But how do you then take these and make them sort of valuable
language learning opportunities?
Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here and today, I want to talk on a subject
that I've talked about before.
How do use Netflix and YouTube and other video material to learn
whatever language you're learning?
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Okay, so language learning as we know is about motivation.
That's the driver, that's the smart plug that triggers your interest,
your curiosity and content, which feeds that curiosity, feeds those
interests is, is extremely important.
Content that you like content that is, has resonance for you.
And, you know, when I first started learning, uh, say Chinese and French
back 50, 60, even years ago, it was overwhelmingly books and then came
along, you know, more and more tape recordings and cassette recordings.
And then I went through a period and you can see behind me, I have a shelf and
it's not the only one, full of CDs, uh, because there was a period where I was
buying audio books and CDs to match, you know, books, reading books in behind me.
And, but now increasingly on the internet, we have all kinds of resources
that we can bring in to our sort of language learning world to learn from.
And videos are quite powerful.
Now I have in the past expressed some reservation about videos
because of course the problem with the video is your, you know, you're
obliged to sit there and watch it.
And there can be long periods of time in any video, any, you know, series
on Netflix or movie or whatever.
Where there's not much dialogue.
So you're just watching people move or cars drive or people
shoot or whatever they do.
Uh, and so it's less sort of language-intense, word-intense
than say a book or even an audio where you are relying on what you
read and what you hear to learn.
And I find that is very powerful in terms of, of learning because
you're having to conjure up meaning based on these words that you hear.
So you're becoming more and more used to these words.
However, movies and series are extremely attractive and because so much of the
language journey is connected with our emotions., I have found that say
watching a series on Netflix, even when I don't understand very well, it could
be a series in Turkish or a series in Arabic, uh, or, um, uh, again, a
movie, a YouTube video in Persian...
the, the good thing about a series is that you meet the same people
every time in every episode.
So it's as if you're, you're getting together with your
family, your Turkish family, or whatever language you're learning.
I happened to have been into Turkish, Persian and Arabic.
So you're getting together with, with your friends and with your family, and
you're seeing them and in different situations and always in somewhat familiar
situations, because typically many of these series are very low budgets.
So that's all done in the one studio and it's always the same place
and it's very comfortable and, you know, familiarity and comfort also
helps us in language learning.
But how do you then take these and make them sort of valuable
language learning opportunities?
So, uh, I'm going to leave in the description box some of the things
that I use, uh, first of all, if I, if it's a movie on, on YouTube, uh...
we do have at LingQ, we have a browser extension that allows
us to import that as a lesson.
So immediately you get the, um, the video, the audio and the transcript.
In other words, the text, if in fact, a subtype, uh, you know, subtitles exist for
that video, which isn't always the case.
And so there is another, um, little bit of a program called, uh, Zero to Hero,
which helps you find, uh, it's, it's all going to be in the description box...
it helps you find videos in the languages you're interested in where in fact,
you know, closed captions exist because once the closed captions exist, you can
then import this as a lesson into LingQ.
Now we are also able to capture videos and subtitle dialogues
from Netflix, but Netflix doesn't allow us to capture the audio.
And it's very useful to have the audio because sometimes you want to listen to
the audio, um, without watching the video.
Uh, so, but, but that doesn't happen with Netflix.
However, you can read the script and, uh, you know, get used to some of the words.
There is also a piece of software called Learning Languages with Netflix.
I'm going from memory, but it's going to be in the description box
where you can go through the video in Netflix frame by frame and see
the subtitles and look up the words.
And so that's another, it's got nothing to do with LingQ, but that's a piece of
software that you may find useful if you are using Netflix to learn languages.
Now, let me just see what else was there.
There is another thing called Down Sub, which is, which enables you
to download the closed captions from YouTube and from Netflix.
As I say, Language Learning with Netflix extension is one.
You'll see this in the description box.
Um, so...
and there are probably others.
You should look into this.
And again, nowadays, you know, it's, it's almost not necessarily for me to give you
the names of different types of software.
You can just Google learning languages with YouTube, learning languages with
Netflix, learning languages, languages with Amazon prime or whatever it might
be, and you're going to find a lot of, uh, bits of software that are going
to help you, uh, the way I like to do.
So I like to go through, so if I, if I take, let's say I have this Persian, uh,
series that my tutor recommended to me.
And part of the problem is, is finding, you know, uh, a series.
I mean, you can also find a film, but the advantage of a series is
that each episode is 30 minutes long.
It's a nice amount to do.
You have to be at a certain level.
Like you have to have graduated from the more sort of beginner
material, but 30 minutes is okay.
Uh, I go through the dialogue and 30 minutes, sort of a 30 minute episode
is probably only 10 minutes worth of concentrated dialogue, 15 minutes.
Like it's not 30 minutes because there's periods when there is no dialogue.
And so I can go through that and learn the words.
And then I like to go and watch the video.
Now I have, as I've said before, I have a stepper at home.
So I can get out my stepper.
I can put on my iPad and I can watch the movie and I've gone
through some of the words.
So the second or third time I watch it, I actually understand more and more.
And as I go through the episodes, um, I, you understand more and more of it.
One thing I've asked my personal tutor to do, uh, which is another approach I
asked her to give me like a three/five minutes summary of each episode.
So the episode has say, is 30 minutes of video.
Uh, if I take the, uh, the URL from YouTube and I put it on
this, uh, website again, you can Google for it, which converts, uh,
URLs from YouTube to MP3 files.
Then I can go to my Happyscribe, automatic transcription service.
The video, the audio transcribed.
So I can study that in LingQ.
Uh, but then I asked my tutor because there's, there are errors in the
automatic transcription to get a bit of a, an, an overview of each episode.
My tutor gives me a three minute, four minute summary of that episode.
So again, if we are more kind of familiar with the what's
happening, if we understand more.
Then it's easier to understand.
So that's kind of the approach that I'm taking.
So I watched the video once or twice while exercising on my stepper or whatever.
Uh, I then work on the transcript from the, uh, the soundtrack
to get some of the words.
Then I read the summary.
Depending on when my tutor sends me the summary, I might start with this.
Uh, and so I get a better sense of what's happening.
So that's one example.
I did this, uh, Egyptian Arabic.
Um, Egyptian Arabic, it's tougher because there are,no there's no, no subtitles
in Egyptian Arabic, no transcript.
So I asked my Egyptian tutor to actually transcribe a whole 30-minute episode.
It ended up being 10 minutes that he had transcribed and then recorded.
And so that's kind of a work in progress.
We're looking at how we can do that to make it, you know, more effective.
Um, what else?
The other thing is we are looking at ways actually within LingQ and LingQ
5.0, but we're still, you know, a couple of months away where it will said,
yes, you have two videos in different languages and you can immediately
click and import them for your own use.
You can share them and they will then be, you know, lessons.
So rather than having to go and look for videos in YouTube, it'll actually
suggest something to you right in the sort of content library, and then you
can, you'll have the option of then going to YouTube bringing those into study.
So if we can deal with the issue of where to find things of interest, to
different learners or to ourselves, how to extract audio and text from these,
uh, that kind of prepares us to enjoy them more, whether we're watching them
on our iPad or on our televisions.
So it's just an example of how content has evolved from, you know, what used to be
books only and open-reel tape recorders, and then, uh, cassette tapes and then CDs.
And now we've got all kinds of content on the internet.
So, you know, there are more and more opportunities for us to enjoy
our favorite content and stay motivated in learning languages.
So there you have it.
Thanks for listening.