For audio, I have been listening to a bunch of podcasts when I’m doing something (podcasts such as hkbk.fm, takram cast, rebuild – I’m quite interested in technology). For shows, I watch my anime with Japanese subtitles either through animelon or https://www.daiweeb.org/terakoya (I really hope these aren’t illegal, but I haven’t done my research).
Watching without subtitles at all is, in my opinion, training a different skill. This is more of getting to turn audio into understanding (and a lot to do with speed too). Watching with Japanese subtitles is more of like turning reading into understanding and using audio to check your work. If you were to be doing it to find new words (i.e. for your anki decks), I think using Japanese subtitles is better (easier to find that word when you can see the kanji and not just knowing how it sounds). However, if the goal is to improve your audio recognition, then definitely watching without subtitles will improve this skill more.
Personally, I only watch my shows (stuff I haven’t watched before) with Japanese subtitles. I use anki for all of my audio recognition training. I have a couple decks with just audio on the front, and the Japanese + Japanese definitions on the other side. This is only because I don’t really feel like watching something I’ve watched before. However, when I do occasionally watch an old show again, I will most likely watch it without subtitles.
I also do have lessons via italki in all Japanese for more audio recognition training, so I think this skill has been targeted enough through other means.
Indeed. Subtitles seemed more like practicing reading than anything else in my case (I was at the beginning watching shows once with JP subs , then with eng subs). With JP subs felt more like speed reading than audio practice tbh… so I went cold turkey
I felt I was missing much because of trying to catch up with the text, instead of actualy watching the show (it felt like studying).
Some of the shows I’ve used to sentence mining were very suited for watching (I’ve learned many lines from those already), but they weren’t many… now I’m doing dubbed movies… mainly the ones I know almost by heart.
You can search in Netflix for japanese dubs
Though if you have acces to Japanese Netflix or Amazon Prime then you’re set for life …
Most of the movies I’m relying heavily on knowing the plot already and pretty much all the dialogues (kind of a film buff myself).
Though today I watched Forest Gump… And it was SOooo clear … the dialogues were right in my level!!..
Nevertheless I doubt I’ll find much movies with a mentally challenged main character that falls into that language learner sweet spot producing such simplified lines
It bothers me more than I can adequately explain that there is an error in the first correction in that promotional image.
“What do you study in university?” is totally correct, and better than “what do you study at the university?”. Not only is that “the” incorrect article usage (use “your” or something in that situation) but it’s more natural to say “in university”.
I’d say “in the university”, never “in university”… and that would kinda imply that I was talking about physical aspects inside it… Like “The library is in the university”, never “at”. But “I’m studying Nutrition Sciences at the university”. Americans (and maybe Canadians/etc?) do say “in college” though.
Idk, this is just my opinion as a non native that somehow learned English thanks to games and social media xD
Yeah haha I’m Canadian so maybe it’s just a regional thing.
Still though, correcting something that was already correct, at least in North America, is a major red flag to me. I guess you’re never guaranteed to have accurate corrections using something like that, but it bothers me that they couldn’t even get it right in the promotional materials.
As far as examples go, “I’m studying Health Sciences in university” seems a lot more natural to me than “I’m studying Health Sciences at the university”. And “I’m studying Health Sciences in the university” is just flat up wrong, because that’s not how we use “the”, unless the full sentence would be “I’m studying Health Sciences at the university up the hill.” or something along those lines.
For example, if you opened a conversation with “I’m studying English at the university” my first question would be “what university?”. Because “the” denotes something already introduced. You could say “I’m studying English at a university”, but at that point it’s not even necessary to add an article.
Prepositions are hard though, and not always intuitive at all. I’m just going on what I hear in common usage. It’s totally possible it’s only a regional thing.
Haha, I’m sorry I’m jumping in to this bit of topic-derailing. I’d say (as a Canadian who grew up in the US) that “in university” sounds more American, while “at university” sounds more Canadian/British. But these things can be quite arbitrary. (Likewise the fact that Americans will tend to add a “the” to “hospital” while Canadians and British won’t.) But your point stands that correcting “in university” to “at the university” seems like an odd illustration.
Actually, I think most Americans would say “I studied ____ in college” even if they went to a university. (Unless they went to Harvard University, in which case they’d say, “I studied ____ at Harvard.” )
It’s one of the reasons I’ve been leery of hellotalk and similar things before it - whenever I look at people making english corrections, the corrections are so frequently either unnecessary or actually wrong.
I had similar situations with some Japanese users’ corrections.
At one point, one user tried to correct the city I was staying in because he had assumed that I lived elsewhere.
This is why when people say “my Japanese friend said…about X” I usually take what they say with a grain of salt unless it’s already established that that said friend works in an industry that requires accurate language skills.
i remember back in the day, on lang-8. wrote a diary in japanese, and you don’t talk to yourself politely. it was actually an attempt to get casual style down, and while most people got it, there was always that one guy who converted my whole text to です、ます
when i looked at what other natives did to the people i corrected, i didnt always agree either, but i usually kept my mouth shut, unless asked via PM.
can’t argue with some people, and especially other natives sometimes have huge pride issues
…
)