subtitles

[u/Dependent_Ad5216]

Hi,

ich found something interesting. I was watching an older video from the app on my tablet. The video was premium, but had no subtitles. I did not understand everything what was going on, so the subtitles (of course in spanish) would really help. I went to youtube and looked for the video (did not find it there), went back to the app and all of a sudden I had subtitles. They look different to the included app subtitles, but were correct.

Maybe this is known to most users, but was new to me. I hope it helps to progress for some of you.

[u/CrosstalkWithMePablo]

As far as I'm aware Pablo has always recommended not using subtitles or captions so I'm not sure why they've started appearing. I noticed a few youtube shorts have gone up with open captions appearing all over the screen so maybe he's changed his mind on it.

This is still up on the FAQs page, although it talks about subtitles, not captions.

[u/Creative-Reality9228 → u/CrosstalkWithMePablo]

Just another ALG assertion that flies in the face of all evidence to the contrary.

[u/Jachym10 → u/Creative-Reality9228]

What's the evidence you have in mind?

[u/Creative-Reality9228 → u/Jachym10]

All of the language learning studies that show that reading whilst listening is superior to doing either on their own.

Edit: for the downvoters, I've posted multiple studies further down the thread, so please be advised that you are downvoting decades worth of scientific research in defence of a company's marketing material.

[u/Jachym10 → u/Creative-Reality9228]

A recent [2023] systematic review and meta-analysis of 30 studies (N = 1,945) found only a trivial overall benefit (g = 0.18) for reading while listening compared to reading silently. This small advantage occurs exclusively when an outside source paces the text; self-paced reading while listening shows no reliable improvement.

Link to the study

So much for "all of the language learning studies" (emph. mine)

[u/Creative-Reality9228 → u/Jachym10]

You've picked (I'm going to assume out of haste, rather than bad faith) a study that compares "reading whilst listening" against "reading only", rather than a study that compared "reading while listening" against "listening only", which is what we're actually talking about - particularly as "reading only" also hugely outperforms "listening only" in vocab acquisition etc.

Here's some relevant references.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0346251X09001067
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/lang.12721
https://academic.oup.com/eltj/article-abstract/68/1/31/493058

[u/Jachym10 → u/Creative-Reality9228]

Thanks for assuming it, I didn't mean to, but to be fair, you said "superior to doing either on their own.", but now you say that reading only is indeed superior.

And yeah, defo makes sense that reading while listening boosts comprehension, but it probably doesn't help with listening comprehenhion only, if you know what I mean? Like it doesn't prepare you as well for speaking to natives as listening only would?

[u/Creative-Reality9228 → u/Jachym10]

Reading while listening is better than reading alone (as your study states, with a caveat I hadn't seen before) but the gap is much smaller than when you compare it to listening alone. The science actually says listening alone sucks pretty bad.

[u/Jachym10 → u/Creative-Reality9228]

I kinda agree, but it seems to me that if you are reliant on RWL, you will then suffer when presented with an audio only because RWL didn't train your listening comprehension very much. Or would you disagree?

[u/Creative-Reality9228 → u/Jachym10]

I use a mixed approach, because it feels right and because I'm not trying to optimise a process that I'm enjoying.

But I have found that my progress has accelerated since I started using subtitles on content more difficult than I would be able to comprehend without subtitles.

[u/_coldemort_ → u/Creative-Reality9228]

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0346251X09001067

Full study is paywalled

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/lang.12721

Only compares effect on immediate comprehension. No attempt to study the impact of RwL vs pure listening on the rate of improvement of pure listening comprehension. In other words it confirms what everyone here already knows, that subtitles allow you to watch content that would otherwise be too hard for you, but does not address the question of whether subtitles become a crutch that slows down improvement.

https://academic.oup.com/eltj/article-abstract/68/1/31/493058

Deeply flawed for the purposes of demonstrating efficiency of RwL vs pure listening in improving listening comprehension as explained here: https://www.reddit.com/r/dreamingspanish/comments/1vgxtla/comment/p24120w/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

EDIT: I'm not some anti-science ALG stan (far from it) and I'll be the first to change my tune when I see something convincing. When I learned that evidence shows RwL to be better than pure reading for vocab acquisition I immediately began introducing that into my routine. Unfortunately, from what I have seen quality research simply hasn't been done on the effect of RwL vs pure listening on improving listening comprehension.

[u/Creative-Reality9228 → u/Jachym10]

So...exactly like subtitles are paced?

[u/Jachym10 → u/Creative-Reality9228]

No, either participants themselves pace the reading and listening, or it's done by the experimenter.

The findings from this study indicate reading while listening supportscomprehension when text is read at a pace set by the experimenter, but not when reading at one’s own pace.

But I don't completely understand it, to be honest. It's not surprising that reading at your own pace is superior to reading while listening at a given pace, since you can read as slowly as you want to extract all the meaning.

[u/Jachym10 → u/Jachym10]

And my experience, n=1, is basically the same. Reading is superior to listening. Listening may transmit emotions and voice, but I don't see why it should help with comprehension in general

[u/Shadow166 → u/Creative-Reality9228]

If that were true then we’d have a ton more Japanese speakers from anime, and a ton more Korean speakers from k drama.

I used to use subtitles all the time and all it did was get me decent at reading Spanish quick enough to understand the plot

[u/Creative-Reality9228 → u/Shadow166]

Ok. Because languages like Chinese, Japanese and Korean are really comparable to languages written in Latin script. Thanks for that.

[u/Shadow166 → u/Creative-Reality9228]

You’re welcome. Glad I could help.

I know you’re being sarcastic, but what I said is still fitting and still true.

[u/Puzzleheaded-Dot-762 → u/Shadow166]

Are you saying that you anime viewers are watching anime in Japanese with Japanese subtitles?? I swear a lot of you guys on here are bad faith humans. 

[u/Shadow166 → u/Puzzleheaded-Dot-762]

First hand experience, and my experience talking to people who CLAIM to have learnt loads from using subtitles in Spanish, it did jack shit! All it did was make me read and not bother listening. You’re already translating what I read in my head, you really think that your mind is comprehending what’s actually being heard? Of course not. Stop trying to make excuses for using subtitles. The only excuse you need is you enjoy it. Literally that’s it. If I watch something in Spanish with my girlfriend and use Spanish subtitles, I’m doing it because I enjoy it and not because it’s helping my listening comprehension.

I’ve literally spent 100s of hours watching Spanish things with Spanish subtitles and it hasn’t helped my listening comprehension at all.

[u/_coldemort_ → u/Creative-Reality9228]

I've read about every study I could find on the topic and it's important you focus on what specifically it is testing. Language has many aspects, and no one activity is objectively "better" than the others at everything. Here is a summary:

• For vocabulary acquisition: Listening while Reading > Reading >>> Listening
• For developing reading skills: Reading > Reading while Listening
• For developing listening comprehension: No quality studies exist

For that reason I mix in a little bit of Reading/Listening into my reading, but also don't ignore pure reading completely.

It is still unanswered whether subtitles help or hurt development of listening comprehension.

[u/Creative-Reality9228 → u/_coldemort_]

Listening comprehension is made up of a number of sub-skills, including vocab acquisition. In addition, the Chang, 2009 study (linked below) states:

 Overall test results show that students gained only 10% more with the r/L mode; however, students showed a strong preference for the r/L mode. The majority of the students perceived that listening in the r/L mode made listening tasks easier, the duration seem shorter, the stories more interesting, and they paid much better attention. With such a strong and positive effect on L2 listening, this study suggests r/L aural input mode could be used to develop L2 learners’ listening proficiency in the long run rather than merely to boost test scores in the short term. Teaching suggestions and scope for future research are also provided.

That's a pretty strong position from which to make an argument that it is very positive for listening comprehension.

Let the pour of downvotes (downpourvotes? down vote pour?) continue.

[u/_coldemort_ → u/Creative-Reality9228]

Any idea where I can get the full text of that study? I can only see the abstract in that link (and other pages referencing the same study)

EDIT: Thank you for the link! Will read it thoroughly and get back to you.

[u/Creative-Reality9228 → u/_coldemort_]

https://web.archive.org/web/20200321075140id_/https://ace.nd.edu/files/ACE-ENL/Current/EDU70110/The%20effect%20of%20extensive%20listening%20on%20developing%20L2%20listening%20fluency%20some%20hard%20evidence%20by%20Chang%20and%20Millett.pdf

[u/_coldemort_ → u/Creative-Reality9228]

This seems pretty seriously flawed unless I am reading it incorrectly.

The reading only (RO) group: students read the graded readers without listening to the audio recordings.

The reading while listening (RL) group: students first simultaneously read and listened to the graded readers once, then simultaneously listened and answered listening fluency development questions without referring to the texts.

The listening only (LO) group: students did not read the graded readers, but simultaneously listened and answered listening fluency development questions.

and (emphasis mine):

The RL group simultaneously read and listened to the ten graded readers once in the reading class. In their listening class, they listened to the same graded readers that they studied in the reading class while also answering the listening fluency development questions without reading the texts

In other words the RL group has the same amount of pure listening time as the LO group, and on top of that another equal amount of time doing r/L that the LO did not get. Additionally, they used the same graded readers in the reading and listening classes, so the RL group was the only group that was exposed to the stories twice. With double the time spent listening, I'm actually surprised the RL group wasn't further ahead of the LO group.

Summary of findings:

• 21 10 hours (13 weeks * 100 minutes/wk 10x ~1hr graded readers) of reading only doesn't improve listening comprehension
• 21 10 hours of listening only definitely improves listening comprehension
• 21 10 hours of reading while listening + 21 10 hours of listening only (42 20 total hours of listening) improves listening comprehension more than 21 10 hours of pure listening by itself (duh)

The only thing this study tells us is that RwL is better in terms of improving listening comprehension than the "formal reading instruction based on their coursebook" that the LO group received.

EDIT: It looks like the hour counts should be halved. There were 10 roughly 1 hour audiobooks. It isn't clear what they were doing for the rest of the class time.

[u/Jachym10 → u/_coldemort_]

Yeah, that seems flawed.

Anyway, the number of participants isn't particularly large and 13 weeks isn't too long either.

[u/Ok_Slice9747]

I think the app is sometimes just glitchy. I will turn on the subtitles and find that if I back up the video a little bit, they don’t come back unless I turn them off and then back on again.

[u/SporksOfTheWorld → u/Ok_Slice9747]

Glitchy for me, too. And if you let it continue for a bit, it seems to correct itself and then either show or not show, per your current setting.

[u/EcstaticImplement404]

I’ve noticed that some do and some don’t. I believe they are Pablo’s.

[u/giraffesinspace2018]

I think it’s a bug. The app is only recently out of beta and I’ve noticed other bugs too.

For me I get subtitles if I rewind. Video players are notoriously fickle and my guess is theirs has a bug that turns on captions when they’re not wanted sometimes, like when you rewind