In the same way that you tune out the audio when you watch something with English subtitles, I tend to do the same thing when I watch with Japanese subtitles. It of course helps with understanding by quite a bit, but I'm not convinced it actually helps with listening at all. I turn them off and everything becomes incomprehensible again. Has anyone had any long term listening progress with subtitles?

I don't relaly think about that aspect. I totally know what you mean with that dillema. I've thought about it before and quickly discarded that whole issue. for me i noticed that i have the hardest time understanding japanese movies, and commercials for some odd reason whiletalk/variety shows are effortless so i googled around andfound stuff (people with similar sentiments, possible explanations, etc etc) and i just left it there and just moved on. I just care about understanding everything with subtitles (so i don't have to rewind etc etc ) so i tend to watch with subs whenever possible except for anime (because I don't like crap covering the screen so for anime i write down the lines i couldn't catch or understand or the line that comes before or after that line in japanese since the subs are in japanese ). if you have subs you can look up stuff right away and you know that it's correct veruses if your depending on your listening comprehension skills you might be searching in the dark going in all different direction or maybe on the off-set chance you do catch evreything correctly and it comes up in the dictinoary, it's no biggie.

the reason you didn't catch or understand what was said was either because you dont' konw the word/phrase /etc or you're not famiilar enough wit hthe word/phrase/etc or there was other background sounds or the person has bad pronunciation or they're mumbling (I notice this in american movies too.... i hate mumbling) .

maybe you could do what i do with anime if it bothers and you want to "test" yourself. but then it takes more time so i would that for stuff you care about.

OH AND another thing you can do , which you can definitely do with ENGLISH SUBS, is to delay the subs by however seconds so you can "test" yourself. I tend to delay subs with j-subs just a little like 0.5 sec or more since i read fast so i don't spoiler/bore myself. it's sorta taxing since the subtitles lagging and the dialogue is still going and all that. I personally don't do this so i can't speak from experience.

I recently i found this transcription site http://o.x0.com/m/27049 for japnaese tv and so i refer to it whenever i can't catch something in the show sometimes if i really want to know and it's not there, i ask japanese people online.

what I would suggest is focusing on understanding as much as possible as in watch with j-sbus if they exist rather than think about training your listening comprehension. ultimately you have to think about the reason why you want to improve your listening comprehension besides generic i want to improve my japanese. the answer is probably is to watch or listen to x with ease and to do you gotta listen to x or something similar to x a lot plus learn vocab and idioms and all that jazz to get there or maybe even other media too so you become well-rounded. my view on that is it's gotta be something enjoyable and for me personally i've found that stuff so ijust watch watch watch and find out what i can't catch whether it be through j-subs or blog transcriptions or just asking japanese people so i can get full enjoyment and work on my listening comrpehension at the same time.

I'm not quite sure about what it does for listening comprehension but generally speaking I've found watching L2 stuff with L2 subtitles to be one of the best tools available. Though with Japanese I'm just a beginner I usually SRS every single line of dialogue and then when watching the show, I frequently pause the video so that I am able to read the lines carefully before the audio kicks in. I do think without pausing it's very advanced technique

If you want to focus your studying on your listening comprehension then I guess you could watch first with subtitles and then without to see if you can still catch most of the dialogue. I love Assimil and when I've used it with German, I like to listen to the lessons couple of times before even opening the book so that I'm forced to pick up as much as possible with just listening. And I would also do almost all of my reviewing with just listening so that I'm always going in and out with my ear.

egoplant Wrote:In the same way that you tune out the audio when you watch something with English subtitles, I tend to do the same thing when I watch with Japanese subtitles.

I don't really understand what you mean by tuning out the audio. I've been watching stuff with subtitles all my life so maybe I'm a little different in that regard but I find that I'm often able to read the lines two or three times while listening to the audio. A little game I use to have was to watch The Simpsons with subtitles in my native tongue and then compare the original jokes with the translated ones to see how well the translator was able to catch the original meaning. Sometimes I would laugh at the original joke first then at the translation.

Sorry for the ramble.
A big break in my English studies was when I realized that I could just download English subtitles for my English movies and stuff. At first I was pretty annoyed at not understanding everything, which is why I re-watched a lot of the old stuff that I like and pretty soon I developed a good reading and listening understanding of the language. Of course I had been doing a accidental AJATT thing with English for 17 years of my life, though I never used the language actively outside mandatory classes. But I think watching English stuff with English subtitles, and later without subtitles, was really the last breakthrough that made me feel like I really got this language. I didn't even look up words or expressions that much, I just bombarded myself with so many different kinds of sources.

i agree with norwegianringo. reading books/comics and watching movies with subtitles were the most useful things i did when learning a new language.

Quote:A big break in my English studies was when I realized that I could just download English subtitles for my English movies and stuff.

The same goes for me. Until recently I was able to read complex books in english without any effort, but I couldn't understand a thing in spoken english. Until I watched all Dr. House series in english WITH english subtitles. From that moment on I was able to listen and understand to everything in english. The good thing is it happens without any effort, because the brain connects automatically the written words you already understand with the spoken words.

But I don't know if it's the same for japanese

cophnia61 Wrote:

Quote:A big break in my English studies was when I realized that I could just download English subtitles for my English movies and stuff.

The same goes for me. Until recently I was able to read complex books in english without any effort, but I couldn't understand a thing in spoken english. Until I watched all Dr. House series in english WITH english subtitles. From that moment on I was able to listen and understand to everything in english. The good thing is it happens without any effort, because the brain connects automatically the written words you already understand with the spoken words.

But I don't know if it's the same for japanese

It was the same with me. I was able to read english books without issues long before being able to understand more than a random sentence in a movie/series. Than I started using english subs with all the media I was watching with italian subs, and my listening comprension improved significally without efforts. It's not perfect, but I can listen to audiobooks and podcasts and understand almost everything, so it's fine!

I really hope it'll be the same with japanese. I'm at a level in which I can read simple texts (hukumusume and stuff) with just a handful of dictionary lookups, but I can't understand even the simplest expression, if spoken at a natural speed ("Takedashinjidesuonegai!" "....").
Considering the difficulty of improving just my reading ability, I think I'll stick with the method I used with english, hoping in its universality across languages.

(Sorry in advance for the off-topic)

Moregon, I'm italian too, don't you mind if I ask you some questions about your university? (Più tardi se non ti dispiace ti scrivo un PM, ora purtroppo vado di fretta :/ scusa in anticipo per il disturbo! EDIT: non esistono PM in questo sito, come non detto xD)

cophnia61 Wrote:(Sorry in advance for the off-topic)

Moregon, I'm italian too, don't you mind if I ask you some questions about your university? (Più tardi se non ti dispiace ti scrivo un PM, ora purtroppo vado di fretta :/ scusa in anticipo per il disturbo! EDIT: non esistono PM in questo sito, come non detto xD)

Ciao! Nessun problema, ho appena reso pubblica la mia mail, dovresti vederla nel mio profilo! Così continuiamo lì ed evitiamo di riempire il thread di messaggi in italiano XD

/off-topic, sorry everybody!

This is purely speculation: the viewer becomes more involved in video and dialogue without the help of subtitles. On the other hand, using subtitles is a little less demanding because the viewer passively observes subtitles. That's not to say that subtitles are unhelpful. Subtitles point out what is unknown and known to us, which is valuable. There are no hard-and-fast rules here. Use whatever you feel is right for you at the moment.

It's been found "that it was not learning new information that engaged widespread brain networks and elevated cognitive performance, but rather actually deeper processing of information and using that information in new ways that augmented brain performance." Source.

Also, "research on the redundancy principle in multimedia learning has shown that although exact correspondence between on-screen text and narration generally impairs learning, brief labels within an animation can improve learning..." Source.

So, as others have mentioned, it depends on how you use the subtitles. Deep processing is preferable over receptive/passive learning. But passive watching is more enjoyable, so there's that.

Watching an episode multiple times is like priming, and improves fluency. The episode becomes easier to understand or subtitles become easier to read.

Examples of deep processing:
create associations
thoughts, reactions, emotions
read lines multiple times and make sense of them in context
look up new words and try to understand how they fit in context

A mini tldr list
• Deep processing leads to better engagement with media
• Subtitles help tremendously, but this depends on how they're used (see dtcamero & NorwegianRingo & howtosavealif3's posts for examples)
• Emotions increase retention
• Repetition reinforces memory

I think the usefulness or not usefulness comes from how you use the j-subs.

I think one of the most useful strategies during my first two years was to find something really compelling, and watch it once with J-subs (at that time it was anime like Akira, Naruto, Lucky Star etc.). Then I ripped the audio and played it over and over on my ipod later.
I would listen to that tv show / movie while just sitting doing other work, having it in the background. I already understood the plot from carefully watching it that one time so I could follow everything just from the audio.
With that set-up it was just like watching the media again, with somewhat overall comprehension. That feeling of really hearing the dialogue comes from listening to comprehensible input over and over again...
this is a good way to get there, and get away from that feeling you described of swimming around in a murky pool of incomprehensible L2 audio.

For 2 years I watched anime exclusively with Japanese subs and I passed N2 and N1 with that (as the only listening practice), and reading novels. Sure my listening still sucks but it'd be a lie to say that J-subs don't help with listening comprehension at all.

Whether J-sub or raw is better for improving listening is more debatable; with J-sub you understand more but with raw you are forced to parse the sounds better, so depending on which part you are worse at you may want to use either. For me I know I should try to watch raw as much as possible because my understanding is good but my ears are bad at parsing sounds.

I think the suggestion of putting stuff you watched (with J-subs to understand) on iPod and listening over and over again is a good idea due to it being comprehensible input.

English was my L2 and I lived in Canada for 4 years before I became comfortable watching drama and movies without English subtitles, so raw is quite difficult.

I find subtitles (either English or Japanese) are a huge help. If I don't understand what was spoken I just pause the video. At that point it usually just takes me a couple seconds to figure out what was spoken.

That being said I think an anki/subs2srs deck is much more efficient for this kind of thing

Oops, I read your post wrong. Ignore this.