Subtitles

Do they help you learn English?

Photo by Immo Wegmann on Unsplash

Hello everyone!

Do you use subtitles when you watch a film or Netflix show in English? Is it a good idea to use subtitles?

I’ve been thinking a bit about this for the last few days and chatting with people on Facebook. You might have seen some of these comments already but I’ve thought about it some more and added a few extra points.

In case you don’t know what I mean, subtitles are the words that appear at the bottom of the screen when you watch a film, TV show or video. You can sometimes choose to have subtitles in your language or in English.

(You might have heard the term “closed captions”, especially in American English. These are subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing. They include information about sound effects and music as well as the dialogue. In British English, we usually say “subtitles” for this as well.)

I’ve seen some people on social media - teachers and learners - who say that you have to turn off the subtitles if you want to learn. I don’t think it’s that simple.

Some native speakers use subtitles, including me! I have the subtitles turned on all the time and I hit the rewind button quite often because I don’t always understand everything the first time! 

The dialogue in movies and TV shows isn’t always as clear as we would like it to be. It would be crazy for me to tell you to turn off the subtitles if I use them myself!

But do subtitles help you with your English? The answer depends on your learning goals and your reasons for watching.

If you just want to relax and you need subtitles to understand and enjoy the movie, then, of course, you should turn them on. There’s nothing wrong with that.

If you want to learn English, I think subtitles can be helpful. Reading and listening at the same time can help you to match English spelling with English pronunciation, as long as you concentrate. For this exercise, it’s easier to stay focused if you watch short videos rather than a whole film.

Subtitles can also help you to build your vocabulary. Again, this only works if you are an active learner. If you hear a word you don’t know, you can pause the film, look for the new word in the subtitles, write it down and learn it.

However, using subtitles can sometimes be unhelpful. If you really want to improve your listening, you will probably have to turn the subtitles off eventually, when you’re ready. Otherwise, it's too easy to just read them and forget to actually listen. Then you’re practising your reading skills and not your listening.

One of my Facebook followers made an excellent point: there are no subtitles in real life! It’s not helpful if you become too reliant on subtitles. But the good news is that real-life conversations are often easier to understand because you have more context and you can ask people what they mean.

The answer also depends on your level. If you’re a beginner, you will probably need subtitles in your own language. You could also try watching something twice, first with subtitles in your language and then with subtitles in English.

But actually, if your English is a low level, I don’t think watching movies is a useful thing for you to do. I think you should watch short videos which are written specially for learners at your level, like BBC Learning English on YouTube.

When you're a bit better at English, you can try watching films or TV shows with English subtitles. But remember to listen. Don’t just read. And maybe you could watch your favourite part a second time without the subtitles and see how much you can understand.

The sooner you can switch the subtitles from your language to English, the better. In fact, listening to English but reading in your own language won’t help you much at all. I know! I’ve tried it! I’ve watched French shows with English subtitles and I hardly learnt a thing about French! (I enjoyed the shows though!)

When you're more advanced, you might want to turn the subtitles off, most of the time anyway. You won’t improve your listening skills as fast if you continue to rely on subtitles. Of course, you can rewind and turn the subtitles on for a few seconds when you hear some new language and want to check what they said.

To summarise, subtitles can be helpful when you’re learning English but think about why you’re using them and if turning them off might help you more.

My final advice for you is to try different things and see what helps you the most. I can give you some ideas to think about but only you can decide what works best for you.

If you’d like to watch some videos for English learners but don’t know where to find them, check out this blog post on my website.

I hope you found something helpful in today’s email! Thanks for reading!

Until next time,

Katie

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