1. Using a series
2. Remember to choose a series according to your objectives and also remember to vary the series to discover the diversity of accents and registers of the language you are studying!
3. Watching a series can help you develop your foreign language skills in a number of areas, as long as you are active in your learning and set yourself goals.
Listening, speaking and vocabulary acquisition are the areas for which we suggest activities in this tutorial.4. You can watch a series to gain an overall understanding of a scene, or even the whole episode.
Several activities are possible.
You can watch the series in English with the subtitles in English. Using the subtitles in the language allows you to associate the written form of a word with its spoken form. You may tend to read at the beginning without listening to what is being said: one possible solution is to read first and then listen while trying to read to work on this oral/written link.
Having the subtitles in LE allows you to see how the words are spelt, so it’s easy to look up words in the dictionary that seem to be really hindering your overall understanding. Look up the words if you feel you need to, but don’t look up all the words or you’ll lose the thread of the scene…
You can also watch the series in LE without the subtitles and then check your understanding by watching the series with the subtitles in LE or LM.5. In any case: don’t worry if you don’t understand everything in detail, it’s normal and that’s not the point!
6. If you want to understand how the language works in more detail, you can choose a line that seems interesting to you and analyse it: look for the vocabulary, try to understand how the sentences are constructed…
But don’t do this for every line!7. Losing your accent is not a very important objective when learning a foreign language, but it is important that this accent should not be a barrier and that you should be able to make yourself understood in a foreign language.
Pronunciation difficulties are often due to the fact that you have to string sounds together in an utterance, respecting intonation and rhythm.
You can work on this aspect by watching a series.
For example, you can listen to a character’s line, paying attention to pronunciation, intonation, the way the words are grouped, identifying the more accented parts, those where the voice rises or falls…
You can then practise repeating them after him. If you want to assess your progress, remember to record yourself so that you can compare your utterances with the model.
« Acting » can also help you overcome your apprehensions about speaking the language.
Of course, remember to be critical of the model you choose and to vary the models!8. If you want to work on the production of statements in foreign language, you can use a series that you already know, that you have seen in French as a foreign language or with subtitles in French as a foreign language, for example.
You can select a scene and then try to invent what a character is going to say in LE.
Then you can check with the LE version.
Be careful, even if your statement doesn’t correspond to the LE version, that doesn’t mean it’s wrong… There may be different ways of saying the same thing.9. Just as there’s no point in trying to understand everything when you watch a series, there’s no point in trying to learn all the words you don’t yet know.
In fact, the word that prevents you from understanding a statement is not necessarily interesting to remember for expression or even comprehension…
It is also important to distinguish between vocabulary that is useful for understanding and vocabulary that is useful for expressing yourself.10. Listening in LE and looking up vocabulary will help you memorise vocabulary that will be useful for listening comprehension.
You can use a translator to translate words or expressions that you don’t know, or think about using a unilingual dictionary or a concordancer to understand a term or expression that may not have an equivalent in French.>> Download file » How to use a series to learn a language 2 ? «
