of a larger system. I'm starting a 4-year PhD in September to develop a system that will gloss words (in text/subtitles in a variety of clients, like FF, ebook readers, media players, etc.) that aren't in your (Anki-compatible) flashcards. That means you get to read "normal" text, enriched with glosses only for words you don't know. The idea is basically to provide automated scaffolding at exactly the level the learner is currently at vocab-wise. There is an extension to Anki that does what you suggest with the video frames (at least for Japanese?), and I want to integrate that (or similar) at some stage. But there are heaps of cool ideas to implement if you take the flashcard database as a first approximation of a representation of the learner's (lexical) knowledge of a language and then enrich real-world texts that the learner is interested in with enough help to appreciate the real-world content. The beauty with having a representation of the learner's knowledge is that you can take a number of different approaches (say depending on the % of unknown words) or even just let the learner decide how much help they want/need on a given content consumption session. With even a small number of users the data generated will also be pretty awesome for research purposes. It's pretty clunky still (I haven't started the thesis yet) but it is all going to be completely open-source and I definitely hope I'm not the only one to contribute to it, so hopefully it will get some momentum at some stage, and there will be heaps of clients that can talk to the server part. https://transcrob.es https://transcrob.es

garfieldnate 8y ago
Can I sign up to receive updates about it? I'm very curious. This could be pretty awesome!