How I Use Netflix to Aid My Language Learning

I’ve always been jealous of how good people from other countries are at speaking English. I wondered if having so much popular culture content in English, such as movies, TV shows, and music, was part of the reason. When you hear English so often, it must make it easier to learn.

I’ve been learning Italian for a while, so I decided to immerse myself a little more in the language to see if I could improve my Italian skills. One of the most effective ways I found was to use Netflix.

I Started With Foreign Shows and English Subtitles

When I first decided to try to use Netflix to help improve my language skills, the easiest way I found to start was with foreign shows with English subtitles. There were two reasons for this.

The first is that, since my Netflix account is in English, any foreign shows I can find on the service will offer English subtitles. I don’t have to search through shows that may or may not have the subtitles or audio that I want. An Italian film will have an Italian audio option, and I’ll always be able to select English subtitles.

The second reason is that it’s the gentlest way into language learning using Netflix. We’re all used to watching foreign films or shows with English subtitles; you can follow the dialogue without any issues, even if your language skills are non-existent. You’re still hearing the original language, however, and words and phrases do begin to sink in over time.

If you’re watching Netflix on your computer, there is a useful “Browse by Language” option at the top of the home screen. You can use this to find shows and movies in specific languages; you should then always have an option to choose the original language for the audio. You can also choose English-language content and select another language in the audio options, but keep the subtitles in English.

The Next Step Was Shows With Foreign Subtitles

I’ve always found understanding native speakers challenging, because they often talk quickly and with a much wider vocabulary than I’ve learned. By watching shows with Italian dialogue, I gradually began to pick out more and more words I recognized and could follow some sentences. The next thing I tried was watching English shows with Italian subtitles.

Watching English shows with foreign subtitles means that you can understand all the dialogue, while also following the story using the foreign-language subtitles. While Italian shows with English subtitles helped improve my listening skills, foreign subtitles helped improve my reading skills.

One benefit of this technique is that subtitles will often appear on the screen when someone starts to speak, or even before they speak. This means you get to test yourself by translating what you think the subtitle means in your head before the line is spoken in English. It’s also a useful way to pick up new vocabulary, as words you don’t recognize will then be spoken aloud in English.

Related

How to Change Your Netflix Profile, Subtitle, and Audio Language

You can change the default or playback language on Netflix no matter where you are in the world.

I Moved On to Familiar Shows with Foreign Audio

So far, everything I’d watched had either English subtitles or English audio. I was finally ready to move on to the ultimate challenge: watching shows and movies in Italian without any English at all.

The trick here was to choose popular Netflix shows that I knew well, so that I would already know the plot and some of the dialogue. This meant that I wouldn’t be struggling to understand what was happening in the story even if I couldn’t understand everything that was being said. Otherwise, there was a chance I could miss a crucial piece of information from the dialogue and have no idea what was going on.

Another useful trick was to turn on the Italian subtitles as I watched a show or movie in Italian. If the dialogue was spoken too quickly, or I just didn’t understand, I could use the subtitles to pick up on any words that I’d missed. Using the audio and subtitles in combination made it much easier to understand as much of the dialogue as possible.

Using Foreign Shows to Practice My Accent

This is definitely one to only try when you’re watching alone, but watching foreign shows and movies on Netflix is a great way to practice your accent in a foreign language. Language apps will use native speakers, but the phrases are often spoken carefully and clearly, which isn’t how it works in real life. Dialogue in movies and shows is much more like the way that the language is really spoken.

I tried repeating lines from the shows or movies I was watching to see how closely I could mimic the accent. Repeating every line is a challenge, so I stuck to repeating lines from one specific character. If the dialogue was too long, I’d just repeat the first line each time.

It’s amazing how quickly your accent can improve using this method. Because you’re copying native speakers, your own accent soon begins to sound a lot more natural. It also means that you don’t fall into the common pronunciation errors that many language learners succumb to.

Keeping a Vocabulary Log Is Helpful

This is a trick I learned when I tried reading a few books in Italian. As with Netflix shows, I picked books that I knew well, but I also chose books aimed at a younger audience to make the language a little simpler to follow. The first books I tried were from the Harry Potter series.

Despite knowing the stories well, there were a lot of words that were new to me. I found a really effective way to improve my vocabulary was to keep a log of any new words I came across and what they meant. I could then refer back to the log now and again to brush up on these words.

The same applies when you’re watching Netflix. If you come across words you’ve not encountered before, keep a note of them in a log. You can look them up once you’ve finished watching or pause the show to find out what they mean. You then have a ready-made collection of words that you can try to learn.

Extensions Such as Language Reactor Make Life Easier

This trick doesn’t work if you’re watching Netflix on your TV, but if you’re watching on a computer, there are some really useful extensions that can make your life a lot easier. I used a browser extension called Language Reactor.

On the Language Reactor website, you can enter the language you want to learn to see a curated list of Netflix shows that have high-quality subtitles in your target language. You can narrow the search to movies or TV shows, and specify genres, making it much easier to find something you want to watch.

The extension itself is even more useful. When you open a show or movie on Netflix, you get an additional menu with Language Reactor tools. You can select the audio language and choose the subtitle language, without having to go through the Netflix menus. Even more useful, however, is that you can opt to display subtitles in both the target language and English, meaning you can watch a show in Italian, with subtitles displayed in both Italian and English.

Related

The Best Websites for Learning a New Language

You’d think that with the vast amount of information on the Internet, learning a new language would be easy.

Hovering over a word in the subtitles will bring up an English translation, and you can also automatically pause the show or movie after each line of dialogue. That way, you can practice repeating the line, study the subtitles, or add words to your vocabulary log before moving on to the next line.

I’ve been using Netflix to help with my language learning for a while, and it’s made a big difference. Duolingo is great for learning vocabulary and basic grammar, but it’s not nearly as useful for speaking and listening. Netflix fills that gap well.

The key thing that I found was that it was important to choose the right content. A boring show or movie is boring no matter what language it’s in, but if you choose content you love, then at times you can almost forget that you’re learning as you watch.