It definitely helps to have a few tricks up your sleeve when learning languages. As we talked about in previous posts, watching movies and television can be a very powerful language-learning tool. Another convenient and effective tool you can use along with videos are subtitles. They're available on lots of movies, television shows and many online videos, including YouTube. Long-gone are the days of huge VHS tapes with lousy quality and no language settings whatsoever (although the auto-tracking feature... that's pretty cool). Subtitles can be an invaluable tool and can influence the difficulty of the material you are learning. In this post, we'll take a look at the different ways you can use video subtitles to improve your language-learning skills.
When used effectively, subtitles can be of great help when learning languages. You can use a combination of different subtitle techniques to make your way up the levels. It can be helpful to watch the same scene a few times with different subtitle combinations. For example, you may want to watch a scene with English subtitles, then watch the same scene again with foreign subtitles before watching it a third time without any subtitles. Try to experiment with these and find ways that work best for you. Just keep in mind that if you are watching content specifically for learning, you must try to focus on the material and pay attention to the language in order to reap the most benefits.
