I believe I got to a point where I can read whats going on fairly fast on game shows which are getting almost as helpful as English subtitles... For example, most songs I can sing along with at the same exact speed with the lyrics. Ok it's worst with variety shows, sometimes I just neglect the speech unless its short and understandable because I just can't hear anything. Instead I just read because the shows I watch almost 90% of what everyone says are in the subtitles. By this I can understand about 30-40% of whats going on. Without it feels like 5-10%. Is it bad to keep staring at the subtitles all day?

It's not cheating to use Japanese subtitles, it's excellent practice.

If you can't follow TV shows yet for listening comprehension reasons, you should probably spend some time with Erin https://www.erin.ne.jp/ or with buonaparte's L-R resources or both. If it's vocabulary, well, you probably have a favorite vocab method already.

Do try to keep your ears open and line the written words up with the voices, though, or it's not as valuable of practice.

I think to start with you should use whatever methods you can to make Japanese media accessible. You'll be able to consume more Japanese so you'll improve faster and it will be easier to tackle the hard stuff later.

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:It's not cheating to use Japanese subtitles, it's excellent practice.

If you can't follow TV shows yet for listening comprehension reasons, you should probably spend some time with Erin https://www.erin.ne.jp/ or with buonaparte's L-R resources or both. If it's vocabulary, well, you probably have a favorite vocab method already.

Do try to keep your ears open and line the written words up with the voices, though, or it's not as valuable of practice.

I'll check them out, thanks. Listening always have been the hardest aspect in all the languages I used to learn. I'm a fast learner when it comes to reading however :p

you could watch it again without japanese subtitles or you could make the subtitles lag behind 1 second or something to check yourself. I personally don't do either because i just want to catch what they say and move on. I try to blame the person like the actors for not catching what they say lol... i think most of the time it really is there fault but i'm sure sometimes it's because japanese is not my native tongue.

If you listen to Japanese and it's complete gobbledygook, it's worth your time studying material with subtitles.

If you listen to Japanese and you can mainly catch the gist, but might need a listen or two (or three), it's worth your time to abandon the subtitles, and work on building up your listening comprehension skills instead of relying on reading.

You can also do a halfway approach: find materials with subtitles, listen to them once or twice w/o assistance, and then consult the subs only for those areas you truly couldn't comprehend. That's the approach I'm taking lately with shows on CrunchyRoll.

I do think there's a point where relying on subtitles becomes a crutch. It's not that it's "cheating" - it's that you're depriving your mind of the opportunity to grapple with comprehending pure audio input in your L2, which is qualitatively harder than comprehending and retaining the written word because audio is a forward-only stream.

Go with your gut. If you feel you can only grasp 10-15% without subtitles, keep using them until your comprehension improves. Like Chris said, it's excellent training.

Ok thanks, however I like watching variety shows and I believe those have no options to turn off subtitles(japanese). I guess I'll go back to watching some dramas with subtitles, than take it off the second time

[s0apgun]

Sometimes when I'm watching something in Japanese i'll use subs for half of it and then turn them off. Best of both worlds >.<

Variety shows dont sub everything. Like i have to rewind sometimes or search for blogs that transcribed it or ask on chiebukuro for parts i couldnt catch. Actually sometimes some of the funniest interesting lines aren't turned in subtitles to be put in the screen... so if you only understand the dialog with the subs you might be missing out. dont force yourself to watch dramas if u dont like them all much just to fulfill the no subs requirement.

howtwosavealif3 Wrote:Variety shows dont sub everything. Like i have to rewind sometimes or search for blogs that transcribed it or ask on chiebukuro for parts i couldnt catch. Dont force yourself to watch dramas if u dont like them all much just to fulfill the no subs requirement.

There's no "requirement". Do what you like. I definitely don't believe OP should watch shit that he/she doesn't enjoy out of a sense of duty. I do believe, however, that there's extra cognitive effort involved in grasping spoken language w/o the assistance of text, and that this is worthwhile to practice once you reach a certain level.

It's also a matter of wanting to engage more deeply with the language. I was fine using transcripts heavily for over a year. After a certain point, I got tired of passing over things that looked interesting because "there's no transcript available".

So I guess my advice is, listen to some things without transcripts, but make sure you're enjoying it even if it's a little beyond your current level.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: There's no cheating in language learning.

But if you feel like you're using it as a crutch, just turn off the subs. I watch different shows with or without subs and I go through phases where I feel like one way over the other is massaging my comprehension abilities nicely.

[Zgarbas]

Watching anything in any language without subtitles is annoying. I wish real life had subtitles.

Also

Quote:I've said it before and I'll say it again: There's no cheating in language learning.

This!

Zgarbas Wrote:I wish real life had subtitles.

Ha, that's good! I've often felt like that.

Come on, Google Glass!

Well i've only been doing serious study for about 2 months, just passive learning for like 5 months but that did nothing for me. I'm pretty content with my 30-40% understanding of media (WITH subtitles), hopefully it will be get better, than I'll start taking off the subs.

Xanpakuto Wrote:Well i've only been doing serious study for about 2 months, just passive learning for like 5 months but that did nothing for me. I'm pretty content with my 30-40% understanding of media (WITH subtitles), hopefully it will be get better, than I'll start taking off the subs.

I think you're well shy of the point where transcripts would be considered "cheating", then. I would keep using them until you feel like you can enjoy listening to Japanese without them.