But you also say that passive listening is a powerful learning tool, when coupled with active study. You say that watching something with subtitles is the equivalent of watching it in English. So, it really is just like doing something completely in English with an occasional Japanese vocabulary word thrown at you from time to time. But at a low level, you don’t have the foundation to manage these two different thought processes and the English takes over. While other times, I feel like I’m listening and reading two different language simultaneously and that they are being processed kind of in two different thought processes (it’s very interesting). If I look at them, sometimes my Japanese zones out and I feel like I’m not picking up anything. However, they can be distracting depending on the size of the screen. And watching without subs gives you thatĪt my level (~40), I don’t need subtitles, and when there are subtitles because I’m watching with someone else, I try to avert my eyes. But what you really need right now is to immerse yourself into the sound of the language, so that your brain can more quickly pick up the flow of the language, allowing learning from context. You’ll perhaps pick up a few new phrases and occasionally hear a phrase you recognize. So if it were me and I were to redo how I started learning Japanese (I didn’t switch to “no subs” until level ~30), I would’ve followed one drama subbed and one not subbed, because I was one of those people who really wanted to follow the details of the stories, but could’ve benefited from the added immersion.Īt your level, it’s really hard to focus on listening to the Japanese at the same time as reading the subtitles. With my suggestion, I can’t imagine watching more than two dramas at a time. I was going to add another suggestion to watch in Japanese, then English, then in Japanese again, but reading the previous comments, Adshap’s reasoning that it’ll take away the motivation to understand purely in Japanese makes sense. You’ll be learning completely by immersion, and not from a prior knowledge given to you by English. This way, you grow attached to the drama or anime just in Japanese, no English involved. My suggestion is to pick one (or more!) series that you are dedicated to not watching any subs with. After all, Japan’s story making skill is a lot of the reason why people want to learn the language! I understand the desire to understand the plot. Movie screenshots from: Big Dreams Little Tokyo I’ve never really had the problem using a TV, since DVDs and Blu-ray have the option to disable subtitles, but I suppose you could tape a small strip of paper along the bottom of your TV to cover it up. It is much more preferable than having the constant urge to dip your eyes towards the bottom of the screen. It does slightly get in the way of the actual video, but so do subtitles. Solution: open a folder or small program. You may think to yourself, “Well I just won’t look at the bottom of the screen and I’ll be just fine.” You can usually go a few minutes like that, but you will give in to temptation. This is a very common problem with online streaming content such as Japanese movies on Netflix, or most things on YouTube. Unfortunately, you often find great Japanese content with English subtitles that can’t be removed. Watching something with English subtitles is the same as watching something with English audio. I have mentioned before that you should never, ever use English subtitles when watching a Japanese video.
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