Would you like to be able to learn a language by watching TV? If you ask a lot of people who have learned English as a second language after coming to the United States, many will tell you that they learned by watching TV. I never thought that would be possible, at least for me, but a new learning program has just been introduced to us. This new product does just that. It teaches you a new language by watching TV programs.
You can pick the programs from dozens that they have available. Many of your old favorites are there. Choose from over one thousand hours of recorded TV programs and even do the Free trial. As you learn you can go from Beginner to Advanced at your own speed.
The programs are shown in the new chosen language. There are subtitles and you can ask for a translation of any word at any time. Of course, as with any training course,, your diligence and time spent will govern the result achieved. A review of the website shows dozens of reviews all with five stars, so it must be really fun and working.
Pick a Language to learn by watching TV
There are currently three options for language learning.
- Spanish
- French
- Russian
- English (depending on region)
They are launching new languages every couple of weeks. The next languages that are being launched are Italian, German, Hebrew & English
Helpful Hints
Here are some helpful hints to make learning with this system more fun, useful and effective.
- Slow down the video – You do this by clicking on the button in the bottom right hand corner
- Auto-loop the subtitles – In order to practice certain words, you can automatically replay the sentence over again by clicking on the auto-loop icon in the video player while you are watching.
- Auto-pause after each subtitle – You can also auto-pause the video after each sentence and restart the video easily just by clicking on the video player screen anywhere and it will continue to play.
- Review clicked words with flashcards – To practice words that you clicked on, you can review these words with built-in Flashcards.
- Turn English subtitles on or off – For a challenge you can also remove the English subtitles.
Learning a language Watching TV
My roommate and I had some practice doing this while watching a football game. For some reason, the game wasn’t televised in our area, but we found a station where we could watch the game BUT it was being broadcast in Spanish. Of course, we couldn’t understand much of the dialog, but it was amazing how some words and phrases, along with what was happening on the field, started to stick with us. It was really fun. I am really bad at learning languages, but I am certainly going to give this a try. I would really like to become proficient in Spanish.
Of course, there are many different ways to learn a new language, which is evident if you just Google “learn a language”. When I was young, I took two years of Latin, followed by two years of French. I passed the courses but did not become proficient in either language.
A few years ago, I took an adult class in Spanish. It turned out to be a riot for me. Every time I tried to say something in Spanish, that old French phrase that was buried deeply somewhere in my brain would creep out. People thought I was crazy. Needless to say, I didn’t last too long in that class. But I never give up. I’m going to try this new system.
A Variety of Shows to Select
A large variety of shows are available for your selection. Everything from daily news to cartoons travel shows, comedies, and action series. New shows are added every month so there’s always something new to learn with. The shows are all recorded in the base language, i.e. shows in Spanish are recorded in Mexico. So you are hearing the real country dialects as well as the words. They will provide assistance to you in selecting the TV shows, based on your learning level, if you need the help.