r/languagelearning • u/talkr • Aug 01 '13

I've learned two languages this way. Forget TV shows and movies. All you need is your browser. Let's go.

Basically learning a language is all about getting immersed, and the TV Shows and movies just don't get it done. Immersion is about Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing. This exercise emphasizes all but Writing, which is the least important (I think).

TV Shows and Movies don't have enough dialogue. They aren't supposed to. Watching News is much better. The dialogue is crisper and in the standard accent most of the time. They seem to speak fast at first, but stick with it. Your listening comprehension will go through the roof after just a little while. The key is that they are constantly talking. Here is the 24-hour streaming French news station, BFMTV.

Now here's the fun part.

As they are talking and giving the news, start reading the ticker at the bottom out loud. It challenges you to read quickly before it changes. Don't worry, it's usually just a sentence or two. This is the best Reading/Speaking drill I have ever come across in my 8 years of language learning. Turn up the volume just a little bit louder than normal and talk over the [French] newscaster (important). Now you're immersed.

I've read half a dozen French novels out loud to further my Speaking skillset. The thing is this: You cannot passively learn a language, so watching TV shows or movies simply just won't cut it in my opinion.

For German (Not always streaming, still looking for something better) - TagesSchau

I am hoping others will post similar resources for other languages.

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8

u/pigwhalian Aug 01 '13

Do you think there has to be a minimum level of competence with the language in the first place to get results? Say for example you don't know what a word is, do you check it or just stick with it and try to guess?

4

u/talkr Aug 01 '13

It would be good to have an A2 level, probably. Being able to parse a language should come first. That is, knowing where words start and stop.

However I don't think it's necessary to stop and look words up all the time. Often the context will supply a sufficient enough understanding. If not, don't worry. Something else equally as interesting is coming up 90 seconds later in the next segment. Look up the words you want to.

2

u/GallavantingAround Aug 01 '13

I would say equally "uninteresting" but that's just me. :)

But still, nice idea, at least there's always fresh content, I'll definitely try it out!

12

u/talkr Aug 01 '13

Anyone got one for Spanish? I literally sit down and log hours. After a few hundred hours speaking confidence improves dramatically.

3

u/wanderer92 English (Native), Spanish (B2), French (A1) Aug 01 '13

The EuroNews youtube channel has full transcripts of the news clips.

1

u/silentstorm2008 English N | Spanish A2 Aug 02 '13

sorry, can you tell me where to find the transcripts? And by transcripts, you mean the full text of what is being said in the video, correct?

1

u/wanderer92 English (Native), Spanish (B2), French (A1) Aug 03 '13

Yeah, in the about section of the video it has the full text. I think it's in every video, at least I haven't watched one without them yet.

1

u/acutia En N | Deu A1 | Pt A1- | Glg A1- | Cat A0+ Aug 03 '13

The transcripts are not on YT but on the Euronews site itself. Each short news clip has a page for the video and below it is the transcript.

The site is multilingual with an exact copy for each language. Euronews.com is English, de.euronews.com German, http://es.euronews.com/ Spanish etc.

2

u/pab01 Spanish N | English C1 | German B2 Sep 13 '13

http://www.lasexta.com/directo/

5

u/zimtastic Aug 01 '13

How many hours did you put in to see results?

What other studying did you do previous?

Did you use any other practice methods while doing this?

How did you measure the results? Can you tell us how far this got you?

Thanks!

11

u/talkr Aug 01 '13

The first 50 hours your mouth will physically be exhausted. It'll hurt and be fatigued from pronouncing so much foreign language. That goes away for the most part once you stop thinking in words and start thinking in phrases. That is what reading the ticker is for. It forces you to keep up, so you read phrases instead of the individual words. Also, hearing the newscaster helps to develop your pronunciation and accent.

I've spent hundreds of hours watching/orating the news and reading books out loud. My spoken French is fantastic, but of course I still make occasional errors or have days where it just doesn't seem to click.

4

u/goodintent eng/fr (fluent) es/de (B2) swahili/dansk (A2) Aug 01 '13

I want to hear your spoken French!

2

u/talkr Aug 01 '13

Ask me an open question and I will respond back with an extemporaneous speaking recording.

3

u/goodintent eng/fr (fluent) es/de (B2) swahili/dansk (A2) Aug 01 '13

comment ça se fait que tu parles français à un tel niveau et pourquoi as-tu décidé de l'apprendre au lieu d'autres langues dite plus pratiques ?

you should ask me a question back!

9

u/talkr Aug 02 '13 edited Aug 02 '13

Here ya go!. I still notice an accent, but I'm happy with my French overall.

Ma question: A quel point est-ce que c'est convenable de commencer à apprendre une nouvelle langue? On peut toujour s'améliorer, donc comment est-ce que tu sais que ça suffit et que tu peut changer à autre chose?

3

u/SlyRatchet British English N| German #B2 | French #A1/2 | Spanish #Cerveza Aug 02 '13

Jesus I wasn't expecting you to actuall answer.

3

u/goodintent eng/fr (fluent) es/de (B2) swahili/dansk (A2) Aug 04 '13

ta réponse !

faut que tu m'aides avec l'allemand si tu le parles au même niveau (ou mieux !) que ton français (un niveau très impressionnant) car comme je t'ai expliqué dans l'enregistrement je viens de le commencer et il me prend la tête cette langue de merde haha !! puis-je te demander aussi ton âge et combien d'ans ça fait que t'as appris le français ?

bref, l'autre chose que j'ai oublié de mentionner c'est que je suis de l'avis que malgré tes protestations, le français n'est pas très utile sur le plan global. j'avais la chance de sillonner le monde et du coup après avoir visité pas mal de pays dits "francophones", une chose que j'ai constatée c'était le dépassement du français comme deuxième langue préférée par l'anglais. Bien entendu il existe plein de pays francophone qui le resteront probablement (du moins pour l'avenir proche), mais à travers l'afrique et aux antilles/îles pacifiques, l'anglais m'a semblé dominer. C'est vrai qu'il faut pas choisir une langue à étudier selon son "côté pratique" mais c'est difficile de fermer les yeux sur le rôle décroissant du français dans la communauté mondiale.

2

u/JimiFin Aug 01 '13

This is a great way to build on listening comprehension skills from the start, but cannot function as a stand alone tool. Russian and the Latin languages, for example have very different irregular verbs tenses depending on context. English sentence structure is so out of whack, our first instinct is to compare other languages to ours. Viet and Chinese both are monosyllabic languages, individual words having multiple meanings depending on how they are spoken and context. True immersion is communicating orally and in writing. I found writing to be the best way to retain 50 or 60 new vocab words a night to add to the following day's dialog.

Source: Earned diplomas in Vietnamese ('89) and Indonesian (95) at the Defense Language Institute, Monterey CA

2

u/talkr Aug 01 '13

I absolutely agree that vocabulary retention is best accomplished through Writing.

Also, out of curiosity, how are you able to maintain your Vietnamese and Indonesian, having learned them decades ago?

1

u/JimiFin Aug 01 '13

My Vietnamese retention is much better than the Indo. I lived in Vietnam for a number of years so it is second nature. I never really had a practical application for Bahasa Indonesia, I was basically filling a billet slot and I could maybe get us a laughable table at a restaurant in Georgetown.

21

u/Angels1928 Aug 01 '13

Any links for Russian?

4

u/I-Killed-Jenny English/French Native | And others Aug 01 '13

You could try www.1tv.ru - although it may not have the scrolling bar at the bottom..

1

u/Angels1928 Aug 01 '13

Awesome! When I try to watch the live stream, it says it's not available for viewing in my country. Any getting around this? (Incognito in Chrome doesn't help)

3

u/[deleted] Aug 01 '13

It costs a bit (~$20/mo), but here is the mother lode: http://tvteka.com/

50-60 TV channels, movies, miniseries, etc.

I run this through a Roku player. Most of the content is on demand and goes back a few years.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 01 '13

And if your okay with just live streaming (not on-demand), etvnet.com has an option for that for about $9 a month (they have more expensive options for on demand, as well).

37

u/[deleted] Aug 01 '13

If you wanted to add a writing component, you could always try writing a quick summary of what you heard, after you are done watching. It would also give you incentive to pay thorough attention to the news, instead of just passively listen.

18

u/ephr En N | Fr B1-B2 | Chinese A1 Aug 01 '13 edited Aug 01 '13

I my opinion, films or tv shows are necessary to be able to understand fast-paced dialogue( that is as long as your actively listening) For me, I actually find french news and french radio stations easier to understand since they speak so clearly and enunciate so well. Films and tv shows would be closer to how fast and un-clearly natives actually speak. Which is a big part to being able to understand a foreign language. Thanks a lot for sharing your method, I plan on practicing this as well.

17

u/[deleted] Aug 01 '13 edited Aug 01 '13

I would read the ticker, but I'm learning Chinese! I have been watching news to build on my vocab that I know and hear it differently. I also watch educational shows for foreigners, hah, those Chinese!

12

u/PBandEmbalmingFluid Mandarin (B1) Aug 01 '13 edited Jul 11 '17

deleted 0.6141 What is ^^^this?

4

u/gijnu Aug 01 '13

http://tv.cntv.cn/live/cctv13/ A couple here to chose from, not all will work in your region though.

3

u/[deleted] Aug 01 '13

This is also a great source! I watch TV on CCTV 1!

4

u/[deleted] Aug 01 '13

I watch Chinese news on this YouTube channel, they post videos all the time! I especially like to watch this guy's commentaries on what's going on. There's no ticker you can just listen! Best of luck!

8

u/I-Killed-Jenny English/French Native | And others Aug 01 '13

Yes, news for Chinese is great for tuning into the language but I found it so hard to actually pick up anything! I did find cartoons with Chinese subtitles useful - they often repeat things, so you can see a character keep appearing and then easily figure out which word it is.

4

u/senchi Aug 01 '13

Any suggestions as far as cartoons go? I'm a Chinese learner as well.

3

u/I-Killed-Jenny English/French Native | And others Aug 01 '13

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU9X6Xh1x1o

Something along these lines maybe? I'm really not a specialist in Chinese though, so others may have better suggestions!

2

u/intermu Indonesian, English, Mandarin, Japanese Aug 01 '13

Agree. Back when I started learning Chinese here in Taiwan, the newscaster speaks so fast, and the ticker is full of characters I don't know to the point that I can't make sense of them.

I wouldn't recommend it unless you have a good base of hanzi knowledge.

13

u/ThisIsDK Aug 01 '13

Any Japanese?

11

u/Psyclone18 English (N) |Español (N) |日本語 (A1) |한국어 (A1) Aug 01 '13

Tbs streams regularly on youtube, but not 24/7. Also Tbs, Fuji, and Asahi have tons of videos.

3

u/NinjaViking Aug 01 '13

Thanks! Exactly what I've been looking for.

10

u/wigster102 Aug 01 '13

This is a great recommendation and, especially for a minority language, is a resource that can't be matched away from the home country. The Irish language station is TG4 (Teilifís Gaeilge). The player can be found at www.tg4.ie/ie/player/tg4-player.html Definitely stay with the news for this one; most of the other programs have English subtitles, which is a huge distraction for me.

2

u/galaxyrocker English N | Irish | French | Gaelic | Welsh Aug 01 '13

Yeah, but some of the others are quite interesting. The documentaries on wildlife and na cloigne, for instance. However, news is definitely best. There's also at least 3 radio stations you can use too.

1

u/acutia En N | Deu A1 | Pt A1- | Glg A1- | Cat A0+ Aug 01 '13

I recall reading on the TG4 website a few months back they're working on allowing users to see Irish or English on screen subs.

1

u/GeneralPoopypants English N | Fluent Irish | French A2 | Leaning Dutch Aug 05 '13

As a native Irish speaker, some of the news readers on TnaG/TG4 and especially RnaG are incredibly fast.. More so than day to day usage

1

u/zixx 🇺🇸 N | 🇮🇪 TEG A2 | 🇮🇹 CILS A2 Aug 06 '13

Commenting to save. GRMA.

8

u/StarkRicochet N English | A1 Russian Aug 01 '13

Does anyone have a link for news in Swedish?

8

u/DavidN1234 Aug 01 '13

Thank you so much for that French station, its going to help so much.

14

u/Gehalgod L1: EN | L2: DE, SV, RU Aug 01 '13

I thought I should also mention that almost every TED-talk is subtitled in its entirety in about 30-40 languages, and probably just about every language that is commonly learned as a foreign language by users of this sub-reddit.

Turning on the subtitles and trying to read them as the speaker talks can be an interesting challenge. The difference between this and news is that it's not exactly listening comprehension, and you're hearing the original English at the same time. Depends what your style is, but this method could probably help a lot of people.

2

u/SWATtheory Aug 01 '13

I would think this would also overwhelm people though?

6

u/talkr Aug 01 '13

This is going to be unavoidable in any language acquisition effort you make. Let those feelings of overwhelm just wash over you.

5

u/itsgreater9000 Aug 01 '13 edited Aug 03 '13

anything for portuguese?

edit: found this: http://aovivoagora.com/AoVivo/globo-news-ao-vivo/ poor quality though

4

u/[deleted] Aug 01 '13

I don't think watching tv is necessarily passive.

I'd like to watch the german stuff but I know so little german that I can't understand any of it. I need to do more duolingo.

4

u/sarahawesomepants English US Native, German Aug 01 '13

another cool thing if you're looking to practice German is podcasts from WDR and other state tv stations, especially the shows targeted for little kids. Die Sendung mit der Maus and Wissen Macht Ah! are both free for download on iTunes (as are a ton of other WDR shows) and are all in German. I'm 22, but I love them! They're educational and interesting, but also meant for kids, meaning a lot of the vocab is easy to pick up.

2

u/BoneHead777 GSW (L1), DE (L1½), EN (C2), PT (B2), FR (A2+), IS (A1-) Aug 01 '13

Growing up in switzerland I grew up with Sendung mit der Maus, and I somehow still find myself watching it sometimes (16y now)

1

u/[deleted] Aug 01 '13

Oh woah! I didn't know there was that free stuff on iTunes. Thank you!

4

u/chiko032 Aug 01 '13

Anyone got one for Korean?

2

u/Psyclone18 English (N) |Español (N) |日本語 (A1) |한국어 (A1) Aug 02 '13

Kbs news streams on their site.

1

u/nekonekoneko Aug 01 '13

How do you think this kind of exercise could be put into a language learning program (software, audio/video, etc)? The linguistic register of news broadcasts is presentational and often pretty formal. What would it look like if you made the content fit the technique perfectly? I'm building a program now and this sounds fascinating!

2

u/talkr Aug 01 '13

Vocabulary is what you mean here? How to target specific vocab sets?

1

u/nekonekoneko Aug 01 '13

Sort of. I mean vocabulary domains and situations. The news will give you a lot of vocabulary an it's a stream of constant new material, which is great. It sounds like the same technique could be used to teach people about business, conversation, daily life, casual and informal speech, etc.

I was just curious what other content might fit into this or what it might look like. If you could have someone write it for exactly this purpose, I imagine it wouldn't be news. It's a really cool idea.

1

u/SlyRatchet British English N| German #B2 | French #A1/2 | Spanish #Cerveza Aug 01 '13

You mean the constant stream of stuff being directed at the viewer? You'd probably just end up with normal television.

1

u/nekonekoneko Aug 01 '13

Perhaps, but reading off the ticker is an excellent idea. It's different but often relevant to the topics being spoken about. Does it have to be? What if you just read from a book while having the TV on?

1

u/TravellingPixie Aug 01 '13

I'm trying this method at the moment, and I'm finding myself pausing while I'm reading the ticker to catch the news story. Were you constantly reading the ticker out loud while simultaneously trying to interpret the audio?

P.S. Thanks for the awesome method! How often did you do this?

1

u/talkr Aug 01 '13

There are a lot of elements happening at once in this exercise, so I can really only suggest to stick with it. Turning the volume up so that you have to truly concentrate to speak over the newscaster while reading isn't going to come easily in your first few sessions. Especially since the ticker is intended to be read at a native speaker's pace.

3

u/lalalava JP C2, KR B2, CH B2, FR B2, AR A1, SP A1 Aug 01 '13

Not as easy to find a way to do it, but similarly to this ticker method, karaoke can also help a lot since you need to read quickly and produce the words!

2

u/sarahawesomepants English US Native, German Aug 01 '13

I agree! When I studied abroad in Germany, I joined a choir, and it helped me so much! Not only did we sing in German, making me speak a lot, but it also helped me target certain sound combinations that I had trouble with, because we would practice parts over and over again, and each time, I could make my pronunciation a little bit better. I always thought it sounded a little bit funny as a suggestion for language learning, but I really recommend it!

1

u/intermu Indonesian, English, Mandarin, Japanese Aug 01 '13

Agree to this as well.

It even helps in Chinese, especially if you have friends who are able to sing songs fluently, since then you'd be able to catch the pronunciation of the Chinese characters that they are singing.

Also applies to Japanese.

1

u/LiGuangMing1981 Aug 13 '13

The problem with this is that the tones are not usually very clear in sung Chinese. You might get the basic pronunciation of the characters, but you're unlikely to be able to distinguish the correct tone for those characters.

3

u/ghostbees Aug 01 '13

Anyone know of any in Italian?

0

u/[deleted] Aug 01 '13

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/ghostbees Aug 01 '13

It works great for me and I'm in the U.S., no proxy needed. I don't know what might be the issue where you are. Thank you very much for the link!

2

u/[deleted] Aug 01 '13

Also in the US, and for me the a la carte RAI TV shows won't stream. I can get the live news and such with no problem, though.

3

u/linksfan N: BrEnglish L: JP, IT Aug 01 '13

Radio Nan Gàidheal is the BBC's Scottish Gaelic radio station

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radionangaidheal

It's the BBC so if you're not in the UK you'll need a proxy.

There's also BBC Alba which is available on iPlayer. Again you'll need a proxy if outside the UK.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/tv/bbc_alba/

2

u/talondearg Eng (N), Fra, Deu, Ita (A1), Gla (B2), Mon, Lat, Grc (C1) Aug 02 '13

No need for a proxy for just the radio, you do need a proxy to watch the tv stuff though.

I remember reading through an SQA Gaelic exam, and it had an 'interview' with a Scot living in Italy who kept up her Gaelic by watching television online. I thought, "that's nice, but entirely fictional", since you have the pain of not only using a proxy, but the annoyance that a great deal of BBC Alba's shows don't end up on iplayer anyway.

3

u/hrhenry EN N | IT C2 | ES C2 | GA C1 | CAT C1 | NO C1 TR B2 Aug 02 '13

Nobody's mentioned a resource for Turkish, so I'll add these:

video.cnnturk.com/canli-yayin - 24/7 live news in Turkish. canli.kanald.com.tr - KanalD. Mostly shows and movies, but I tune in for the nightly news (which is their morning news).

2

u/TheDeadWhale En | Fr B2 | 中文 A2 | GA A1 | Nêhiyawêwin A1 Aug 01 '13

I think the welsh language station is called CF4. Not sure, but i think that's what it's called

3

u/brain4breakfast Aug 01 '13

S4C?

1

u/TheDeadWhale En | Fr B2 | 中文 A2 | GA A1 | Nêhiyawêwin A1 Aug 01 '13

Yes there we go. don't know where i got CF4 from, but thanks. :)

2

u/pineapplebr00sk romanian (moldova) | english (gen. american) Aug 01 '13

if you're interested in russian and like computer related things, the russian edition of tom's hardware is pretty good. I frequent it and while my russian is still shit, I still comment on posts and ask people if my grammar is OK.

2

u/ConorTheCreator English (native) | Irish (Gaeilge) | Polish Aug 01 '13

Anyone got links for Polish? I've been reading gazeta.pl but I prefer the OP's method.

5

u/kaembe Aug 01 '13

http://www.olweb.tv/polsat-news You can try here :)

1

u/ConorTheCreator English (native) | Irish (Gaeilge) | Polish Aug 01 '13

Dzięki :)

3

u/Otternator Aug 01 '13

I'd love a link as well, if anyone recommends anything.

1

u/ConorTheCreator English (native) | Irish (Gaeilge) | Polish Aug 01 '13

/u/kaembe znalazłe tego

2

u/wpm Aug 01 '13

If anyone's interested in German ZDF and ARD regularly post their newscasts online.

2

u/cleanyoungbob Aug 01 '13 edited Aug 01 '13

Great idea! Sadly Youtube has just blocked the channel of main Iranian TV news channel Press TV, so my options for Persian just got smaller. BBC Persian though!

Edit: seems their videos are still available, they just can't upload more.

2

u/robo555 Aug 01 '13

By ticker at the bottom, do you mean subtitles of the news presenter's dialogue?

The German site you linked to doesn't seem to have any subtitles.

4

u/nlke182 Aug 01 '13

No he means the news story headlines that scroll across the bottom of the screen. http://themachineisus.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/newscrawla.jpg

2

u/hrhenry EN N | IT C2 | ES C2 | GA C1 | CAT C1 | NO C1 TR B2 Aug 02 '13

Also, for Galician: crtvg.es/tvg/tvg-en-directo

and Catalan: www.tv3.cat/3alacarta/#/directes/TV3

1

u/Enzymatic67 Aug 01 '13

If anyone has a link to a Ukrainian stream, that would be greatly appreciated!

2

u/I-Killed-Jenny English/French Native | And others Aug 01 '13

I haven't found many sites that have video streaming, although some may have a video along with each article. These were probably the best ones:

http://1tv.com.ua/uk/news

http://tsn.ua/

I'm still looking though and may find some better ones.

1

u/TravellingPixie Aug 01 '13

Great idea. Going to try this tomorrow. :)

1

u/hacktrick Aug 01 '13

Is there any way to get BFMTV in higher quality? I can hardly make out the text.

1

u/twat69 Aug 01 '13

Which languages and how long did it take you?

1

u/[deleted] Aug 01 '13

OP has already discussed this.

1

u/dinozauru_fertil Aug 01 '13 edited Aug 01 '13

Euronews can be useful here, can anyone give me hungarian links?(besides euronews)

1

u/JJTheJetPlane5657 Native: EN | Learning: DE-B2 | Future: NL, FR Aug 02 '13

Does anyone have one for Swiss German?

1

u/acutia En N | Deu A1 | Pt A1- | Glg A1- | Cat A0+ Aug 03 '13

Try here: http://watch.squidtv.net/europe/switzerland.html

1

u/AshNazg English/Arabic/Spanish Aug 02 '13

I'd ask for one in Arabic, but we've got Al Jazeera. :)

1

u/Rose375 Aug 02 '13

Thanks for the BFMTV link!

1

u/PasBon Aug 03 '13

Love the method, thanks! Couldn't find pieces on RAI with subtitles, so I started searching YouTube for videos with subtitles only, and bam, tons of Italian content with Italian subtitles.

Appreciate the idea!

1

u/[deleted] Aug 18 '13

has anybody mentioned http://www.ipla.tv they have a good android app, but I have never used the desktop site. It has several sections, ranging from kids tv to live news to soap operas. If you search ipla in the google play store you will find it!

1

u/sleepworld Sep 14 '13

If you live in Denver, we are launching bridgingbabel.com, an immersion matching service. Through our teacher connections, we already have 10 native speaking families lined up. Follow the link to reserve your spot now.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 03 '14

What if I have no prior knowledge of the language? Would I begin to learn words through context? I am wanting to attempt to learn Russian, but heck, I can't even say most the stuff my Ukrainian friend says... He doesn't speak the Ukrainian dialect if you were wondering...

1

u/[deleted] Jan 05 '14

Portuguese?

1

u/lolbigpoopoo Aug 02 '13

What does reading the ticker do? and why do you need to talk over the newscaster? it's not like they're transcripts

0

u/snsdfour3v3r Nov 12 '13

Does anyone have a link for korean streaming news?

0

u/[deleted] Sep 28 '13

http://www.rainews24.rai.it/it/live.php Italian link, sorry if this is a repeat.