Watching a film can be a great way to support your language learning. No matter where you are on your learning journey, it’s always nice to sit back and relax while still putting in a little language practice. Being able to pick out individual words or even whole sentences from a film is also very rewarding and can help motivate you to put in a bit more time on your other educational resources, like the uTalk app.
Contents
- Subtitles in your native language vs. the language you’re learning
- I’ve tried listening to a dub and using subtitles in the language I’m learning, but they don’t match! What do I do?
- Should I re-watch something I’ve seen before?
- How do I find films to watch?
- What other tools can help me learn a language with films?
- How do I get started?
- What genre should I choose?
- What do you think you’ll watch next?
All right, how can you get started? Simply select a film to watch!
It’s likely that you’re already subscribed to one or more streaming services, and many of them offer films that are dubbed or subtitles in different languages.
dubbed = the audio track has been translated into and is performed in another language; depending on which language you’re learning, this can take different forms
subtitles = subtitles have been translated into a different language
The easiest place to start is to choose a film you like, change the audio to the language you’re learning, and get watching.
Oh, but should you use subtitles? What if they don’t match the audio? Should you re-watch something you’ve seen before? Let’s get into it.
Subtitles in your native language vs. the language you’re learning
Clearly, it’s best to choose a film where the audio was either originally recorded in the language you’re learning or where it’s been dubbed into that language. That means if you’re learning, for example, Spanish, you’ll want either a Spanish-language film, or one with a Spanish-language dub.
So far, so good. But what about the subtitles? After all, if you’re very early on in your language learning journey, you probably won’t understand all that much.
Using subtitles in your native language is a perfect way to start watching films, just make sure that you are listening to the audio and not simply reading along. Try picking out individual words, or listen out for a new grammar construction you’ve been working on.
You might come across advice telling you to move quickly from subtitles in your native language to subtitles in the language you’re learning. You might even hear people say that using subtitles in your native language will have a negative impact on your language learning because you won’t be learning anything new.
There’s good news on that point! A 2013 review on the role of subtitles in learning foreign languages found that several studies suggest that “watching subtitled programs contributes to children’s and adults’ proficiency in foreign languages.” A series of studies carried out in the 1990s also found that adult and adolescent students might learn words outside the classroom by watching subtitled TV, and that this was especially true when the programmes used foreign languages that sounded familiar to the viewer.
So, watching films with subtitles may very well help you learn new words, and even if it doesn’t do that immediately, it will likely help to reinforce words and phrases you have learnt before. As you progress, you can switch to subtitles in the language you’re learning, and then try not using them at all if that’s what you want to do.
I’ve tried listening to a dub and using subtitles in the language I’m learning, but they don’t match! What do I do?
Let’s use an example for this to make it clearer. Say that I’m a language learner, and I’m learning French. I open Netflix and decide to watch something that I’m already familiar with (so I’ve seen it before in English, my native language, and it was a film originally made in English), so I start playing a film with the French dub. I also switch on the French subtitles, but weirdly, they don’t match up to what I’m hearing.
This is very normal and is down to the way the translation industry works when it comes to handling dubbing and subtitling. In many cases, two different companies will handle each aspect: one company will translate and format the subtitles, and another will translate and organise a script for dubbing.
These companies are not working together, and there are other restrictions with each medium. For example, if you’re translating something for dubbing (particularly for a film/show that is not animated), you need to be aware of the mouth shape of the actors. Think about the difference in your mouth when you say ‘b’ versus ‘s’. When translating for dubbing, you want to match these mouth shapes where possible to make things look natural.
Subtitling has different restrictions—mainly, space and reading speed. People can only read so fast, and there are also best practices surrounding when to time subtitles after camera angle changes and things like that, as subtitles flickering in and out can be very distracting!
All this to say, often a dub and subtitles won’t match if you’re dealing with a translation.
But, if you’re watching something in the language it was originally made in, look for captions/closed captions/CC in the subtitle list. Closed captions are primarily made for D/deaf and Hard of Hearing (HoH) people, and so are much more true to what you’ll hear. Most of the time, closed captions will only be available in the original language of the film you’re watching, but some streaming services are now offering these in multiple languages, so make sure to look out for that.
Fun bonus! These captions also often describe sounds, so you’ll get short descriptions of other things you can hear, such as the mood of background music, or sound effects like a dog barking or car door slamming.
Should I re-watch something I’ve seen before?
Yes, that’s always a great place to start.
Of course, feel free to watch something new, particularly if there’s a film you really want to see in the language you’re learning. The plus side of re-watching something you’ve already seen is that you know the story, so you can really focus on the language if you want to.
It’s the same reason so many people who are learning a new language start reading Harry Potter. They already know the story, so even if the language becomes difficult in places, it is easier to keep up with what’s going on.
How do I find films to watch?
If you have streaming services at your disposal, take a look at those. Netflix gives you the option to search by language, and even lets you designate whether it should be the film’s original language or its dub/subtitled language.
Note: You may sometimes find that Netflix doesn’t have a language you expect it to, or it says it should. An easy way around this is to create a profile for that language you’re learning, e.g. Italian, and set the user language for that profile to Italian. That will push Italian as the main language you’d like films and programmes to be in, putting it at the top of the list where it is available. It’s also useful to have this separate profile if you want to get different recommendations for your language learning versus your regular watching time.
Disney Plus also has a lot of different language tracks and subtitles for its programming, and there are often foreign language films on other services like Amazon Prime.
Naturally, one way to find films you want to watch is to search online. Try ‘top 50 [films] [country]’, where [films] is in the language you’re learning and the country is the name of a country you’re interested in, also in that language.
For example, if you want Spanish films from Mexico, you could search for top 50 películas de México. Or, if you want Polish films from Poland—top 50 filmy Polska. Note that it doesn’t matter if the phrase is entirely grammatically correct (or that you’re writing ‘top’ in English in these examples!); the search engine will likely show you something anyway.
This should bring up sites like IMDb (the Internet Movie Database), where users can create lists of films and you can search for recommendations. Another useful place to look is Letterboxd, which does the same kind of thing.
What other tools can help me learn a language with films?
If you’re using Netflix in a browser, then the Language Reactor browser extension might be helpful (it also works with YouTube). This extension allows you to show two sets of subtitles at the same time, so you can watch something in, say, Portuguese, and see both the Portuguese subtitles and the English subtitles.
Having a dictionary (physical or digital) to hand and some way to make notes might also be useful, but you don’t have to treat watching every film like a learning exercise. What’s more important is getting as much exposure to the language you’re learning as possible. You want at least some of it to be understandable, of course, as otherwise you won’t learn anything at all, but there is value in simply watching ten films for entertainment.This is because as you become more used to the sounds and rhythm of the language, you’ll feel motivated to learn more, and (bonus!), you’ll probably learn a few new words along the way.
How do I get started?
Pick a film and watch it from beginning to end in one go.
No, we’re joking. That might be the best way if you’re already at a high beginner level or above, but if you’ve just started learning a new language, you might need a little more help.
If so, be prepared to watch the film in chunks instead so it’s easier to maintain concentration. This is useful to stop your mind wandering off or becoming overly reliant on the subtitles, which can happen when you start feeling tired. Be prepared, too, to feel excited whenever you recognise a word you already know!
What genre should I choose?
While there’s no issue with watching fantasy or science fiction films, be aware that you’ll probably come across a lot of vocabulary that was either coined for these genres, for the specific media you’re watching, or is generally quite rare. You might hear a lot of formal speech, for example, if you’re watching a show about kings and knights, and that may not be the way people speak the language you’re learning in their daily lives.
Choosing something contemporary and about day-to-day issues—if that’s what interests you—is always a good place to start. You might also look for a series of films; they will all cover similar language, so you should notice that it’s easier to understand things once you get to the end.
Of course, all of this pales in the face of the most important rule: choose something you want to watch and that will keep you interested. This will keep you motivated, which will help you stay consistent in your learning efforts.
What do you think you’ll watch next?
We hope this has answered most questions you might have about watching a film in the language you’re learning! It’s a really fun way to learn, and of course, all these principles apply to watching TV shows and things like YouTube videos, too, so you can pick from any of these to begin.
Let us know below what you’re planning to watch next!
Happy language learning!