Learning a new language from children's shows

[LCastellano]

Since one of the best ways to learn a language is to expose yourself to it as much as possible, it's quite obvious that watching TV programs and movies and other such media spoken in that language would be very beneficial to the learning process. However, I find that in watching certain shows or movies, the dialogue can sometimes be a bit too complex or hard to follow. That led me to consider watching children's shows as a sort of gateway to learning the language, as mostly simpler language is used in that kind of media, and with a educative tone to boot.

 

What do you guys think? Do you think it's beneficial for language novices to start exposing themselves through children's shows spoken in that language?

[Teira Eri]

I agree with you 100%. Sometimes regular TV programs incorporate very advanced lexicon and grammatical points that only fluent speakers can grasp. Therefore, since children shows are geared towards those still garnering linguistic information and developing their comprehension skills, the vocabulary and topics are often less challenging. However, we all know that children shows have a knack for hiding more adult themes beneath the veneer of naiviety. As your understanding of the language grows, attempting to locate these hidden meanings might become a type of reward. 

I highly recommend shows to people seeking to increase their listening abilities. Repeating what you hear is also great pronunciation practice. The one issue I see with this is when shows use phrases that aren't actually real words and you mistake them as legitimate. Anime, for example, does that and trips a lot of people up big time. 

[petesede]

Overall I agree, but you have to pick a sweet spot and not go too young or you risk running into the Dr. Suess  problem.  Can you imagine trying to learn english using Dr. Suess Books?   yeah, stuff like one fish, two fish, red fish blue fish might help, but so many of the books have fake words, which is often the case with books and shows for very young children.  I found that books in the 8-12 age area are great for learning, stuff like Judy Blume ( any excuse to read Superfudge again!!)... or the pippi longstalking books.  But I really would not go much younger than that.

[LCastellano]

I agree that anime is relatively easy to pick up from, and as for the made up words and slang there's usually TL notes to cover you on that. What I am concerned about, though, are the languages that aren't featured in too many animated shows, so I assume I'll have to rely on dubbed cartoons and such for that. That aside, though, I didn't really believe I'll be binge-watching the German dub of Noddy in my lifetime prior to having this idea!

[Baburra]

I once saw a movie where a character did exactly this to learn a new foreign language as he was living in a foreign country and wanted to learn to speak the language. Unfortunately my memory of which movie this was is vague because I think it's a very old one that I watched years ago. Still, even then I have pondered that doing so must at least be somewhat effective since you could learn at least the basics and it's not that far off anyway since you are essentially starting to learn from scratch just as kids do. 

[takibari]

Learning a new language from children's shows should be used with caution. Children's shows are primarily catered to its audience and thus, a lot of things discussed are toned down to the level understandable to the children watching the show. I guess it's the Dr. Seuss problem that petesede mentioned about.

Anyhow, learning a new language using children's show as a main medium I think is great if you're still at the beginner's level. What better way to start than to get things done from the level of children. I, however, haven't heard of an adult learner starting with this approach. I remember a friend's child who loves to watch Dora the Explorer. While there's no one in my country who speaks Spanish, the child was able to pick up a few Spanish expressions just by watching Dora.

[lingvo]

A decent approach. In fact, for example, a good japanese learning process in the beginning is watching kid's shows instead of  anime or j-drama. That also applies to easier languages (almost every other language except mandarin, cantonese or arabic), tons of elemental vocabulary and context to improve fast.

[petesede]

On 5/19/2016 at 11:27 PM, Baburra said:

I once saw a movie where a character did exactly this to learn a new foreign language as he was living in a foreign country and wanted to learn to speak the language. Unfortunately my memory of which movie this was is vague because I think it's a very old one that I watched years ago. Still, even then I have pondered that doing so must at least be somewhat effective since you could learn at least the basics and it's not that far off anyway since you are essentially starting to learn from scratch just as kids do. 

I saw a similar semi-documentary where someone was able to learn a language just from watching the Harry Potter series.  He said a big part of it was just the fact that he had the movies basically memorized in english, so every sentence he was able to translate while the movie was still going on.  For books and movies, that is probably very important.. if you already are very familiar with the books or movies, it makes translating faster and easier.

[reverserewind]

This method is pretty interesting. When we all were much younger... yeah, that was the way we were learning our native language, as we didn't know any language at all at that time. However, as adults it wouldn't be the same. We already have some language and thoughts in our heads.

[darkchild]

I agree that one can learn languages from children's shows. I experienced this watching Dora the Explorer with my son. At least I know how to greet and say a few words in Spanish. I'm sure it is because of the constant repetition which helps retain information.

[IronMike]

Sometimes the kids' shows can be too hard/colloquial/fast. What I like to do is watch shows that I know in my native tongue but watch in an L2. I watch Воронины/Voroniny, which is basically Everybody Loves Raymond done Russian-style. The episodes are pretty much the same, so I can follow along easier than watching something like Comedy Women or other Russian sit-coms. They also have a plagiarized version of Married With Children, but it is so dang colloquial I just can't follow it. 

What also works for me is watching some reality TV in Russian. They've got a show called Магаззино/Magazzino, where a guy goes around and inspects grocery stores. He speaks quickly, but the subject is pretty limited in vocab, so not too bad to follow. There's also one called Орел и Решка/Heads or Tails, where two hosts show up in a city somewhere and flip a coin. The winner gets to spend whatever they want while in the city and the other gets $100 to spend for the weekend. Very fun to watch and the vocab isn't too difficult. 

[lingualbabe]

To be honest, I've never tried this approach but I do think it's a great option. Like you said, children's shows, like cartoons and educational series, are simpler in terms of usage of words and construction of sentences or phrases. So if you're a newbie learner of a language, it might be easier to grasp such concepts through a children's show. And the good thing is, they touch on the basics, so colours, the alphabet, the animals and all these things are included in the show. You are going to learn about the basics in a very simple way, enough for you just to understand them.

Like when I was learning English when I was younger, I tend to watch television series. During that time, I cannot understand most of the things that the actors say. Why? They spoke too fast and they have deeper accents. Whereas whenever I was watching Sesame Street or even Powerpuff Girls, I could easily understand what they're saying. Granted, the themes are simpler but it gets the job done.

I guess it could work for other languages too although I have never done that. I'll try and search some children's educational shows in Korean or Japanese next time. 

[Baburra]

On May 20, 2016 at 5:44 PM, petesede said:

I saw a similar semi-documentary where someone was able to learn a language just from watching the Harry Potter series.  He said a big part of it was just the fact that he had the movies basically memorized in english, so every sentence he was able to translate while the movie was still going on.  For books and movies, that is probably very important.. if you already are very familiar with the books or movies, it makes translating faster and easier.

I agree. I think evidence of this can be found everywhere now that I think about it, because I am sure that there are lots of non native English speakers who have learned the language mostly just busy watching the movies and tv shows which are extremely popular in almost every country. Granted, these aren't children's shows, but given that the language here is probably more complex then I'd say it's even more helpful or possible if it's a children's show. 

[lushlala]

I have to say, I too think this would be a very good way of learning. It would probably not work for everyone across the board, but I feel it's something worth exploring. -and yes, I'd be very careful not to go too young because the language geared towards the kiddies may be way too basic to be of any real use. I think somewhere around the ages 10-15 would be a good start. I think it would be simple enough and the pace slow enough to accommodate cmplete newbies to the language to people with very basic skills, and would be great for easing you into the whole learning process. I think this could definitely work for me. It doesn't even have to be restricted to TV shows or movies. I'd also want to look at the material geared towards that age range like text books and other learning aids.

[wolfette]

This is something we used to do in High School to help us to learn French, but I didn't find it helped me much personally. I'd rather listen to music than watch TV shows myself because I find that way I can concentrate more on the words than on the pictures. I guess I need the acoustics more than the visuals to learn? 

However I found that watching documentaries in other languages was beneficial to me. I watched a documentary about Mount Vesuvius (I have no idea why I picked that one!) and was able to learn some words from it. I suppose because it's factual though it interested me more than ordinary TV shows would have done. I prefer factual stuff even in English, my native language.