To Use or Not To Use Chinese Subtitles

[Yadang]

I was wondering what people's thoughts are for using Chinese subtitles when watching a Chinese movie or tv show.

 

Although I can understand some of what is said without subtitles (and in some cases, most), subtitles definitely help for the slurring of words or if I miss something, etc.

 

Even though subtitles are all aired movies and TV, my Taiwanese friends have told me that they can understand everything without them anyways, and they are there only to increase literacy.

 

However, there are sometimes when for the life of me, I don't think any number of repeats would lead to me understanding. If, at these points, a native speaker would understand, I can only think that this would be due to their enormous amount of interaction with the language, so that they practically know what the character is going to say anyways, and just need very very small understandable input to know what's being said. Then again, I don't always understand everything in my own language either, so maybe I'm holding myself to to high a standard.

 

Besides the fact that native speakers seem to be able to do it (so I think it would be good to learn to do it myself), I find that I listen more carefully without subtitles (at least, I think I do...). This on its own might be a good reason not to use them.

 

Anyways, I'm wondering whether anyone has experimented (preferably long-term) with not using subtitles (turning them off, or covering them up, etc) when watching videos and tv shows, and what this has done for their listening comprehension, especially compared with using subtitles. Thanks in advance!

 

[OneEye]

I wrote here about what I used to do with subtitles. Basically, use them as a crutch until you understand a bit of dialogue, then listen to that dialogue over and over without the subs, use shadowing and chorusing to imitate the speakers, pay particular attention to how the speakers elide certain sounds or mush them together, etc. It's not especially fun work, but it's powerful.

[Yadang]

Hi OneEye! Thanks for the response. Actually, I've following your methods in that post (with, as it happens, the same movie ), and I've liked the results. I do it a little differently however - because I use subs2SRS and import the whole movie into anki in sentence fragments). I then use anki to record my own voice, listen to myself, listen to the movie audio, and repeat. I also memorize the sentences to try to "ingrain" the grammar patterns and words in my head so they come naturally to me when I speak. I've also found that this method (memorizing and shadowing whole sentences) leads to more natural tones and intonation over whole sentences, as well as a more natural (feeling)/direct route to knowing the tones of individual words I speak. With flashcards of single words, it takes me a while before I tend to "forget" the actual tone of the word and just have a feeling for it and say it the correct way (and so if I want to identify the tone, I have to "reverse-engineer" it by playing the word in my brain and figuring out what tone it is - much like native speakers seem to do when you ask them what the tone of any given word is. However, with this method, I tend to get to that point much sooner with new words).

However, when I do this kind of intensive studying with movies, I only like to do it with a movie I really like that has language I think will be really useful, because it's not a trivial process. In the above post, I was more wondering about what to do at those times when I'm not doing such intensive active recall and shadowing, and just watching movies for both entertainment and for trying to improve my listening comprehension. Have you experimented not using subtitles long-term at all? 

[imron]

Have you tried watching 锵锵三人行?  It doesn't have subtitles, but transcripts are mostly available.

 

I think it's a good idea to listen/watch things without subtitles.  They have their uses, but can also be a crutch.  The less you use them, the better your listening will get.

[Yadang]

 

Have you tried watching 锵锵三人行?  It doesn't have subtitles, but transcripts are mostly available.

 

I haven't! I'll check it out, thanks!

[imron]

This thread has relevant links and info.