I run a language learning app (leerly.io) which focuses on teaching language through comprehensible input, which seems to be at least somewhat how LLwN is approaching the problem of language acquisition. For those interested in how to get the most out of language learning tools like LLwN, some tips which are backed up by the field of applied linguistics:
- Don't translate! If you do, do so very sparingly. It sounds counter-intuitive, but stopping to translate often will just slow you down. That's because...
- The most important thing is just experiencing the language. You need hundreds and hundreds of hours listening to the language to really start to acquire it. Comprehension is inevitable, just optimize for time spent listening/reading.
- Avoid speaking. This has shown to actually hinder the process of acquiring a language. Speaking is the natural result of having learned a language. You'll notice when you're ready to start speaking a little because you'll occasionally have thoughts in your target language. Until then, speaking practice is virtually useless.
Maybe these will help you, as they've definitely helped me learn Spanish. Buena suerte :)
Note: These tips are also only for people who want to learn a language to fluency. If you just want to learn enough to order at a restaurant, that's a different ballgame.
"Avoid speaking"
This is 100% a myth. The Defense Language Institute comprehensively disproved this in the mid-1970's.
I know this because it's discussed on the first day of classes at DLI as for why you need to learn to speak the language not just hear and read it. Because my job title was voice intercept operator.
Pre-1976 the Defense Language Institute did not score or rate students speaking ability because only reading and listening were considered mission critical skills.
Post-1976 it was considered a mission critical skill because it had such a dramatic effect on students final listening and reading abilities during the culminating Defense Language Proficiency Test (DLPT). Subsequently an Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) was developed and is considered an integral part of the DLPT.
Note: This was all direct, primary research done at the Defense Language Institute with thousands of participants annually, so it was direct cause and effect experiment.
The DLI has a different set of motivations: bring as many analysts to a working level of proficiency within a fixed time period, and has a lot of other things that confound this analysis: it's totally ok for the DLI to wash out some percentage of trainees in each flight, they can pre-screen candidates into whatever language they think is a best fit depending on candidates latent aptitudes, etc.
There is a universe where both pieces of advice can be right; surely you can imagine "don't worry about speaking" advice might be reasonable for someone who is learning casually, has no hard time frame to learn, wants to learn in dribbles and maximally passively, for whom a partial fluency might be a reasonable endpoint, and the greatest risk is burnout from negative reinforcement of failure.
I was surprised to see that suggestion as well: every language course I've ever seen focuses on memorizing a (relatively) natural dialog and reciting it word for word from memory as its primary means of targeting fluency. I don't know about the research OP cites, but I've found that, for me, memorizing the dialogues as the courses suggest have been by far the most helpful way to advance in language acquisition. I will admit, though, that of the foreign languages I do speak, I speak them better than I understand them... so maybe there is something to this.
> - Avoid speaking. This has shown to actually hinder the process of acquiring a language. Speaking is the natural result of having learned a language. You'll notice when you're ready to start speaking a little because you'll occasionally have thoughts in your target language. Until then, speaking practice is virtually useless.
This has to be the most counterproductive advice I've ever heard. You need to start speaking as soon as possible. There's no other trick to learning a language than forcing yourself to speak.
For some it's easier because they're less socially anxious. For others it will be more difficult. I was in the latter camp learning Danish. You have to make friends with your fear or you will forever be stuck in what many language learners refer to as a "quiet period". I was for a decade (!!!) If you don't start speaking you will forever have only an intellectual understanding of the language.
So speak. Please speak. Early and often. Babies sound things out early because they're trying to get a hold of it, the vocal contortions required.
Now a result I can believe in this vein would be: "that attempting to lean heavily on sentence construction and grammar exercises to induce speaking could have a negative effect on language acquisition" and that's what I believe Stephen Krashen is actually advocating against.
But that's a very specific claim as opposed to "avoid speaking".
You haven't really shown how speaking improves your understanding or comprehension of a language.
Of course you need to speak to get good at speaking, I don't think that's what the original poster meant. But rather that you should focus on comprehension initially,because there's not really much point to speaking to someone if you don't know what you want to say and cannot understand the response.
I'm curious, do you know of any research (or even just anecdotes) showing that speaking practice is bad? I've heard the claim before but never seen any evidence for it.
In my own experience, it feels like speaking helps improve my speaking a lot. Sure it doesn't help me pick up new phrases or grammar at all, but the first time I say something always comes out horrible, before getting progressively better as I say it more. And there's the skill of utilizing a limited vocabulary to communicate complex ideas. That's another thing that I feel has gotten better as I exercise it through speech.
I'll try to dig up the original study I found months ago, talking about correlation between speaking practice and language acquisition in Japanese students learning English. When controlling for method of study, the researchers noted that students who tended to speak more ended up doing _worse_ on final exams. This could potentially be explained by the tendency for early speakers to way over-focus on correctness, which slows the whole process.
In the meantime, this book by Krashen may be of interest! He touches on some of the same ideas, roughly. Notably, around page 100 or so, he starts to define what he would consider his ideal learning environment: http://www.sdkrashen.com/content/books/sl_acquisition_and_le...
I disagree with nearly all of your advice and tips. And I'd be very surprised if they reflected actual scientific findings in linguistics.
The least objectionable is the "don't translate" tip but even there I think you've gotten it wrong - translating isn't the issue - avoiding the trap of getting bogged down in trying to translate _precisely_ or being a perfectionist. But you definitely have to maintain some understanding of the context in order to get any value from subsequent exposure.
I fully disagree that you can acquire language just by osmosis - that it's enough to just listen to a language for hundreds of hours. Do you really think that if I isolated myself with hundreds of hours of say Mandarin audio recordings, TV shows and newspapers and novels and spent 40 hours a week listening to the recordings or staring at written text, that in a few months I would acquire the language? I mean if this actually worked, learning second languages wouldn't even be seen as a challenge or task.
It takes thousands of hours of active "work" with a second language to acquire it (although the data is patchy), not hundreds of hours of passive "experiencing".
And avoiding speaking is terrible advice. It's been shown to provide a huge boost to language acquisition. I know people who can read and comprehend the spoken form of a second language at a reasonably high level (C2) but can barely speak it. Speaking will not just "happen" if you don't actively practice it.
If you honestly did manage to acquire fluent Spanish purely by just passively "experiencing" the language, then I'm guessing your first language is closely related one - one of the romance languages.
> Do you really think that if I isolated myself with hundreds of hours of say Mandarin audio recordings, TV shows and newspapers and novels and spent 40 hours a week listening to the recordings or staring at written text, that in a few months I would acquire the language?
Yes, it does work, according to various accounts I've seen, although 40 hours for a few months might not quite be enough
(the usual figure is around 18 months of full-time immersion, and more is obviously better), and this is actually quite challenging to do for long periods of time (esp. without distracting yourself with your native language excessively) and that's why it can be a challenge.
>not hundreds of hours of passive "experiencing".
It's on the hour of thousands, not hundreds. There are people, especially in the refold community, who have reached fluency in languages very different from their native, with mostly input (active output is part of the equation, but it can be done later, after your comprehension is very high).
>Speaking will not just "happen" if you don't actively practice it.
Yes, you do need to practice speaking to get good at speaking. But from aforementioned accounts, this process can be quite fast after a high level of comprehension has been gained.
I can confirm that for myself, over the past half year or so, increasing the amount of input I get every day has greatly accelerated my japanese learning process, versus the previous year, where I got far fewer hours in (1, maybe 2 hours a day at most, versus my current 4+ hours every day), although I'm not fluent yet.
In just that time I went from barely being able to read, and only being able to understand simple beginner podcasts to being able to fully understand easier shows (stuff for adults is still mostly out of my reach), and understand most of all the podcasts I listen to, (as long as I'm actually focused on the audio, if I'm passively listening I don't understand as much). My reading hasn't improved as much, as I spend probably 80% of the time listening/watching shows versus reading, but I can read basic manga easily now, and I'm working on reading through some essays now, novels still seems massively difficult, but we'll see in another couple months.
I've found that many hours of audio input each day have greatly improved my ability to keep up with native-speed speaking, although for increasing my comprehension, intensive study (making sure I understand each line in a show, or careful reading) is more effective per unit of time. I have no doubt you could acquire the same results as intensive study with enough exposure to the language though, as I've seen it happen with myself before I tried adding intensive study, it would just take more time.
Most people wouldn't call 4 hours a day massive though, so I can probably still increase my rate of improvement if I find more time to use.
Sure, don't translate, but the input also has to be comprehensible. So there is always a challenge of not seeing the translation but still understanding. If you never look something up, there are some words you will never know. There is a balance, and that balance is hard to find.
True, a lot of it depends on personal preference, too. I think the idea is to not worry about understanding 100%. Even just 70% could be fine! Or just the gist or emotion of the text could be enough.
A lot of people have already commented on the part of not speaking being virtually useless at the beginning. I tend to agree with the criticisms listed there, but I submit another reason: muscle memory.
Practicing making the sounds of the target language as soon as possible with the correction of a native speaker, in my opinion, is absolutely essential. For many languages, there are unique sounds that are just close enough to one’s primary language, that our muscle memory causes us to make the familiar, incorrect sound instead of the proper one. Because it’s more a matter of physical exercise alongside the rewiring of our brains to recognise said phonemes, the more time spent working on it, the better on the path to fluency.
Having said all that, everyone’s language acquisition ability and language goals will be different, so I can see where this piece of advice does not have universal application.
One thing I've noticed helps me learning language has been working hard to imagine the physical thing as opposed to the english equivalent word. That is imagining a shiny red apple when learning "manzana" instead of the word "apple". Always wondered if theres anything to back this sort of approach up or its just different learning styles.
Oh totally, I've wondered the exact same thing. I started messing around with that on leerly, and there are a couple articles with a feature called Storybook, where images appear as the user is speaking, to help build the association between the foreign word/sound with an image, rather than the associated word in your target language.
I have no idea if it's effective, I just think it'd be cool to see how it helps with learning grammar. I def want to experiment more with it, but it takes a fair amount of time to add images to all the articles.
> The most important thing is just experiencing the language. You need hundreds and hundreds of hours listening to the language to really start to acquire it. Comprehension is inevitable, just optimize for time spent listening/reading
Listening with or without subtitles? I've been trying to figure out if watching content in another language with English subtitles actually helps me at all...
Nope, no subtitles in your mother language. Only your target language. It's okay if you don't understand a lot, what matters is exposing yourself to the sounds and sights of the language, and the general message of what is being conveyed ("I don't know exactly what they just said, but they seemed pissed and they said 'mierda' a lot, so maybe that means something bad").
Ideally, you'll want to focus on material where you can understand the majority of what is being said, through subtitles or just listening. If you find you can't do that, try watching something that would be easier to understand.
I couldn’t disagree more with “avoid speaking”. Being forced into conversations is my main method for learning another language, even with a small vocabulary it’s how I retain most of what I learn… by practicing it.
I do agree with the “Don’t translate” though. That never works.
Paying member here -- I've used it to slowly, sentence by sentence, watch a full season of a Taiwanese workplace drama over the past few months.
One of the best parts of LLwN as a way to study is the passive encouragement: you can click on a word to mark it as "known", and then it always shows up green in future subtitles.
Pretty soon, entire multi-line subtitles start showing up all green. And for me at least, that provides a huge confidence boost that helps me keep going.
Instead of seeing each new subtitle as a challenge ("<Deep breath> here we go..."), you think, "It's all green! I already know everything here! I just have to read it!" And that's made a huge difference in how it feels to study.
If you want a similar experience with text, I can recommend Learning with Texts (LWT) if you want a self-hosted experience and you are okay putting in some work to setting things up. Basically you feed it some text and it lets you click on words and define their meaning as well as how well you know the word, from 1-5 + "Known" status.
There is also LingQ which is a paid and proprietary service, but it has a ton of content as well as no real setup required. It has an already populated pop-up dictionary and many texts to pick from. LWT was inspired from LingQ if I remember correctly.
I've used both and can recommend both depending on what experience you are after, I switched to LWT however to save some money and gain some control. I also happen to prefer the experience using LWT. If you're interested in LingQ, be warned LingQ has a pretty scummy subscription cancellation sequence, requiring you to click through 5+ screens of offers and "are you sure?" pages, as well as them threatening with deleting your account data. My data seems intact after the cancellation though.
This is amazing! Thank you for putting it together.
The show is called Office Girls. Friend in my Mandarin class recommended it as being fairly simple once you get past some office-related vocabulary. “Rich kid has to pose as poor kid and work his way up from the ground floor of dads business” story.
Fantastic! Thank you for sharing. Do you actually practice them? Or what's your approach to using them? I add vocabulary to Pleco faster than the space repetition shows them so it doesn't seem like an effective way to use them.
Also searches don't seem to access stored vocab first so it doesn't actually make searching that much faster either.
That's interesting. I have been using this plugin for years, but only for passive learning - just to watch things on Netflix with dual subtitles (and to unlock subs in more languages than the Netflix UI would allow). Will take another look at the other functionalities.
This is a tangent, but has any noticed just how terrible Netflix subtitles can be? Occasionally, when watching with family members, I will enable Swedish subtitles for English movies and sometimes it's as if they have worked on a different material than what the actors on screen are saying. It's bizarre to see this low quality effort in movie after movie, show after show.
Yes! The subtitles can be completely different than the dubbing in some cases which makes it difficult for me to watch with both.
Also, they sometime use a bit odd translations. I saw a Belgian show and they translated smoking a cigarette into smoking a fag. Which I guess is technically correct (based on the cambridge dictionary), just an odd choice for general EU viewership
Yes! The subtitles can be completely different than the dubbing in some cases which makes it difficult for me to watch with both.
I suspect in many cases the subbing is done translating off the original script, while the dubbing is done using a completely different translation designed to flow better when spoken.
> Yes! The subtitles can be completely different than the dubbing in some cases which makes it difficult for me to watch with both.
Yeah I've tried Czech dubbing with Czech subtitles, but have a lot of trouble following it for this reason. I'm sure once I get better at Czech it'll make more sense, but for the moment it seems like I need to stick with Czech audio and English subtitles or vice versa. Otherwise it's just too confusing.
Basically, only English has a tradition where in closed captions, the spoken word matches the text. In many other languages, even for original content, even for subtitles that are a hearing aid, the text often won’t match. For example in French.
I guess the desire is to shorten the text to make it easier to read in time, but it’s kind of ironic that it’s called „subtitles for the ones with bad hearing“. Non-matching subtitles are not a hearing aid, but a hearing replacement.
They traditionally had trained translators, a friend worked for them. He's since been let go, with no warning about quality being an issue, leaving me to believe they have replaced him with machines or cheaper workers. I also watch with subtitles and notice the decline.
I was under the impression that most of the English -> English subtitles are just machine generated. So often the subtitles will be homophonic to what was actually said, a mistake that a human would not have made. And then what's worse is you get [Speaking German] or whatever, so I have to pause, disable the subtitles and rewind, just to be able to see the original subtitle that was included for the vitally important to the plot translation of the foreign language.
I've tried watching dubbed+subbed shows, with both set to my target language, and the two rarely ever match for any given line of dialogue. Netflix has thankfully expanded their language capabilities recently to make it easier to watch shows in an arbitrary language (used to have to change the entire interface into the target language), but I wish there were a CC option for all choices of audio.
Which is weird because it seems like the perfect use of crowd sourced knowledge. You could probably get translations just by offering free subscriptions. I think you'd see a bit of national pride help fuel it too: I'd love to see regional variations/dialects. (For instance, Quebec French). You could even have crowd verification like what Google Translate and Duolingo do.
As an active learner of the Turkish language this tool is really held back by using Netflix' own subtitles. First of all if you go to their website and u look for Turkish content, it only lists shows created for the Turkish market, yet there's so much more content available with Turkish dubs and subs like Ninjago, Pokemon, Paw Patrol that likely have easier vocabulary, cause it's target at kids. And yet again the subs sometimes hardly match the dubs, which therefore doesn't help with hearing comprehension at all. If anyone can suggest good alternatives to practice hearing comprehension at different levels (even payed ones) I would really appreciate it.
The video shows subtitles in two languages for each spoken sentence. Does this use ASR or the official multilingual subtitles? I found that even monolingually, subtitles can sometimes divert from what is actually spoken on screen. I assume that if just the existing subtitles are used, they are not exact translations from one another either?
Also, longer dialogs are often split into two screens - this should be an additional synchronization challenge between the two languages, right?
I met a young woman in Chile who had an amazingly clear accent when speaking English. She learned English from watching American TV and listening to American music. It was way better than any English I heard from teenagers learning it in school.
Learning English by watching Friends was so common, AFAIK all over the world, that it achieved cliché status, 10-20 years ago. May not be the case anymore.
Readit News
- Don't translate! If you do, do so very sparingly. It sounds counter-intuitive, but stopping to translate often will just slow you down. That's because...
- The most important thing is just experiencing the language. You need hundreds and hundreds of hours listening to the language to really start to acquire it. Comprehension is inevitable, just optimize for time spent listening/reading.
- Avoid speaking. This has shown to actually hinder the process of acquiring a language. Speaking is the natural result of having learned a language. You'll notice when you're ready to start speaking a little because you'll occasionally have thoughts in your target language. Until then, speaking practice is virtually useless.
Maybe these will help you, as they've definitely helped me learn Spanish. Buena suerte :)
Note: These tips are also only for people who want to learn a language to fluency. If you just want to learn enough to order at a restaurant, that's a different ballgame.
I know this because it's discussed on the first day of classes at DLI as for why you need to learn to speak the language not just hear and read it. Because my job title was voice intercept operator.
Pre-1976 the Defense Language Institute did not score or rate students speaking ability because only reading and listening were considered mission critical skills.
Post-1976 it was considered a mission critical skill because it had such a dramatic effect on students final listening and reading abilities during the culminating Defense Language Proficiency Test (DLPT). Subsequently an Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) was developed and is considered an integral part of the DLPT.
Note: This was all direct, primary research done at the Defense Language Institute with thousands of participants annually, so it was direct cause and effect experiment.
It's hard to find the specific research results summarizing this, but here's one example from that time period. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1975-10458-001
There is a universe where both pieces of advice can be right; surely you can imagine "don't worry about speaking" advice might be reasonable for someone who is learning casually, has no hard time frame to learn, wants to learn in dribbles and maximally passively, for whom a partial fluency might be a reasonable endpoint, and the greatest risk is burnout from negative reinforcement of failure.
EDIT: As I linked below, here is Krashen on the subject - http://www.sdkrashen.com/content/articles/down_with_forced_s...
This has to be the most counterproductive advice I've ever heard. You need to start speaking as soon as possible. There's no other trick to learning a language than forcing yourself to speak.
For some it's easier because they're less socially anxious. For others it will be more difficult. I was in the latter camp learning Danish. You have to make friends with your fear or you will forever be stuck in what many language learners refer to as a "quiet period". I was for a decade (!!!) If you don't start speaking you will forever have only an intellectual understanding of the language.
So speak. Please speak. Early and often. Babies sound things out early because they're trying to get a hold of it, the vocal contortions required.
But that's a very specific claim as opposed to "avoid speaking".
Of course you need to speak to get good at speaking, I don't think that's what the original poster meant. But rather that you should focus on comprehension initially,because there's not really much point to speaking to someone if you don't know what you want to say and cannot understand the response.
EDIT: You may appreciate this - http://www.sdkrashen.com/content/articles/down_with_forced_s...
In my own experience, it feels like speaking helps improve my speaking a lot. Sure it doesn't help me pick up new phrases or grammar at all, but the first time I say something always comes out horrible, before getting progressively better as I say it more. And there's the skill of utilizing a limited vocabulary to communicate complex ideas. That's another thing that I feel has gotten better as I exercise it through speech.
In the meantime, this book by Krashen may be of interest! He touches on some of the same ideas, roughly. Notably, around page 100 or so, he starts to define what he would consider his ideal learning environment: http://www.sdkrashen.com/content/books/sl_acquisition_and_le...
The least objectionable is the "don't translate" tip but even there I think you've gotten it wrong - translating isn't the issue - avoiding the trap of getting bogged down in trying to translate _precisely_ or being a perfectionist. But you definitely have to maintain some understanding of the context in order to get any value from subsequent exposure.
I fully disagree that you can acquire language just by osmosis - that it's enough to just listen to a language for hundreds of hours. Do you really think that if I isolated myself with hundreds of hours of say Mandarin audio recordings, TV shows and newspapers and novels and spent 40 hours a week listening to the recordings or staring at written text, that in a few months I would acquire the language? I mean if this actually worked, learning second languages wouldn't even be seen as a challenge or task.
It takes thousands of hours of active "work" with a second language to acquire it (although the data is patchy), not hundreds of hours of passive "experiencing".
And avoiding speaking is terrible advice. It's been shown to provide a huge boost to language acquisition. I know people who can read and comprehend the spoken form of a second language at a reasonably high level (C2) but can barely speak it. Speaking will not just "happen" if you don't actively practice it.
If you honestly did manage to acquire fluent Spanish purely by just passively "experiencing" the language, then I'm guessing your first language is closely related one - one of the romance languages.
Yes, it does work, according to various accounts I've seen, although 40 hours for a few months might not quite be enough (the usual figure is around 18 months of full-time immersion, and more is obviously better), and this is actually quite challenging to do for long periods of time (esp. without distracting yourself with your native language excessively) and that's why it can be a challenge.
>not hundreds of hours of passive "experiencing".
It's on the hour of thousands, not hundreds. There are people, especially in the refold community, who have reached fluency in languages very different from their native, with mostly input (active output is part of the equation, but it can be done later, after your comprehension is very high).
>Speaking will not just "happen" if you don't actively practice it.
Yes, you do need to practice speaking to get good at speaking. But from aforementioned accounts, this process can be quite fast after a high level of comprehension has been gained.
I can confirm that for myself, over the past half year or so, increasing the amount of input I get every day has greatly accelerated my japanese learning process, versus the previous year, where I got far fewer hours in (1, maybe 2 hours a day at most, versus my current 4+ hours every day), although I'm not fluent yet.
In just that time I went from barely being able to read, and only being able to understand simple beginner podcasts to being able to fully understand easier shows (stuff for adults is still mostly out of my reach), and understand most of all the podcasts I listen to, (as long as I'm actually focused on the audio, if I'm passively listening I don't understand as much). My reading hasn't improved as much, as I spend probably 80% of the time listening/watching shows versus reading, but I can read basic manga easily now, and I'm working on reading through some essays now, novels still seems massively difficult, but we'll see in another couple months.
I've found that many hours of audio input each day have greatly improved my ability to keep up with native-speed speaking, although for increasing my comprehension, intensive study (making sure I understand each line in a show, or careful reading) is more effective per unit of time. I have no doubt you could acquire the same results as intensive study with enough exposure to the language though, as I've seen it happen with myself before I tried adding intensive study, it would just take more time.
Most people wouldn't call 4 hours a day massive though, so I can probably still increase my rate of improvement if I find more time to use.
Practicing making the sounds of the target language as soon as possible with the correction of a native speaker, in my opinion, is absolutely essential. For many languages, there are unique sounds that are just close enough to one’s primary language, that our muscle memory causes us to make the familiar, incorrect sound instead of the proper one. Because it’s more a matter of physical exercise alongside the rewiring of our brains to recognise said phonemes, the more time spent working on it, the better on the path to fluency.
Having said all that, everyone’s language acquisition ability and language goals will be different, so I can see where this piece of advice does not have universal application.
One thing I've noticed helps me learning language has been working hard to imagine the physical thing as opposed to the english equivalent word. That is imagining a shiny red apple when learning "manzana" instead of the word "apple". Always wondered if theres anything to back this sort of approach up or its just different learning styles.
I have no idea if it's effective, I just think it'd be cool to see how it helps with learning grammar. I def want to experiment more with it, but it takes a fair amount of time to add images to all the articles.
- https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/transover-ff/
- https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/transover/aggiicla...
Listening with or without subtitles? I've been trying to figure out if watching content in another language with English subtitles actually helps me at all...
Ideally, you'll want to focus on material where you can understand the majority of what is being said, through subtitles or just listening. If you find you can't do that, try watching something that would be easier to understand.
One of the best parts of LLwN as a way to study is the passive encouragement: you can click on a word to mark it as "known", and then it always shows up green in future subtitles.
Pretty soon, entire multi-line subtitles start showing up all green. And for me at least, that provides a huge confidence boost that helps me keep going.
Instead of seeing each new subtitle as a challenge ("<Deep breath> here we go..."), you think, "It's all green! I already know everything here! I just have to read it!" And that's made a huge difference in how it feels to study.
I wish Kindle had a similar feature for books.
There is also LingQ which is a paid and proprietary service, but it has a ton of content as well as no real setup required. It has an already populated pop-up dictionary and many texts to pick from. LWT was inspired from LingQ if I remember correctly.
I've used both and can recommend both depending on what experience you are after, I switched to LWT however to save some money and gain some control. I also happen to prefer the experience using LWT. If you're interested in LingQ, be warned LingQ has a pretty scummy subscription cancellation sequence, requiring you to click through 5+ screens of offers and "are you sure?" pages, as well as them threatening with deleting your account data. My data seems intact after the cancellation though.
https://learning-with-texts.sourceforge.io/
https://www.lingq.com/en/
For people learning Mandarin I provide some information including word lists for a lot of shows on Netflix here:
http://www.jiong3.com/gradedwatching/
The show is called Office Girls. Friend in my Mandarin class recommended it as being fairly simple once you get past some office-related vocabulary. “Rich kid has to pose as poor kid and work his way up from the ground floor of dads business” story.
Also searches don't seem to access stored vocab first so it doesn't actually make searching that much faster either.
1. Where can I get the movies?
Many chinese movies are incredibly boring. This one is an exception and I did not see it on the list
2. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7180392/
Also, they sometime use a bit odd translations. I saw a Belgian show and they translated smoking a cigarette into smoking a fag. Which I guess is technically correct (based on the cambridge dictionary), just an odd choice for general EU viewership
I suspect in many cases the subbing is done translating off the original script, while the dubbing is done using a completely different translation designed to flow better when spoken.
Yeah I've tried Czech dubbing with Czech subtitles, but have a lot of trouble following it for this reason. I'm sure once I get better at Czech it'll make more sense, but for the moment it seems like I need to stick with Czech audio and English subtitles or vice versa. Otherwise it's just too confusing.
I guess the desire is to shorten the text to make it easier to read in time, but it’s kind of ironic that it’s called „subtitles for the ones with bad hearing“. Non-matching subtitles are not a hearing aid, but a hearing replacement.
The key is to find content that was originally produced in the language you want to learn so that the subtitles will match.
Deleted Comment
Joke's on you, I've lived in Europe my whole life.
Also, longer dialogs are often split into two screens - this should be an additional synchronization challenge between the two languages, right?