Why Subtitles are Hurting Your Language Learning

Contents

• Is subtitles good or bad?

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer proved this

• Getting through the pain

• “Tolerance for ambiguity”

• Stick with it and you’ll improve

Watching TV shows is a great way to improve your listening skills and level of comprehension in a language. Once you get to an intermediate level I recommend you start binge-watching some kind of a show, documentary or history series or anything that aligns with your interests.

I find shows that have 20 or 40 min episodes are more useful better than movies. They are shorter so it won’t tax your endurance as much. Watching a 1.5 hour movie in your target language is tough even at a lower intermediate level. Being able to follow the plot with all its twists and turns is actually quite an advanced thing to do.

And the good thing about TV shows is that many of them have a lot of episodes (Friends anyone?) so you have more continuity and repetition. Since it takes place in a certain “world” then chances are a lot of vocabulary will keep popping up in more than one episode. This will make it stick easier in your mind.

And when it comes to improving your listening ability - sheer volume is key to see massive results.

Is subtitles good or bad?

Should you watch with subtitles or not? Let’s say you’re learning Spanish and you’re watching a Spanish TV show with English subtitles thinking you’ll just somehow absorb the language by picking up on a word here and there.

This might be a good thing to do as a beginner, but once you’re past that stage and to really improve - it’s of very little use in my opinion.

The problem is that as soon as you turn on those English subtitles then you’re mostly reading - in English! Which is not helping your target language skills.

Only when you remove the crutch of the subtitles will your ears fully open up and start being active. This is how babies learn languages. They are getting massive exposure even though they understand nothing at first.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer proved this

I have a funny example that both proves this and that is quite funny.

Me and my wife was recently watching the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I consider myself extremely comfortable with English. I don’t have to watch anything with subtitles.

My wife, who has good English, sometimes need that support if something complicated is being talked about. So often times we’ll have Finnish subtitles on whenever we watch a movie or a TV show (which gives me a little added Finnish practice - totally besides the point though hah). 

The problem is that this often makes me understand what is being said in the episodes less than if we would have the subtitles off! Whoa. I have watched all the episodes of Buffy before so I’m very familiar with the the plot and so on.

So at first I was a bit confused why I constantly ended up missing stuff.

“Am I just spacing out too much?” (I’ve been known to do this hehe).

Well the issue here is that when the Finnish subtitles are there I end up reading them. And since my Finnish level is not close to my English level - a lot more words will frequently pop up that I don’t know.

We are so conditioned to rely on the visual aspects of our society and culture. We have trained our eyes way more than our ears. So if there’s a subtitle there - we tend to rely on our eyes rather than our listening.

It’s like our ears automatically shut off.

And in language learning - your ears are gonna be your greatest asset. A strong listening ability helps with both comprehending and speaking well.

Getting through the pain

At first when you watch without subtitles it’s gonna be uncomfortable. This was actually something that used to hinder me a lot in my Cantonese because I wanted to understand everything that I heard.

And when I didn’t understand it would frustrate me to the point that I wouldn’t watch it. But it kept me from getting a lot of valuable listening practice in - which is crucial to build your comprehension.

And of course it’s important to pick things at the right level for you when you’re starting out or at an upper beginner/lower intermediate level.

But once you get into native-like content, which is when you really start to build towards that true fluent level, it’s going to be hard. There’s no way around it.

But as you continue to listen even though you can’t understand all of it or even most it - it develops something really powerful in you.

“Tolerance for ambiguity”

By listening to things you don’t understand it cultivates your “tolerance for the unknown”. Polyglot Luca Lampariello and Japanese language virtuoso Matt from Matt vs Japan calls it the ”tolerance for ambiguity”.

What it means is that you just build up your tolerance for not knowing, which is uncomfortable for all of us. You get more and more comfortable with it and soon you just don’t mind anymore. You pick up on what you pick up on. And what you miss you miss.

This puts your brain in the position of actually being able to absorb the language. Because even if you feel like you’re not making much of any progress your brain is constantly looking for patterns and trying to make sense of what it hears.

Our brains are wired for language learning.

Our brains doesn’t need to be forced to be able to learn a language. It just needs to be put in the right environment often enough to make the previously unfamiliar language familiar.

Over the past 6 months I’ve here and there been watching a Japanese anime show called Hunter x Hunter dubbed in Cantonese. At first I understood some but most of it got past my head and ears. A lot of unfamiliar topics that I wasn’t used to and I hadn’t really been watching many native-level TV shows before that.

Now after 135 episodes I understand most of what is being said in the episodes, so the equation has completely flipped! It’s a very exciting feeling.

Maybe now it’s finally time for me to start watching classic Hong Kong drama like “Triumph in the Skies”? (“衝上雲霄”)

Stick with it and you’ll improve

It’s quite amazing the progress you’ll see if you just stick with it. Eventually what is uncomfortable will be effortless and normal.

So keep listening and turn off those subtitles to see some real language gains. If you have found subtitles in your target language then those can be helpful.

But whenever you feel comfortable (or not comfortable) turning them off - you’ll really start to see massive benefits in your listening. It won’t happen over night but it’s impossible not to improve if you just keep at it.

If you watch a 1x20 min episode every night for a couple of weeks I guarantee you’ll see improvement. With time you’ll be watching whole movies and feel completely at ease and just enjoying yourself while just getting better and better.

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What TV shows have you been your favorites to watch in your target language? Let me know in the comments below.

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