GIVE ANSWERS - English

”Watching movies with subtitles is good for learning” is one of those myths perpetrated by foreign language teachers who are unable to teach either speaking accuracy or listening accuracy - or who don’t want to go through the hard work of teaching students listening or speaking accuracy.

If you need to be watching something with subtitles in order to grasp most of what is being said/ what is happening then what you are watching is probably too difficult for your language level! Go for something easier for you! When you watch something with subtitles, you are getting clues about what is being said from the text, no matter whether it is in English or French. It’s not really an efficient way of making your brain do the hard work of learning to decode what you hear by just hearing it.

People also don’t stand with a subtitle board below them when they are speaking You have to be able to listen without textual clues!

It works to a very limited extent with subtitles but is a very inefficient way to learn. Better to get even an untrained native-speaking tandem partner to show you how to say words and how they sound and how words are said together. You learn better what to listen for.

A tip for understanding films / movies better is to watch the film for a few minutes, then go back to the start and continue. You become used to the speakers and it becomes easier to understand their accents and pronunciation - even without subtitles. If you still don’t know what is being said - the film is too difficult and you should find something easier.

For words you don’t know which you hear in the film - write them down then look them up in a dictionary, hopefully a monolingual dictionary such as Oxford Advanced Learners if you are learning British English, for example. If you find that you are looking up too many words, then the film / series is too difficult for your level and you should find something else.