Subtitles

Do you use subtitles when you watch a film or Netflix show in English? Is it a good idea to use subtitles? Do subtitles help you learn English or do they get in the way?

I’ve been thinking a bit about this for the last few days and chatting with people on Facebook. Keep reading to find out what I think you should do.

What are subtitles?
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”. In American English, they say “closed captions” when the text is created for the deaf and hard of hearing. They include information about sound effects and music as well as the dialogue. They say “subtitles” when the text is a translation from the original language. In British English, we usually say “subtitles” for both.)

Debate
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 need to use them myself!

But do subtitles help you with your English? The answer depends on your learning goals, your level of English 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.

Subtitles can be helpful
If you want to learn English, I think subtitles can sometimes help. Reading and listening at the same time can help you to match English spelling with English pronunciation, as long as you remember to 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 concentrate. If you just relax and watch the movie all the way through, reading the subtitles, you probably won’t remember many new words from the movie the next day.

To learn vocabulary from movies, you have to be an active learner. If you hear a word you don’t know, pause the film, look for the new word in the subtitles, write it down and learn it. Review your new words the next day.

Subtitles can be unhelpful
However, using subtitles isn’t always helpful. 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.

So what should you do?
The answer 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 watching short videos which are written specially for learners is better, like BBC Learning English on YouTube. Try to find videos which are for your level.

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.

Conclusion
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.


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