Will subtitles PREVENT you from making progress? - Ask Ethan

Recently Ethan was asked: Do you need to quit using target language subtitles?
If you've ever found that you need subtitles to understand your target language, you're not alone. All over the internet you'll find language learners talking about the same problem.
So how are you supposed to fix it? Will the problem of not being able to understand things go away on it's own over time, or do you need to make a conscious choice to turn off the subtitles to train your listening?
Tune in to find out!
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[@nBp4tB12]

As a person who rarely does pure listening practice and rarely does pure reading, when I switch to pure listening I feel like I almost don't lose comprehension, but it definitely feels more exhausting. But if your main focus is pure reading, you definitely feel a huge drop in comprehension.

[@nBp4tB12]

I have always enjoyed listening more than reading. Even now that I have a pretty low level of Japanese, I can recognize more words by listening than by reading, even though I've done almost no pure listening and about 20% pure reading.

[@kas8131]

Given that I still watch movies in my native language with subtitles, I’m not going to worry about it until I’m pretty advanced, but it makes sense to get some practice without it

[@echinas0908]

If your native language is english, I can understand. Sound mixing is sometimes so weird that I'd rather watch them in spanish (NL) than in the english original.

[@masterp69]

I use subs in English, my muttersprache, when I watch anything, if possible, just for the reasons stated. My comprehension is significantly increased when I watch things with TL subs, as most anyone would agree. Many people may not like this exercise, but I found transcription - writing words down as you hear them - for listening practice beyond listening while reading. This is an entirely different level of focus, and I listen as often as needed before I check my work. This is an exercise you don't have to do every day, but even if you did 3 or 4 times a week for 1 to 3 minutes of audio, one would notice a massive difference in listening comprehension in weeks. An easy test is to find a podcast episode you've yet to listen to, and you'll feel the difference. I know that if one does this, using subs while watching anything else won't even matter in the end.

[@RoseyDeutsch]

I doubt I’ll do much video content without subs for a very long time. I watch everything with subs in my native language. I sometimes avoid a piece of video content entirely if it doesn’t have subs, even in English. But I listen to audiobooks all the time, 97 last year and 68 so far this year. So it’s not that I don’t ever consume audio only content, I just hate video content without subs.

[@Leeummm83]

Hey Ethan, good to see you again. My mom is deaf and I grew up with captions on the TV and it greatly impacted my ability to listen… so much that I still watch everything with captions/subtitles to this day. It is really hard for me to break away from them in my target language, but I am making quite the effort.

[@ChandlerBing-t3k]

But if you learning vocabulary through movies. It's okay to watch fisrt with subtitles to learn words that you don't know and then watch again without subtitles?

[@MartinFracker]

I’m going to watch this video later. But I’m writing my thoughts about this here now so I can come back and read my own thoughts after I’ve watched the video and compare them with my new thoughts. I learned the fundamentals of Spanish grammar mostly by reading subtitles of tv shows and movies. I get speaking practice with my family. I have found that without any dedicated listening practice I can understand my family quite easily. I attribute this to the fact that reading Spanish let’s me very quickly learn the patterns of the Spanish language. So when I hear them, my brain is already wired to perform top down processing to figure what I am hearing. My conclusion is that you can make vast strides in the listening skill just by reading subtitles. You just need a lot of input in order to become very familiar with the patterns of the language.

[@kevingeoghegan294]

I think subtitles can be useful to clarify difficult speech but in general, I find that I tend to read the subtitles and more or less ignore the audio as it's easier to make sense of the written text. I guess you should be trying to listen most of the time without subtitles if you want to progress. If you find it hard to follow the audio only then you are probably using material that is too difficult for your level and you should try easier stuff instead.

[@F61Wolf]

Same here i notice i barely, if at all, "hear" the audio if I'm reading the subs. To me subs are useful only when i didn't understand what was said or im curious about a particular word.

[@HoneyBeeofficiall]

My comprehension without subtitles is definitely much less than with subtitles. That being said, I have not been learning for very long. There are still plenty of words that I don’t know. I think that subtitles are very very useful in the beginning and intermediate stage, but then probably because a crutch once you enter higher levels of comprehension.

[@sanetersoy4512]

I think there's nothing wrong with using subtitles whenever you are able, but if your understanding level is lowering by more than 50% when you turn off the subtitles, you should work on it.

[@gyulboy]

My thoughts is to how this connects with sentence mining? I usually prefer sentence mining from video media, thus having the subtitles on makes it far easier to nab the content, when I read books I just engage in intensive free-flow reading trying to understand the picture as whole, I guess I will have to find a way to balance both.

[@x3non500]

I could imagine if you learn to put your focus on specific aspects, for example if you meditate a lot. You could put the main focus on what was said and use the subtitles as a supplementary help to understand more. Most people however will use the path of least resistance and just read along with the subtitles and zone out the audio. I think it can work if done correctly, but building listening comprehension would probably still take longer to develop =) One thing I can comfirm is, that it is very painful to take away the subtitles if you are used to them and do pure audio for the first time. In the beginning it feels like you are a beginner again and that you are not making any progress. If you push through that, you will develop the listening comprehension pretty quickly, even though it might seem like you are not progressing as quickly as you would like. You might want to rewatch a show you have already seen without any subtitles or watch simpler content in the beginning, this way you might have a easier time. On the other hand you should watch shows that you really enjoy, so you are able to push through the uncomfortable feeling. Most important of all: just keep going and trust the process! You will always make more progress doing something rather than not doing anything and overthinking what you should be doing. Just have fun with the language. That's what will get you results long term!

[@zahleer]

I use to rely too heavily on subs even when I could tell most sounds apart (without knowing phonetics) and it did hinder my goal to understand spoken English. Now I've accumulated so many hours of listening by just working for Sprint (when they existed) and getting to know phonetics. I just wished the language was more phonetic so that I could avoid fixing my pronunciation despite my ability to tell sounds apart.

[@carpediemcotidiem]

The thumbnail asked if target languaage subs were a crutch and this seems to suggest that they are? Given that he said many people's comprehension reduces by 50% when they stop using subtitles? Is it better to *not* use target language subtitles at all in order to make faster progress?

[@enbilly]

a week late to this one but i'd say you should only drop them if you feel like it, in my opinion i myself only watch stuff with subs in english and my native language, and i dont plan to change it with japanese i'd rather practice listening by watching youtube and stuff, just like with english, and then over time that'll transfer over to being able to understand shows even without subs

[@carsonj4031]

I am pretty early on in my language learning journey but I do sometimes have content in Japanese where I ignore the english subtitles unless I go "wait, what did they just say?". Granted this comes from me being lazy and not fully committing to using my Japanese only YT account so I cant really say if it works or not.

[@KevinFrancais-rz5nd]

How about hiding subs with language reactor but having the transcript open to check stuff every now and then?

[@coolbrotherf127]

Personally, I never use subtitles when watching English media as I find them distracting and annoying. So I would prefer to eventually not need subtitles in my target language as well. Being able to pick up naturally spoken words is just another skill to train as real life doesn't have subtitles and what's the point of studying if you can't enjoy any KZbin video or talking to real people?

[@Tyler-Alvarez1234]

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