Lessons

Lesson Info

Time to Play: TV & Film

Let's talk about, uh film for a bit actually gonna have less time for questions that that that that that's okay we'll have sometime in the next second um listening comprehension so this is usually where people really get tripped up is in listening because listening is hard sally was talking about this whole rally thing where you running in these cars and people just quite better and you have no idea what they're saying because it's just too fast you and now you may even have a fair bit of french under your belt and you're like this is just too fast I can't understand a word and also you're speaking in dialect and I just stop it can you just say like something slowly um generally if you want to try learning how to listen I mean there's a simple answer which is oh, just listened more uh but there's a lot of different ways to do it. So the usual way people start into listening comprehension is they say I'm gonna watch a bunch of french films with english subtitles um that unfortunately do...

es nothing at all for you. You just watched er in english film with french background music is basically what you've done and that is all you ve done your brain will choose the easiest path through and the easiest path through is there's english right there you know english, why not read the english? And you will there's no way that you're going to watch that movie and learn french if it is in english with french background. Eso subtitles in your native language are useless. That is a complete waste of time. I find no benefit to doing this except that you get to be exposed to really great french film and enjoy it, which is great it's a wonderful use of leisure time. It's fun. It just doesn't is not going to make you know french. So if that is your goal, this is not bringing you closer to that goal. Um, option two is what if I watch a french film with french subtitles? Now, this is really good. This is fabulous has a book because again, your brain will choose the easiest path and easiest path here is you have french text, which is easier than french audio. And you will read that text in the same way that you read that book with audio book and you will have a book with people moving around and it's great as a book, you will get better at reading comprehension. Your vocabulary will grow, you will know all sorts of new things. Subtitles in your target language are wonderful. They're just a book your ear will not get better get a little more familiar with the way french sounds you'll get. You'll notice a few things would be like, oh, they pronounced the s when there's a valid in the next word you can have lay and then, like les zones or something, and you'd be like, huh? We're there's that there's a vest there that sort of magically appears in the context. You will learn some things about pronunciation. You are here will not get better understanding. So that leaves no more subtitles. Okay, well, that's the start the start is that if you have no subtitles in a french film and I am suggesting french film here on french tv and french, you know, the visual audio video like video? Uh, because just listening to radio or listening to news broadcast or listening to something that's just straight audio is hard. We're trying to take baby steps into this, but subtitles not the baby steps you're looking for, and so we're skipping those those things, and we're going to try to see how can we make this easier? Because we're going to be choosing film and tv without subtitles, which is already challenging. So how do we make this easier? The first thing is to choose your genre well, what that means is no comedy. Attempting to watch german comedy is the worst thing in the world we've just talked about german humor but what you jews usually encounter is not that's not really a problem with chairman humor the problem is that comedy requires real real subtlety and language and I've had this experience numerous times we're trying to listen to my friends tell these jokes in austria and they will tell this long, long long joke it will go on and on and on and I will understand everything will be like okay the teacher he's in school and that it's okay and he's asking the student and that stuff and then the punishment would be in dialect every time and so you've listened to this joke for ten minutes it's always ten minutes and then minutely no ten minutes and five seconds they give the punchline and then they say like oh hollis may and you're like I don't understand the punch line when they tried to explain it to you and it's like and it's very frustrating experience and that's the same experience you'll have with tv in most languages is the comedy is different from language to language and it's really subtle and strange and usually won't ever get it but eventually you might get it in the target language uh in terms of really getting a sense of oh that's actually funny as opposed to I understand why you are making that laughing sound um but that's the thing to do later if you want eventually get to comedy that's fine, but if you're going to choose your first source of audio input comedy's just hard, so just skip it. What you want is something mindless and stupid in action. You just want people shooting at each other you want you want drama like like like, uh soap operas, this kind of thing you want either soap operas or mindless action things that are addictive? Um twenty four siri's you know kiefer sutherland it's great! I watched I think five seasons of twenty four in french I washed all of lost in russian for the first time. I've never watched in english except for the very last last epilogue was wonderful. The one other siri's sarah connor chronicles sarah connor chronicles and italian you're just looking for something where general, you understand what's going on because honestly, if they didn't say anything you'd understand what's going on this is people running around me like no, but what I like that's it like that's all you need to understand and that's enough all you. What you want is something you can just watch, be entertained by and actually be somewhat interested in what's going, but what you don't want is something where you're staring at me like what are you saying what is the what is the job? There's a joke? You're trying? Why is everyone laughing and, like that's, that's frustrating when you wanted to sort of action in terms of choosing film versus tv? This is a big thing, um, your goal for instances to his film, but I wouldn't recommend starting with it, and the reason for that is that your your first experience is watching film are going to be something like this. You're going to get through the first half hour, you're gonna have no idea what's going on generally at this stage, and then you're gonna watch the next half hour. You're now on our one, and you have no idea what's going on, you've just washing our and his gibberish. For the most part, you picked up words you're like, I still have no idea what's going on, and you're gonna get to the next half hour, and then it will end, and you will be sad because you just you didn't hide what you watch for an hour and a half, and you don't understand anything, and it was like, why didn't you just wasted? You felt like you're wasting your time, and you in with tv, you have a similar experience, you watched your first half hour and you don't know it was going on when you watch your next half hour and you have no idea what's going on you want your next half hour and you're like, oh that's the guy's name and then you have another eighteen hours left and by our to you kind of figured out who's doing what and then buy our three you're kind of like, oh, I was okay I'm kind of on board here like it was a little wobbly by our four you're like, okay, this is eazy e and then buy our five you start actually enjoying yourself and you just watch it like you would watch anything else and it becomes addictive especially with serious, like twenty fourth or lost where they're they're designed to be addictive you can't wait to watch it I mean you're like ah and so you two go in these binges and you watch for five hours at a time just like we do in english I mean, I think this is the thing you know these are designed for mass binging binge watching and you do that you binge watching your target language and it's awesome those first few hours are uncomfortable, but because it's one set of voice actors one set of plot it's one kind of continuous plotline uh the vocabulary is pretty consistent so you keep encountering it over and over and over again and the characters are all the same the names are all the same eventually get familiar with everyone we know there are ways of free of of sort of making this even easier which is that you again you pre read the summaries I mean this is the same idea actually this's where it started and then the book idea came later uh you go to wikipedia same thing as we did with harry potter you search lost season one in english you click the french button do you switch over in french you see episode summaries and you read them and you read the episode summary ahead of time what this turns into is this wonderful lesson plan that sort of pre designed for you where you read this three paragraph summary of the episode you're about to see in french in my case in russian I was reading the summaries for lost in russia because lost is not something you want to be lost in I mean it's it's already confusing enough in english is I hear I've only watched it in russian uh but you don't know what's going on anyway and so you might as well know at least something and so you read these summaries ah you don't read them with a dictionary I would not when you find is that you read the summary it's like three four paragraphs long and there's a few words you don't know just they use weird words like cave in russian pasha pasha now it sounds like hebrew in our languages are mixed up today and you you read this thing and you think, well I don't what is that? And then you watch the episode and everyone who goes into a cave and you're like, oh that's what that is you're like uh tom sawyer are for easton you like our forest? What does that mean? And then he starts conning everyone out of all their money you're like that's probably what off what it means and it becomes this back and forth between the text that you've read and the thing you're watching so there's a sort of a prepackaged lesson plan that's free I mean the text part is free movie parts were not in terms of where do you find these movies? That's again, tricky this is always a pain in the butt, right? Um one of the options you have is the amazon advanced search let me show this to you I've made a little tiny you're all for this tinyurl dot com slash amazon advanced we'll try typing that in seeing if it works I also if you don't have it, this is not again in the in the syllabus you need to grab this one ah amazon advanced tinyurl dot com write this down if you need it slash amazon advanced and what you'll see is the amazon advanced search thing. I do not know how to get here without this link amazon's website does not allow you to find this easily. I don't know why I've tried, I've tried to find the amazon advanced search I can't find it. The only way is to go to note two for one, five, eight, six, so one one that's why I made this tiny, you're eloping. So anyway, what you do is you go to movies and tv and you select lane, which audio tracks, and these are the options you have, you realize these are not all the options that you would want to have if you wanted arabic tv, you're not going to find it on amazon dot com, but they do have a fair bit of russian. They have a fair bit of spanish, mandarin, japanese, italian, german, french, english, cantonese I think can things is relatively sparse, so you're aware, but you select one of these things, you hit the search button button and you see what's available and you'll get a fair bit. I can't click there because you're going to see a bunch of copy written things and then we'll get in trouble with and I wake, people said, um the other option, our local amazon sites, if you go to amazon dot you will find lots of great italian content dvds that you could buy. You go to amazon dot co dot j p you'll find lots of japanese content. All of the local amazon sites, the ones that exist there is no amazon russia, for instance. Uh, the ones that exist will be able to send you dvds. You will need to get a multi region dvd player or get your computer to cooperate with multi region dvds. But that's that your last bet is tricky but gets easier. The more language you have and may well be your best option is to try your luck using google. And by that I mean, you go to wikipedia and you look for last season one or whatever lost is actually a very good candidate because it is, uh, translating a lot of languages has been dubbed in a lot of languages. Incidently, the dubs I find are fantastic. Uh, there's no, you're not dealing with the whole kung food film like I will kill you. Blob! Blob! Blob! Blob, blob, blob, blob thing anymore dubs are now. The translators are so good that they have chosen translations not only to fit the meaning of what the people are trying to say, they've chosen translations to fit the mouth and how long they're saying it and so generally you don't notice the dub after a few seconds I've never encountered a dubbed film that I'm like, oh, I hate this what the thing is instinct it's always just fine, but I will go to let's say lost season one I will switch over to, uh, french and I will find out that the title of lost in french is lost we'll switch back to the original lady special you and it'll even tell me the word for season, and so I will go on google and I will search for lost lee this battle, you and I will search for citizen, huh? And at that point you need to start going through these things in figuring out what you wanted to. There will be some legal streaming things from french tv, they will probably be some illegal stuff uh, and you need to figure that out because there will be also options in terms of you can go sit on the field, and so there you find amazon. The link actually can't show that, uh, you'll find the link directly to how to purchase that dvd. And so your best bet basically is you search on wikipedia for the original title, you switch to french, you find the title and you search google for that, and then you start adding things like this is a, uh you search for streaming, you search for a dvd and you'll start finding these options that are available to you. I believe that is the end of the segment, and so we have, like, one minute, many times question this is fascinating. I mean, I actually did this myself, but sort of accidentally, I was working for arts briefly, and I found they were running the avengers really late at night, but completely special because I knew the siri's, so well, I really enjoyed watching it, but I agree with you if I come to it, and that was the first time I'd ever experience that I wouldn't have a clue what was going on, what was being said so it's a great way to learn on dh we were teasing back and forth behind the scenes because danish dramas have suddenly become very popular in europe. This big serious called the bridge on dh there, not actually translating it. They're just running it in danish. You and british viewers have really got hooked on this, but they believe now they speak danish, which is rather sad on swedish as well, for lander is another one that they remade in english, but they did show the original swedish people are really beginning to enjoy learning languages through the television of films it's, great tip it's very cool it's definitely resonating with a lot of people online to first first that great concept off listening to the audio book while you read the translated book, which I never thought we're going like that um front but many missing in the films and the suggestion that action not company which again is something that perhaps the low person I don't think I've strayed away with such a great idea but isn't so engaging, so engaging now next segment in our learning adventure is time to play speaking fluently we're gonna talk about how to use your speaking time I mean use the time when you have someone in front of you who's actually willing to talk to you uh and use that effectively how do you use that to make you see yourself more flew into supposed to just practice the things you ready? No testing now we do have a thank you card on facebook today and a lot of you have already jumped on and said thank you that will be terrific recipe did too. So if you're on facebook, you whipped to the creative live site and scroll down and you'll see the thank you card to gave it would be terrific to hear from you in just a couple of people that have already popped there's down nikki cases thank you gave her such a motivational course I'm so inspired awesome, steve paid good stuff, gave thanks a lot, your power use. The demos have been super useful. The point is to the stuff on web. It's, great once again to send tech japanese talk isn't tech talk. I think he was speaking no that's, um, one of the scandinavian languages. I think it could be a british view women very american, and my husband and I it's, not the crane. My husband and I have really enjoyed your class, and the information about language acquisition use has been fascinating. But we also super love your lay back, enjoy the process approach. Thank you.